SLENDER

" You couldn't set up a better system to fail, in terms of "No one at school likes you, but here's this open-ended monster who will embrace you." 

The worst time to be socially isolated is the time when your brain and body are begging for camaraderie, for kinship, which is adolescence. 

It's the hardest time to be alone. I think in the absence of social contact, the Internet can sometimes serve as a peer in a way, or a peer group. Those two girls in a tight-knit group of eight friends, I don't think this would've happened, because they wouldn't have only been talking to each other and they wouldn't have been relying so heavily on information from the Internet. "

Slenderman is the modern-day boogeyman. 

Because it's faceless, because it's quiet, because it doesn't speak words, it's open to a lot of interpretation and open to a lot of possibilities and to a lot of projection. 

It varies from person to person as to what Slenderman actually is. 

He's the creature that lives in my closet. 

He's the guy in the windowless white van. 

The faceless stranger who kidnaps kids. 

It encapsulates, symbolically, a lot of these other kind of societal fears that we've had for ages and ages and kind of conveniently wraps them up and makes it really malleable. Because, really, Slenderman can be whomever you want him to be. We can empirically look back and find out where Slenderman was created. It was created in 2009 by Eric Knudsen under the screen name "Victor Surge" as part of a Photoshop contest to try to create something that looked real that really wasn't. Urban legends on the Internet has been a thing for decades. There was already a base audience that was ready for a globalized project to kind of build a myth. It actually began with the games that spun off from Slenderman. It's so heavily Page 12/51

visually oriented that it's replicable without really having to understand too much cultural context. And from there, it spread to every available platform and medium on the web. Tumblr... DeviantArt... YouTube... and also the 4chan's Paranormal Board. All of these websites have a really strong affinity with fan art in general. "Slender is coming"? YouTube was the international hub for non-English speakers to kind of break their way into the myth. Creepypasta is this generic term for horror stories that gets copied then pasted because it's good. As it spreads, people start tweaking some parts of the story or pick up where they left off. These are stories that branched out of the main canon of Slenderman. "Oh, should I travel through the woods," "Or should I not wishing I would?" "For above me lurks within the trees" "No one could hear my deathly screams" "The palest man, the blackest suit" Page 13/51

"Bigger than the tallest brute" "Six black arms will grab you up" "Or stalk you till you just give up" "He'll leave your body not to eat But to staple your corpse upon a tree." "Fear the man, the Slenderman For he can do what no one can." Slenderman kind of represents an opportunity to see where people are nervous about certain things and what excites them and what brings them together, because it changes. It changes based on who's telling the story. Often in the adult world we forget how much it sucks to be a kid. Slenderman can also be seen as a guardian angel. Slenderman is the Grim Reaper but with a heart. These pictures are not so much him showing up on the playground to snatch kids away, but to rescue them. Stories like this can be a powerful aphrodisiac for... for somebody who is lonely or is troubled, or is trying to find their way in the world. Slenderman has this entire community of people online who are feeding into the narrative and creating their own versions of it. It's constantly... Page 14/51

it's exponentially growing. That's the definition of a good meme. In human culture, if it's copied from one brain to another, that's a meme. Hi, my name is Valerie, and I've decided to do the Ice Bucket Challenge. I'm doing the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. I'm here to join the people bringing attention to Lou Gehrig's disease. It can be an idea. It can be a tune. It can be a style of dancing. Tired? What do you think he's doing? - Planking. - Oh, you know? - Yeah, I do. - Yes! I am from the Internet. The Internet provides a very, very fast, efficient, universal, worldwide medium for memes to spread. That'll never catch on. No doubt. 

 

"There may be some Memes that spread like a very rapid epidemic and then die away. 

But others may have strong persistence. 

 

People are captivated by Slenderman and wish to pass on images or to modify images of him. 

This horrifying story of two girls who thought that it was their duty to Slenderman to go and kill someone. 

 

Well, that's what I call Power. 

That's very Substantial Power, very Horrific Power."

 

-Prof. Richard Dawkins, Atheist.

 

"One of the things that just absolutely staggers me about these stories—especially the story of Cain and Abel, which I hope to get to— is that it’s so short. It’s like 10, 11 lines. 

There’s nothing to it at all, and I’ve found that it’s essentially inexhaustible in its capacity to reveal meaning. I don’t exactly know what to make of that. I think it has something to do with this intense process of condensation across a very long period of time. That’s the simplest explanation. The information in there is so densely packed, and it’s not that easy to come up with a fully compelling explanation for that. One of the things that you can be virtually certain about is that everything about the archaic Biblical stories that was memorable was remembered.

This is kinda like Richard Dawkins’ idea of Memes. 

I often thought that Richard Dawkins, if he was a little bit more mystically inclined, would have become Carl Jung. 

Their theories are unbelievable similar. 

 

The idea of Meme and the idea of archetype of the collective unconscious are very, very similar ideas. 

 

The Jungian idea’s far more profound, in my estimation — well, and it just is. 

 

He thought it through so much better. 

 

Dawkins tended to think of Meme as a sort of like a mind-worm that would infest the mind, and maybe multiple minds. 

But I don't think he ever really took the idea with the seriousness it deserved. 

 

I did hear him, actually, make a joke with Sam Harris, the last time they talked, about the fact that there was some possibility that the production of Memes — say, religious memes — could alter evolutionary history. 

 

They both avoided that topic instantly. 

They had a big laugh about it, and then decided they weren't going down that road. 

 

That was quite interesting, to me."

- Prof. Jordan Peterson, Prophet

Unconsciously, Slenderman stems from a tradition that... that goes way, way back. 

To a great extent, the Brothers Grimm collected tales that deal with what I would call universal human struggles that we continue to have today. 

I think that's one of the reasons why people are responding to this tale, and they're telling their own versions, their own horror stories about what is happening in The World today. 

Slenderman is a tale about a character, a strange weird character, who may feed upon children. 

It made me think of a legend that Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected called "The Pied Piper of Hamelin." 

Many years ago a town was being devastated by rats... in the gutters... on the streets... in the cellars. 

The Pied Piper comes out of nowhere. 

And he's a very odd, strange-looking person, but he has a flute or some type of pipe that he plays. 

The man said, 

"If you want me to get rid of the rats, you must pay me." 

So they said, 

"Yes, as much as you want if you can get rid of the rats." 

The Piper began blowing on the pipe. 

The Rats began following. 

The Piper had all The Rats jump into The River. 

But The Mayor and The Councilmen cheat him. 

And the Piper said, 

“You know, there are other tunes I can pipe, 

and ways that I can repay you, 

in a way that you will never forget." 

So The Piper took his pipe to his lips again and he began piping. 

The people froze, but the children followed him. 

There was an opening, a sudden opening in The Mountain. 

And all the children headed toward this opening. 

And as the last one entered, the mountain closed, and the Piper went inside as well. 

Depending on the times and the person who is telling their version of "The Pied Piper," he can be many different things. 

So he is a very mysterious figure. 

We don't know whether he's evil or good. 

We don't know whether he's going to do anything to these children. 

The children never return. 

Nobody ever hears about them.

But the Pied Piper does live on.