Origin The Slender Man was created on a thread in the Something Awful Internet forum begun on June 8, 2009, with the goal of editing photographs to contain supernatural entities. On June 10, a forum poster with the user name Victor Surge contributed two black and white images of groups of children, to which he added a tall, thin spectral figure wearing a black suit.[3][4] Although previous entries had consisted solely of photographs, Surge supplemented his submission with snatches of text, supposedly from witnesses, describing the abductions of the groups of children, and giving the character the name The Slender Man: The quote under the first photograph read: We didnt want to go, we didnt want to kill them, but its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time… — 1983, photographer unknown, presumed dead.[4] The quote under the second photograph read: One of two recovered photographs from the Stirling City Library blaze. Notable for being taken the day which fourteen children vanished and for what is referred to as “The Slender Man”. Deformities cited as film defects by officials. Fire at library occurred one week later. Actual photograph confiscated as evidence. — 1986, photographer: Mary Thomas, missing since June 13th, 1986.[4] These additions effectively transformed the photographs into a work of fiction. Subsequent posters expanded upon the character, adding their own visual or textual contributions.[3][4] In an interview with the website Know Your Meme, Victor Surge (real name Eric Knudsen)[5] claimed that he was inspired to create the Slender Man by legends of the shadow people, the writings of H. P. Lovecraft, Zack Parsons, and Stephen King (particularly The Mist), and the surrealism of William S. Burroughs. His intention was, he claimed, to formulate something whose motivations can barely be comprehended, and [which triggered] unease and terror in a general population.[6] Development The Slender Man soon went viral, spawning numerous works of fanart, cosplay and online fiction known as creepypasta: scary stories told in short snatches of easily copyable text that spread from site to site. Divorced from its original creator, the Slender Man became the subject of myriad stories by multiple authors within an overarching mythos.[2] The first video series involving the Slender Man evolved from a post on the Something Awful thread by user ce gars. It tells of a fictional film school friend named Alex Kralie, who had stumbled upon something troubling while shooting his first feature-length project, Marble Hornets. The video series, published in found footage style on YouTube, forms an alternate reality game describing the filmers fictional experiences with the Slender Man. The ARG also incorporates a Twitter feed and an alternate YouTube channel created by a user named totheark.[1][7] Marble Hornets is now one of the most popular Slender Man creations, with over 401,000 subscribers around the world, and 78 million views. Other Slender Man-themed YouTube serials followed, including EverymanHYBRID and TribeTwelve.[1] In 2011, Markus Notch Persson, creator of the sandbox indie game Minecraft, added a new hostile mob to the game, which he named the Enderman when multiple users on Reddit and Google+ commented on the similarity to the Slender Man.[8] In 2012, the Slender Man was adapted into a video game titled Slender: The Eight Pages; as of August, 2012, the game has been downloaded over 2 million times.[9] Several popular variants of the game followed, including Slendermans Shadow[10] and Slender Man for iOS, which became the second most-popular app download.[11] The sequel to Slender: The Eight Pages, Slender: The Arrival, was released in 2013.[12] Several independent films about the Slender Man have been released or are in development, including Entity[13] and The Slender Man, released free online after a $10,000 Kickstarter campaign.[14] In 2013, it was announced that Marble Hornets would become a theatrical film.[15] Description Because the Slender Mans fictional mythology has evolved without an official canon for reference, his appearance, motives, habits and abilities are not fixed, but change depending on the storyteller.[16] He is most commonly described as very tall and thin with unnaturally long, tentacle-like arms (or merely tentacles),[2] which he can extend to intimidate or capture prey. He has a white, featureless head and appears to be wearing a dark suit and tie. The Slender Man is often associated with the forest and/or abandoned locations and has the ability to teleport.[17][18] Proximity to the Slender Man is often said to trigger a Slender sickness; a rapid onset of paranoia, nightmares and delusions accompanied by nosebleeds.[19] Reaction The success of the Slender Man legend has been ascribed to the chaotic, ambiguous nature of the Internet. While nearly everyone involved understands on some level that the Slender Man is not real, the Internet offers up a mess of conflicting perspectives, blurring the boundary between fiction and reality and obscuring the characters origin, thus lending it an air of authenticity.[4] Only five months after his creation, George Noorys Coast to Coast AM, a radio call-in show devoted to the paranormal and conspiracy theories, began receiving callers asking about the Slender Man.[20] Two years later, an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune described his origins as difficult to pinpoint.[16] Eric Knudsen has commented that many people, despite understanding that the Slender Man was created on the Something Awful forums, still entertain the possibility that he might be real.[17] Professor Tom Pettitt of the University of Southern Denmark has described the Slender Man as being an exemplar of the modern ages closing of the Gutenberg Parenthesis; the time period from the invention of the printing press to the spread of the web in which stories and information were codified in discrete media, to a return to the older, more primal forms of storytelling, exemplified by oral tradition and campfire tales, in which the same story can be retold, reinterpreted and recast by different tellers, expanding and evolving with time.[17] Professor Shira Chess of the University of Georgia has noted that the Slender Man exemplifies the similarities between traditional folklore and the open source ethos of the Internet, and that, unlike those of traditional monsters such as vampires and werewolves, the Slender Mans mythos can be tracked and signposted, giving a powerful insight into how myth and folklore form.[3] She describes the Slender Man as a metaphor for helplessness, power differentials, and anonymous forces.[16] Similarly, Tye Van Horn, a writer for The Elm, has suggested that the Slender Man represents modern fear of the unknown; in an age flooded with information, people have become so inured to ignorance that they now fear what they cannot understand.[21] Troy Wagner, the creator of Marble Hornets, ascribes the terror of the Slender Man to its malleability; people can shape it into whatever frightens them most. Guys! Is It True?
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 05:26:24 +0000
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