![]() ![]() ![]() Quoting Shifman, Shira Chess and Eric Newsom comment that as an Internet meme, Slender Man “can be treated as (post)modern folklore, in which shared norms and values are constructed through cultural artifacts such as Photoshopped images or urban legends.’ In other words, memes crowdsource cultural values, fetishes, fears, and anxieties” (2015: 19). Fans adjusted old Germanic woodcuts and petroglyphs to illustrate Slender Man’s existence beyond the digital realm, inventing “proof” that Slender Man, or at least the Slender Man archetype, has existed since time immemorial. While Victor Surge copyrighted Slender Man in 2010, he also encouraged fans of his original Something Awful posts to embellish the story and use their technological skills to craft a historical and folkloric tradition that would lend to the immortality and realism of the figure. Though Slender Man began as a clever bit of photoshopping and flashfiction, the collective authorship and reinterpretation of the character through digital channels buoyed his popularity and seeming veracity. The documentary manages to incorporate the digital corpus and community that made Slender Man into a mythic creation capable of inciting violence, but the preoccupation with Internet surveillance among children and psychology of the girls fails to account for the digital ecology within which Slender Man was produced, or the connections between the mimetic monster and the digital affordances that have also given rise to phenomena like Pepe the Frog, Pizzagate, and Anonymous. ![]() The Slender Man stabbing, as it has come to be known, is the subject of HBO’s latest documentary Beware The Slenderman, a film as concerned with the psychological conditions of Geyser and Weier as it is with the mimetic production and circulation of the faceless horror figure, a creature many have referred to as a digitally crowd-sourced monster. Both girls have been incarcerated since 2014 and their trial as adults is set to take place this year. Though the girls were quickly apprehended en route to Nicolet State Park and the victim, Payton (Bella) Leutner, was rushed to the hospital, the violent episode made national news as an eerie, uncanny figure emerged in Geyser and Weier’s stories-that of Slender Man, a fictional creature first spawned on Something Awful by Eric Knudsen/Victor Surge as a part of a paranormal photo competition. The moral panic surrounding Slender Man- a figure of Internet folklore-erupted in 2014 after two young girls, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, stabbed a female friend and left her for dead in Waukesha, Wisconsin. ![]() It’s this lesson in helplessness that earns Slender: The Eight pages rank #10 on our list of best scary games to play in 2015.We didn’t want to go, we didn’t want to kill them, but its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time… And as the night deepens, the closer the Slender Man comes to wrapping his long, spindly arms around you… Take too long to find those pages, and you’re dead. Occasionally appearing in your peripheral vision, stare at him too long, and you’re dead. Slender Man, the tall, faceless creature of myth, is stalking you. It’s dark, and all you’ve got is a sputtering flashlight. Slender: The Eight Pages tasks you with finding eight pages scattered across an isolated woodland area. He has taken up residence in our minds, where he continuous to watch… and wait… Slender: The Eight Pagesīorn in the darkest corners of the internet, Slender Man’s presence in popular culture has grown exponentially to become a figure of folklore. Listed here are our top picks for the 10 Best Scary Games to Play in 2015 – scary games we believe will disturb, startle, and frighten even the bravest of gamers. And this is what makes a good horror game scary – the sense that everything is meaningless, and nothing you do can save you. While other games are equipping you with laser swords and arm cannons, horror games strip you of confidence and the means for self-preservation, introducing you to uncomfortable concepts such as uncertainty, isolation, and vulnerability. Horror games are a special kind of peculiarity in the gaming industry. Or is it the sense of powerlessness that comes with finding yourself alone, shrouded in darkness, with nothing but a dim flashlight and a dinky blade to defend yourself from horrors unseen? Is it the blood-drenched, tentacled abomination lurking just around the corner? The ravenous zombie shambling towards you? ![]()
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