Wow, two posts in a week? That hasn't happened since January. How lucky are you*? And, it's the post I promised in the first post: the the teleporting terror of the internet, the faceless fear of many a Youtube video, the pale panic of gamers the world over, El Hombre Delgado* himself, the Slender Man. More specifically, what it is, how I got interested in it, and why it's scary. Yes, that's right, cower in fear, you wretched fools, as I go into something scarier than Slendy can ever hope to be: deconstruction*. So let's get to it, shall I?
So what is Slender Man? The Slender Man was the first scary/creepy thing created by the internet that really took off - the only thing that could compare is the Zalgo meme, and that's only really because of the m̶̸͜e͞s̕͠s̶̶ed҉͢ ͘u̢̧͠p̨͘ ͏t̸̡ex̛͡t* that is associated with it. But Slender Man, he just took off. Originating from a thread on SomethingAwful in 2009, Slendy quickly took off, with a video series called Marble Hornets starting up in response less than a week after the character was first thought up (the internet moves fast), and which solidified a lot of the ideas around Slender Man that had been tossed up in the thread. Since then, it's been referenced in a lot of things, with Endermen in Minecraft being directly inspired by the whole thing, and with Slender Man finally hitting the mainstream (I don't like using that word, but, I just used it. Sue me.) in June of this year, when "Slender" semi-officially became known as the scariest game that isn't "Amnesia: The Dark Descent".
Well, that's the history of Slender Man, but I haven't started talking about Slendy himself intoo much detail. I'll be getting into that later, because it's tied up intensely with why Slender Man is so scary, but a slight disclaimer first: Slender Man is scary for a reason. As in have-trouble-sleeping-just-because-it's-dark-and-he-could-be-anywhere scary. I'm not going to be able to do this justice. Don't go watching Marble Hornets at night. Or in the day, for that matter. But before I go into why the Slenderest of Men is so scary, I'll brighten everything up by mentioning how I first found out about him.
If I haven't talked about Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series, also known as Yu-Gi-Oh: Abridged or YGOTAS before, I probably should have. It's just an excellent show - LittleKuriboh is one of my voice-acting heroes (yes, I also enjoy voice-acting, as almost everyone I know can attest to.), and the comedy is just top-notch. I have a link in the sidebar to the website for Yu-Gi-Oh: Abridged - if you haven't seen any episodes before, stop reading this and go look at something much more entertaining. Now, of all the characters in this series, Marik and Bakura have to be two of my favourites, and it's pretty obvious that the rest of the internet agrees. And being the avid fan I am, I see this video here, and, well, I just fall in love with it. After I saw that, I went on a Slendy binge, had trouble getting to sleep, and, well, here I am.
Now, to the actual point: why Slender Man is scary. First, though, you may be asking, what is the mythos to Slender Man? Well, first the physical details. Slendy is (as you can guess) a tall, pale, slender humanoid figure, who wears a suit. His (its?) most striking feature is his facelessness, and he is often (but not always) portrayed with having tentacles of some sort. He is generally very silent (having no face, obviousl). Last but not least, he will come after you.
Being how Slender Man is a product of the internet, you won't get much consensus apart from that - a lot of it really depends on who's created the vlog/blog/short story/something else in question. One thing's almost for sure though: whoever wrote the thing talking about Slendy will either die or go insane eventually. Slendy always wins. Always.
But why is Slendy scary, and how did Slendy become popular? Well, Slender Man is like the internet's answer to H.P. Lovecraft, in that Slender Man is some sort of figure who doesn't seem to be quite of this world, but will still mess you up badly. Is Slendy intelligent? What motivates him to kill you or drive you insane? Where did he come from? Why? Nobody knows - and that's sort of the point. Much of the fear comes from the fact that almost all we see of Slender Man is his effects. It is rare you'll find something that tackles Slender Man head-on - he's mainly in the shadows or indirectly referenced. Horror movies are mostly scary because of the suspense, interspersed with episodes of shock and terror - and the Slender Man mythos has really captured this. A successful Slender Man thing will capture the essentials: some tall, faceless, suited figure who lives in the shadows, and who only shows himself to people sparingly - but when he does, things are about to get seriously bad.
So why is Slender Man, of all things, popular on the internet? Why has he captured so much interest? Well, first you need to understand what the internet is good at - individuals producing content and communicating with people worldwide. Things are much more personal on the internet than books or films - someone who posts content seems much more like "one of us" online. And this is how the Slender Man mythos fits in really well - a typical story being someone encountering things that aren't quite right, then investigating and documenting the results, and who soon finds out that there's some suited guy behind it all who doesn't seem quite human... This can obviously work as a film, or book, but it works really well when you get the internet involved - it's something that just fits as a blog or a vlog. It also adds to the fear behind it all - if it were a film, it's less scary: this happened to actors, not people you know. But since it happened online, to people just like us, it gets a lot spookier. That's what makes Slender Man so scary and popular - he's like a character of fear that's worked on the internet's twin powers in spreading ideas and posting content. Slender Man as a concept just works with the power of anyone being able to post content, and since he's become a meme* in his own right, the internet popularises it. This also explains an idea that is occasionally linked to Slender Man - the fact that by being aware of him, he becomes aware of you (aren't you glad you're reading this post?).
Our conclusion, ladies and gentlemen? Slender Man is, if not a perfect, then at least an incrediby good fit for the "scary character" of the internet*. His mythos just makes for a traditionally scary thing, with the whole facelessness and "not-of-this-worldiness" for the physical characteristics, and the suspense teleporting thing to complete the package. This would make him good enough to work with such characters as Freddy Krueger, but on top of all this, Slender Man's mythos of attacking random normal people just naturally gels really well with the power of individual content sharing that makes the internet what it is. It's these characteristics, as well as a few others I mentioned, that make the Slender Man so scary, and make him the terror of the internet that he is today. Hope you enjoyed it!
AB
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