Slender Man: Birth of an Urban Legend

[Devan Sagliani]

Slender Man: Birth of an Urban Legend

A deeper look into the misunderstood urban legend.

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[Hiramas]

It is really fascinating that in the digital age we get digital monsters.
The dynamic this has taken is phenomenal and a thing for social scientists to study.
Thanks for the summary of his story, i did not actually know that slender was THIS young...

 

[ritchards]

I'm surprised SCP hasn't been mined into being a crappy cable show...

 

[Ken Sapp]

It is really fascinating that in the digital age we get digital monsters.
The dynamic this has taken is phenomenal and a thing for social scientists to study.
Thanks for the summary of his story, i did not actually know that slender was THIS young...

Yeah, I could have sworn I had been seeing mentions of him for longer than 5 years...

Unfortunately, the hysterical response to events like this one lead the mass populace to flip their lids and try to place the blame on anything other than personal responsibility. Some people are just not right in the head and it is often hard to identify the perpetrators of crimes like this before they act. Where is the line between being a fan of horror stories and trying to recreate them? The sad fact is that here in the US there really isn't the necessary mental health facilities to really deal with them anymore. And the people you would think are most likely to see the signs, friends and family, are generally the ones least likely to recognize the signs beforehand. How many times have you heard those people realizing their oversights in interviews after the fact?

And finally, is there really a solution to this problem? I don't see one that doesn't involve wiping out the human race. Maybe the computers have the right idea... We are too intent on self destruction to survive.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Here's the thing about lunatics; They will go on their rampages for any reason, if they happen to open the web browsers to a page selling coloured balls, they will say the colours spelled out "m-(magenta)-u-(umber)-r-(red, you get the idea)-der everyone". They're just excuses they use to "justify" their actions. Banning things won't stop the crazies from being crazy.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

the colours spelled out "m-(magenta)-u-(umber)-r-(red, you get the idea)-der

Now I'm trying really hard to think of colors that start with a "d" or an "e"

OT:
Interesting stuff to be sure.

The inner hipster in me feels the need to mention that I was certainly swept up in the fear to a certain extent long before the mainstream popularity of things like Slender.

One other thing stood out here that I need to mention as well.

The girls behind that attack will most likely be tried as adults for their crimes

This is a completely insane idea and I sincerely hope it does not happen.

I get that they're terrible, but they're also 12. There's an extremely good reason that we have differing trials for children and adults, primarily that their brains are very underdeveloped. I understand the need to try certain people as adults when they do something terrible at 17 and such, but attempted murder or not, the girls are 12. That is too young to try as an adult under [i/]any[/i] circumstances.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Now I'm trying really hard to think of colors that start with a "d" or an "e"

D for Dandelion and E for Ebony. Yeah it's chromatic semantics, but tell that to the pencil companies who sell 100 colour pencil sets.

 

[VoidWanderer]

If they make a Slender Man movie before Cthulhu, I will give up on monster movies.

 

[VoidWanderer]

the colours spelled out "m-(magenta)-u-(umber)-r-(red, you get the idea)-der

Now I'm trying really hard to think of colors that start with a "d" or an "e"

OT:
Interesting stuff to be sure.

The inner hipster in me feels the need to mention that I was certainly swept up in the fear to a certain extent long before the mainstream popularity of things like Slender.

One other thing stood out here that I need to mention as well.

The girls behind that attack will most likely be tried as adults for their crimes

This is a completely insane idea and I sincerely hope it does not happen.

I get that they're terrible, but they're also 12. There's an extremely good reason that we have differing trials for children and adults, primarily that their brains are very underdeveloped. I understand the need to try certain people as adults when they do something terrible at 17 and such, but attempted murder or not, the girls are 12. That is too young to try as an adult under [i/]any[/i] circumstances.

They acted with deliberate intent and planned it. Try them as adults as they acted like it. If it was an accident, then fine. But 19 stabs is malicious intent.

 

[Johkmil]

the colours spelled out "m-(magenta)-u-(umber)-r-(red, you get the idea)-der

Now I'm trying really hard to think of colors that start with a "d" or an "e"

OT:
Interesting stuff to be sure.

The inner hipster in me feels the need to mention that I was certainly swept up in the fear to a certain extent long before the mainstream popularity of things like Slender.

One other thing stood out here that I need to mention as well.

The girls behind that attack will most likely be tried as adults for their crimes

This is a completely insane idea and I sincerely hope it does not happen.

I get that they're terrible, but they're also 12. There's an extremely good reason that we have differing trials for children and adults, primarily that their brains are very underdeveloped. I understand the need to try certain people as adults when they do something terrible at 17 and such, but attempted murder or not, the girls are 12. That is too young to try as an adult under [i/]any[/i] circumstances.

They acted with deliberate intent and planned it. Try them as adults as they acted like it. If it was an accident, then fine. But 19 stabs is malicious intent.

Of course it was malicious intent when they planned murder, but this was done by children unable to comprehend the scope of their actions. They believed in Slenderman, for goodness' sake. One of them was ruled mentally incompetent, even for a twelve year old. They did not act like adults, they acted like children in desperate need of help and better parenting. Imprisoning them will do no good to neither them nor society. Will it rehabilitate them from their stabby ways? Will it act as a deterrent to potential future cultists of Slendy? Do we need to keep them incarcerated in order to prevent them from stabbing everyone? No, the only potential gain is some sort of perverse notion of retribution by causing misery upon kids who did not know better than to commit a horrible act of violence.

Why do you even have the possibility of trying twelve year old minors as adults? Between this, the death penalty, the horrendous rehabilitation rate, the ridiculous incarceration rate, and the prison-industrial complex, you have why most of the Western world sees the American penal system as degenerate.

 

[Ian Kapsthan Frost]

Somehow Slender Man always reminds me of the Prince from Yahtzee's later Chzo games (Trilby's Notes and 6 Days a Sacrifice).

They do seem to have a lot in common.


I had previously only known Slender Man as the titular character of the game(s?) about him, and therefore believed that to have been his origin. This article has been most informative, but also most disturbing.

 

[Michael Tabbut]

If they make a Slender Man movie before Cthulhu, I will give up on monster movies.

The HP Lovecraft Historical Society made a silent film version of Call of Cthulhu years ago, long before Slender Man was a thing.
OT. Good article, sort of wondered when the dude was created.

 

[StriderShinryu]

I've never been on board the Creepypasta train, but this is an interesting perspective. It's common to view all sorts of mythical creatures, both good and bad, as things of the past. In many ways, it's that distance which adds to even the smallest amount of their plausibility and yet, in this case, it's something you can actually track the creation and growth of in a handful of years. Then, as stated in the article, you can even see how just a sliver of belief amongst the likely certifiable just adds to the reality of the obviously made up stories. Cool stuff.

 

[briankoontz]

It is really fascinating that in the digital age we get digital monsters.
The dynamic this has taken is phenomenal and a thing for social scientists to study.
Thanks for the summary of his story, i did not actually know that slender was THIS young...

It was created in digital media, but it's not a digital monster - it's resemblance to a human man indicates that as it's source of inspiration. An example of a digital monster is Nyan Cat.

If I had to speculate on Slenderman, I would say that he's one of three main archetypes for creepy pedophiles, the other being the childlike type ala Peter Pan or Michael Jackson and the child's plaything type ala Pedobear. Slenderman's unearthly height and build fascinates children - this is his power over them, very different from the Michael Jackson approach of "I'm one of you" or Pedobear's "hug me". Bear in mind that children are outsiders, excluded in large part from adult human society. So they are attracted to other outsiders.

Slenderman is a Weeping Angel - he bears the full emotional impact of the approaching death of humanity. Slenderman's solution is to attempt to be an Angel, that is to say to be superior to humanity, and his motivation in abducting children is similar to Michael Jackson's - to build a new society with an Angel, rather than humans, leading and shaping the new generation of humans.

The original poster's recommendation that we shun Slenderman is a terrible approach. Slenderman is a very valuable cultural insight, and we owe it's creator a debt in the same sense that we owe every great artist a debt. We need to rationally deal with pedophiles, and the only way to do that is to understand pedophilia on a deep level. Understanding Slenderman is an important part of that.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

the colours spelled out "m-(magenta)-u-(umber)-r-(red, you get the idea)-der

Now I'm trying really hard to think of colors that start with a "d" or an "e"

OT:
Interesting stuff to be sure.

The inner hipster in me feels the need to mention that I was certainly swept up in the fear to a certain extent long before the mainstream popularity of things like Slender.

One other thing stood out here that I need to mention as well.

The girls behind that attack will most likely be tried as adults for their crimes

This is a completely insane idea and I sincerely hope it does not happen.

I get that they're terrible, but they're also 12. There's an extremely good reason that we have differing trials for children and adults, primarily that their brains are very underdeveloped. I understand the need to try certain people as adults when they do something terrible at 17 and such, but attempted murder or not, the girls are 12. That is too young to try as an adult under [i/]any[/i] circumstances.

They acted with deliberate intent and planned it. Try them as adults as they acted like it. If it was an accident, then fine. But 19 stabs is malicious intent.

Of course it's intent, but it's intent created from immature minds.

You say they acted like adults, but they didn't at all. Adults don't believe Slenderman is real. It's their childishness that caused the incident in the first place.

Furthermore, the primary purpose of locking up adults is to punish them so that they, and others, don't repeat the actions. These kids are not going to learn any lessons by being tried the same way adults are. These kids need to be in psychiatric therapy, just as one of them is probably going to be.