The Slender Man. To many, he’s the pale, tall, thin, and faceless fictional creature that kidnaps his victims before stalking them and killing them. The character has inspired horror video games, Internet Memes, fanfiction stories, and several YouTube prank videos. And, horrifically the real life stabbing of a 12-year-old girl back in 2014.
The Slender Man found his origins from an internet contest back in June 2009. In the contest, two black and white photographs were photoshopped and had the Slender Man appear in the background.
The Slender Man creator, Eric Knudsen, was inspired to create the character from various other horror elements. Ranging from Stephen King’s “The Mist”, Zack Parsons’ “That Insidious Beat”, and other fictional sources including Mothman, and “The Shadow People”.
Following the contest, as the internet normally does, The Slender Man went viral. Inspiring fanart, cosplay, and a subject of multiple “Creepypasta” stories. Immediately afterward, with so much going on multiple authors began to create their own mythos of the character, but with very similar themes, before ending up with the same ending narrative.
Several people began to try to connect the character to real life. Including, making a fictional story about his real life origin in German folklore.
In 2012, perhaps the most popular example of the character, he appeared in the Video game “Slender: The Eight Pages”. This was my introduction to the character, Youtube exploded with reaction videos as several people played the video game in an attempt to complete it without The Slender Man getting them. At this point, the character was bigger than ever. I heard the character referenced in school, and even a few conversations between friends. Although it wasn’t all over the school per say, people were certainly talking about it.
When I look at the evolution of The Slender Man, I see a prime example of how the internet is able to impact something and help generate it into a new set of the mythos and popularity. He's grown from a simple content submission to a piece of pop culture and even an influence of a real life crime. The internet is one of the most powerful pieces of modern culture, and it's able to generate thousands of different opinions and viewpoints. Some of these ideas like The Slender Man help grow into something very popular, while others slowly die down and disappear into the darkest parts of the internet. While I haven't seen much about The Slender Man, at least not since the stabbing occurred. It's potentially reaching the end of its internet life.
But when we are consdiering the internet... Is it anything ever really at an end?
