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Wikipedia

Slender Man

The Slender Man (also spelled Slenderman) is a fictional supernatural character that originated as a creepypasta Internet meme created by Something Awful forum user Eric Knudsen (also known as "Victor Surge") in 2009. He is depicted as a thin, unnaturally tall humanoid with a featureless white head and face, wearing a black suit.

Slender Man
An artistic depiction of the Slender Man
First appearanceJune 10, 2009 on a Something Awful post
Created byEric Knudsen
Portrayed by
In-universe information
SpeciesUnknown
GenderMale

Stories of the Slender Man commonly feature his stalking, abducting, or traumatizing people, particularly children. The Slender Man has become a pop culture icon, although he is not confined to a single narrative but appears in many disparate works of fiction, typically composed online. Fiction relating to the Slender Man encompasses many media, including literature, art and video series such as Marble Hornets (2009–2014), wherein he is known as The Operator. The character has appeared in the video game Slender: The Eight Pages (2012) and its successor Slender: The Arrival (2013), as well as inspiring the Enderman in Minecraft. He has also appeared in a 2015 film adaptation of Marble Hornets, where he was portrayed by Doug Jones, and an eponymous 2018 film, where he was portrayed by Javier Botet.

Beginning in 2014, a moral panic occurred over the Slender Man after readers of his fiction were connected to several violent acts, particularly a near-fatal stabbing of a 12-year-old girl in Waukesha, Wisconsin.[1] The stabbing inspired the documentary Beware the Slenderman, which was released in 2016.

Description

 
The "Slender Man symbol" introduced by Marble Hornets

Because the Slender Man's 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.[2] He is most commonly described as very tall and thin with unnaturally long, tentacle-like arms (or mere tentacles),[3] which he can extend to intimidate or capture prey. In most stories, his face is white and featureless, but occasionally his face appears differently to anyone who sees it.[2] He 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.[4][5] Proximity to the Slender Man is often said to trigger a "Slender sickness"; a rapid onset of paranoia, nightmares and delusions accompanied by nosebleeds.[6]

Early stories featured him targeting children or young adults. Some featured young adults driven insane or to act on his behalf, while others did not, and others claim that investigating the Slender Man will draw his attention.[7] The web series Marble Hornets established the idea of proxies (humans who fall under the Slender Man's influence) though initially, they were simply violently insane, rather than puppets of the Slender Man. Marble Hornets also introduced the idea that the Slender Man could interfere with video and audio recordings, as well as the "Slender Man symbol", ⦻, which became a common trope of Slender fiction.[7] Graphic violence and body horror are uncommon in the Slender Man mythos, with many narratives choosing to leave the fate of his victims obscure.[7] Shira Chess notes that "It is important to note that few of the retellings identify exactly what kind of monster the Slender Man might be, and what his specific intentions are- these points all remain mysteriously and usefully vague."[2]

History

Origin

 
The writings of H. P. Lovecraft influenced the creation of the Slender Man.

The Slender Man was created on June 10, 2009, on a thread in the Something Awful Internet forum.[8] [9][10] The thread was a Photoshop contest in which users were challenged to "create paranormal images."[11][12] Forum poster Eric Knudsen, under the pseudonym "Victor Surge",[13] contributed two black-and-white images of groups of children to which he added a tall, thin, spectral figure wearing a black suit.[14][15] 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 didn't want to go, we didn't want to kill them, but its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time…

— 1983, photographer unknown, presumed dead.[15]

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.[15]

These additions effectively transformed the photographs into a work of fiction. Subsequent posters expanded upon the character, adding their own visual or textual contributions.[14][15]

Knudsen was inspired to create the Slender Man primarily by Zack Parsons' "That Insidious Beast", Stephen King's The Mist, reports of shadow people, Mothman and the Mad Gasser of Mattoon.[16] Other inspirations for the character were the Tall Man from the 1979 film Phantasm,[7] H. P. Lovecraft, the surrealist work of William S. Burroughs, and the survival horror video games Silent Hill and Resident Evil.[17] Knudsen's intention was "to formulate something whose motivations can barely be comprehended, and [which caused] unease and terror in a general population."[18] Other pre-existing fictional or legendary creatures which are similar to the Slender Man include: the Gentlemen, black-suited, pale, bald demons from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Hush"; men in black, many accounts of which grant them an uncanny appearance with an unnatural walk and "oriental" features; and The Question, a DC Comics superhero with a blank face, whose secret identity is "Victor Sage", a name similar to Knudsen's alias "Victor Surge".[7]

In her book, Folklore, Horror Stories, and the Slender Man: The Development of an Internet Mythology, Professor Shira Chess of the University of Georgia connected the Slender Man to ancient folklore about fairies. Like fairies, the Slender Man is otherworldly, with motives that are often difficult to grasp; like fairies, his appearance is vague and often shifts to reflect what the viewer wants or fears to see, and, like fairies, the Slender Man lives in the woods and wild places and kidnaps children.[7]

Early development

The Slender Man soon went viral,[19] spawning numerous works of fanart, cosplay, and online fiction known as "creepypasta"—horror stories told in short snatches of easily copyable text that spread from site to site.[20] Divorced from its original creator, the Slender Man became the subject of myriad stories by multiple authors within an overarching mythos.[3]

Many aspects of the Slender Man mythos first appeared on the original Something Awful thread. One of the earliest additions was added by a forum user named "Thoreau-Up", who created a folklore story set in 16th-century Germany involving a character called Der Großman, which was, the writer implied, an early reference to the Slender Man.[7]: 36  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".[21][22] As of 2013, Marble Hornets had over 250,000 subscribers around the world and had received 55 million views.[23] Other Slender Man-themed YouTube serials followed, including EverymanHYBRID and TribeTwelve.[21]

In 2012, the Slender Man was adapted into a video game titled Slender: The Eight Pages; and the official website crashed after too many people tried to download the game.[24] Several popular variants of the game followed, including Slenderman's Shadow[25] and Slender Man for iOS, which became the second most-popular app download.[26] The sequel to Slender: The Eight Pages, Slender: The Arrival, was released in 2013.[27] Several independent films about the Slender Man have been released or are in development, including Entity[28] and The Slender Man, released free online after a $10,000 Kickstarter campaign.[29] In 2013, it was announced that Marble Hornets would become a feature film.[23]

Waukesha stabbing

On May 31, 2014, two 12-year-old girls in Waukesha, Wisconsin held down and stabbed a 12-year-old classmate 19 times. When questioned later by authorities, they reportedly claimed that they wished to commit a murder as a first step to becoming proxies for the Slender Man, having read about it online.[1] They also stated that they were afraid that Slender Man would kill their families if they did not commit the murder.[30] After the perpetrators left the scene, the victim crawled out of the woods to a roadway. A passing cyclist alerted authorities, and the victim survived the attack. Both attackers were diagnosed with mental illnesses[31] but were charged as adults and faced up to 65 years in prison.[32] One of the girls reportedly said Slender Man watches her, could read minds and could teleport.[1]

Experts testified in court that she also said she conversed with Lord Voldemort and one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. On August 1, 2014, she was found incompetent to stand trial and her prosecution was suspended until her condition improved.[33] On December 19, 2014, the judge ruled that both girls were competent to stand trial.[34] In August 2015, the presiding judge ruled that the girls would be tried as adults.[35] They were tried separately.[36] On August 21, 2017, one of the girls, now 15, pleaded guilty to being a party to attempted second-degree homicide, but claimed she was not responsible for her actions on grounds of insanity.[37] Although prosecutors alleged that she knew what she was doing was wrong, the jury determined that she was mentally ill during the attack. On December 21, Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren sentenced Anissa Weier, then 16 years old, to be hospitalized for 25 years from the date of the crime, which would keep her institutionalized until age 37.[38]

In a statement to the media on June 4, 2014, Eric Knudsen said, "I am deeply saddened by the tragedy in Wisconsin and my heart goes out to the families of those affected by this terrible act." He stated he would not be giving interviews on the matter.[39]

On September 25, 2017, it was reported that Morgan Geyser, then 15, had agreed to plead guilty to attempting to commit first-degree homicide in an arrangement that would allow her to avoid jail time.[40] On February 1, 2018, the Associated Press reported that Geyser had been sentenced to 40 years in the Wisconsin mental hospital, the maximum sentence allowed.[41]

Moral panic and other incidents

The stabbing in Waukesha spawned a nationwide moral panic over Slender Man across the United States.[42][43] Parents nationwide became worried about the potential dangers that stories about Slender Man might pose to their children's safety.[42][43] Russell Jack, the police chief of Waukesha, warned that the Slender Man stabbing "should be a wake-up call for all parents" that "the internet is full of dark and wicked things." Many media outlets publicized Jack's warning.[42]

After hearing the story, an unidentified woman from Cincinnati, Ohio, told a WLWT TV reporter in June 2014 that her 13-year-old daughter had attacked her with a knife, and had written macabre fiction, some involving the Slender Man, who the mother said motivated the attack.[44]

On September 4, 2014, a 14-year-old girl in Port Richey, Florida, allegedly set her family's house on fire while her mother and nine-year-old brother were inside. Police reported that the teenager had been reading online stories about Slender Man, as well as Atsushi Ōkubo's manga Soul Eater.[45] Eddie Daniels of the Pasco County Sheriff's Office said the girl "had visited the website that contains a lot of the Slender Man information and stories [...] It would be safe to say there is a connection to that."[46]

During an early 2015 epidemic of suicide attempts by young people ages 12 to 24 on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Slender Man was cited as an influence; the Oglala Sioux tribe president noted that many Native Americans traditionally believe in a "suicide spirit"[47][48] similar to the Slender Man.[49][50] Other Sioux describe the "Big Man"[a] as a messenger or sign, warning that society is developing in a dangerous direction.[52]

A documentary film on the incident called Beware the Slenderman, directed by Irene Taylor Brodsky, was released by HBO Films in March 2016, and was broadcast on HBO on January 23, 2017.[53]

After the Waukesha stabbing

The Waukesha stabbing and the negative media attention it generated irreversibly altered the Slender Man legend and the online community surrounding it.[42][43] What had previously just been a creepy horror meme to most people suddenly acquired a new level of reality that most fans of Slender Man found horrifying.[42][43] Meanwhile, by around the same time, the Slender Man character had lost much of his original popularity.[42][43] Most of the original blogs that had once been devoted to Slender Man either shut down completely or became less popular.[42] Slender Man's presence in mainstream popular culture also contributed to a decline in how frightening he seemed to many people.[42][43]

The late 2010s also saw an increase in benevolent portrayals of Slender Man, with many depictions of him from this period portraying him as an antihero who protects victimized children from bullies, although often by violent means.[43] In some portrayals of Slender Man from the late 2010s, he has a daughter named Skinny Sally, who is portrayed as a young girl covered in cuts and bruises.[43] Slender Man sometimes is portrayed carrying Skinny Sally on his shoulders protectively.[43] Lynn McNeill, assistant professor of folklore at Utah State University, observes that the increase in benevolent portrayals of Slender Man seems to have begun shortly after the stabbing in Waukesha and states that this trend towards a benevolent Slender Man may be a reaction by fans of the character to the violence of the stabbing.[43]

Despite the decline in popular interest in Slender Man, commercial adaptations of the character continued.[42][43] In 2015, the film adaptation of Marble Hornets, titled Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story, was released on VOD, where the character was portrayed by Doug Jones.[54] In 2016, Sony Pictures subsidiary Screen Gems partnered with Mythology Entertainment to bring a Slender Man film into theatres, with the title character portrayed by Javier Botet.[55]

The film generated considerable controversy soon after it was announced, with many accusing the filmmakers of trying to capitalize off the Waukesha stabbing.[43] Bill Weier, the father of Anissa Weier, stated, "It's absurd they want to make a movie like this... All we're doing is extending the pain all three of these families have gone through."[43] The progressive advocacy group Care2 created an online petition, which received over 19,000 signatures, demanding that the film not be released, labelling the film "crass commercialism at its worst" and "a naked cash grab built on the exploitation of a deeply traumatic event and the people who lived it."[43] Sony representatives insisted that the film was based on the fictional character that had become popular online and not on the Waukesha stabbing.[43]

Upon its release in August 2018, the film Slender Man, despite being declared a box-office bomb[42] and receiving both little marketing and overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics,[56][57][42] went on to gross several times its $10 million budget worldwide.[58] David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a D, writing "a tasteless and inedibly undercooked serving of the Internet's stalest creepypasta, Slender Man aspires to be for the YouTube era what The Ring was to the last gasps of the VHS generation. But... there's one fundamental difference that sets the two movies apart: The Ring is good, and Slender Man is terrible."[59] Writing for The Verge, Carli Velocci called the Slender Man movie "a nail in the coffin of a dying fandom".[42]

Folkloric qualities

Several scholars have argued that, despite being a fictional work with an identifiable origin point, the Slender Man represents a form of digital folklore. Shira Chess argues 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 fact that the Slender Man's mythos can be tracked and signposted offers a powerful insight into how myth and folklore form.[14] Chess identifies three aspects of the Slender Man mythos that tie it to folklore: collectivity (meaning that it is created by a collective, rather than a single individual), variability (meaning that the story changes depending on the teller), and performance (meaning that the storyteller's narrative changes to reflect the audience's response).[7]

 
Cosplay of the Slender Man in 2013

Media scholar and folklorist Andrew Peck attributes the success of the Slender Man to its highly collaborative nature. Because the character and its motives are shrouded in mystery, users can easily adapt existing Slender Man tropes and imagery to create new stories. This ability for users to tap into the ideas of others while also supplying their own helped inspire the collaborative culture that arose surrounding the Slender Man. Instead of privileging the choices of certain creators as canonical, this collaborative culture informally locates ownership of the creature across the community. In these respects, the Slender Man is similar to campfire stories or urban legends, and the character's success comes from enabling both social interaction and personal acts of creative expression.[60]

Although nearly all users understand that the Slender Man is not real, they suspend that disbelief in order to become more engrossed when telling or listening to stories.[61] This adds a sense of authenticity to Slender Man legend performances and blurs the lines between legend and reality, keeping the creature as an object of legend dialectic.[62] This ambiguity has led some to some confusion over the character's origin and purpose. Only five months after his creation, George Noory's Coast to Coast AM, a radio call-in show devoted to the paranormal and conspiracy theories, began receiving callers asking about the Slender Man.[63] Two years later, an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune described his origins as "difficult to pinpoint."[2] 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.[4]

Shira Chess describes the Slender Man as a metaphor for "helplessness, power differentials, and anonymous forces."[2] Peck sees parallels between the Slender Man and common anxieties about the digital age, such as feelings of constant connectedness and unknown third-party observation.[60] 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 unaccustomed to ignorance that they now fear what they cannot understand.[64] 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.[4] Tina Marie Boyer noted that "The Slender man is a prohibitive monster, but the cultural boundaries he guards are not clear. Victims do not know when they have violated or crossed them."[7] Andrew Peck also considers the Slender Man to be an authentic form of folklore and notes its similarity to emergent forms of offline legend performance. Peck suggests that digital folklore performance extends the dynamics of face-to-face performance in several notable ways, such as by occurring asynchronously, encouraging imitation and personalization while also allowing perfect replication, combining elements of oral, written, and visual communication, and generating shared expectations for performance that enact group identity despite the lack of a physically present group. He concludes that the Slender Man represents a digital legend cycle that combines the generic conventions and emergent qualities of oral and visual performance with the collaborative potential of networked communication.[60]

Jeff Tolbert also accepts the Slender Man as folkloric and suggests it represents a process he calls "reverse ostension". Ostension in folkloristics is the process of acting out a folk narrative. According to Tolbert, the Slender Man does the opposite by creating a set of folklore-like narratives where none existed before. It is an iconic figure produced through a collective effort and deliberately modeled after an existing and familiar folklore genre. According to Tolbert, this represents two processes in one: it involves the creation of new objects and new disconnected examples of experience, and it involves the combination of these elements into a body of "traditional" narratives, modeled on existing folklore (but not wholly indebted to any specific tradition).[61]

Professor Thomas Pettitt of the University of Southern Denmark has described the Slender Man as being an exemplar of the modern age's 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, allowing the lore to expand and evolve with time.[4]

Copyright

Despite his folkloric qualities, the Slender Man is not in the public domain. Several for-profit ventures involving the Slender Man have unequivocally acknowledged Knudsen as the creator of this fictional character, while others were civilly blocked from distribution (including the Kickstarter-funded film) after legal complaints from Knudsen and other sources. Though Knudsen himself has given his personal blessing to a number of Slender Man-related projects, the issue is complicated by the fact that, while he is the character's creator, a third party holds the options to any adaptations into other media, including film and television. The identity of this option holder has not been made public.[13] Knudsen himself has argued that his enforcement of copyright has less to do with money than with artistic integrity: "I just want something amazing to come off it... something that's scary and disturbing and kinda different. I would hate for something to come out and just be kinda conventional."[63] In May 2016, the media rights to Slender Man were sold to production company Mythology Entertainment,[55] but the company split up in 2019, leaving the ownership of the character's rights in question.[65]

In popular culture

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.[66] In 2013, the Slender Man appeared as the antagonist of the season 3 Lost Girl episode "SubterrFaenean", in which the Slender Man was said to be the basis for the Pied Piper legend.[67] In 2014, the TV series Supernatural parodied Slender Man as "Thinman" in the Season 9 episode of the same name.[68] That same year, the sixteenth season of the crime drama TV series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit featured an episode, "Glasgowman's Wrath", inspired by the Slender Man stabbings.[69] In 2018, Slender Man appeared in the episode "The Planned Parenthood Show" in Big Mouth.[70]

See also

  • Bogeyman – Mythical creature
  • Kunekune – Another message board urban legend with wriggly appendages
  • Pope Lick Monster – Another urban legend of a compulsive being with real consequences
  • The Silbón – A Colombian/Venezuelan legendary figure, who shares some traits with Slender Man

Notes

  1. ^ Which relation may be explored via attributes related by Matthieson,[51] as cited by Redfern[48] and Wilson.[52]

References

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Further reading

  • Curlew, Kyle (2017). "The legend of the Slender Man: The boogieman of surveillance culture". First Monday. 22 (6). doi:10.5210/fm.v22i6.6901.

External links

  • , somethingawful.com
  • Eric Knudsen's gallery that contains all of his Slender Man images, deviantart.com
  • Pixel Gun 3D "Slender Forest" level, YouTube.com

slender, this, article, about, fictional, character, other, uses, disambiguation, also, spelled, slenderman, fictional, supernatural, character, that, originated, creepypasta, internet, meme, created, something, awful, forum, user, eric, knudsen, also, known, . This article is about the fictional character For other uses see Slender Man disambiguation The Slender Man also spelled Slenderman is a fictional supernatural character that originated as a creepypasta Internet meme created by Something Awful forum user Eric Knudsen also known as Victor Surge in 2009 He is depicted as a thin unnaturally tall humanoid with a featureless white head and face wearing a black suit Slender ManAn artistic depiction of the Slender ManFirst appearanceJune 10 2009 on a Something Awful postCreated byEric KnudsenPortrayed byDoug JonesJavier BotetIn universe informationSpeciesUnknownGenderMale Stories of the Slender Man commonly feature his stalking abducting or traumatizing people particularly children The Slender Man has become a pop culture icon although he is not confined to a single narrative but appears in many disparate works of fiction typically composed online Fiction relating to the Slender Man encompasses many media including literature art and video series such as Marble Hornets 2009 2014 wherein he is known as The Operator The character has appeared in the video game Slender The Eight Pages 2012 and its successor Slender The Arrival 2013 as well as inspiring the Enderman in Minecraft He has also appeared in a 2015 film adaptation of Marble Hornets where he was portrayed by Doug Jones and an eponymous 2018 film where he was portrayed by Javier Botet Beginning in 2014 a moral panic occurred over the Slender Man after readers of his fiction were connected to several violent acts particularly a near fatal stabbing of a 12 year old girl in Waukesha Wisconsin 1 The stabbing inspired the documentary Beware the Slenderman which was released in 2016 Contents 1 Description 2 History 2 1 Origin 2 2 Early development 2 3 Waukesha stabbing 2 4 Moral panic and other incidents 2 5 After the Waukesha stabbing 3 Folkloric qualities 4 Copyright 5 In popular culture 6 See also 7 Notes 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External linksDescription nbsp The Slender Man symbol introduced by Marble Hornets Because the Slender Man s 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 2 He is most commonly described as very tall and thin with unnaturally long tentacle like arms or mere tentacles 3 which he can extend to intimidate or capture prey In most stories his face is white and featureless but occasionally his face appears differently to anyone who sees it 2 He 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 4 5 Proximity to the Slender Man is often said to trigger a Slender sickness a rapid onset of paranoia nightmares and delusions accompanied by nosebleeds 6 Early stories featured him targeting children or young adults Some featured young adults driven insane or to act on his behalf while others did not and others claim that investigating the Slender Man will draw his attention 7 The web series Marble Hornets established the idea of proxies humans who fall under the Slender Man s influence though initially they were simply violently insane rather than puppets of the Slender Man Marble Hornets also introduced the idea that the Slender Man could interfere with video and audio recordings as well as the Slender Man symbol which became a common trope of Slender fiction 7 Graphic violence and body horror are uncommon in the Slender Man mythos with many narratives choosing to leave the fate of his victims obscure 7 Shira Chess notes that It is important to note that few of the retellings identify exactly what kind of monster the Slender Man might be and what his specific intentions are these points all remain mysteriously and usefully vague 2 HistoryOrigin nbsp The writings of H P Lovecraft influenced the creation of the Slender Man The Slender Man was created on June 10 2009 on a thread in the Something Awful Internet forum 8 9 10 The thread was a Photoshop contest in which users were challenged to create paranormal images 11 12 Forum poster Eric Knudsen under the pseudonym Victor Surge 13 contributed two black and white images of groups of children to which he added a tall thin spectral figure wearing a black suit 14 15 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 didn t want to go we didn t want to kill them but its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time 1983 photographer unknown presumed dead 15 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 15 These additions effectively transformed the photographs into a work of fiction Subsequent posters expanded upon the character adding their own visual or textual contributions 14 15 Knudsen was inspired to create the Slender Man primarily by Zack Parsons That Insidious Beast Stephen King s The Mist reports of shadow people Mothman and the Mad Gasser of Mattoon 16 Other inspirations for the character were the Tall Man from the 1979 film Phantasm 7 H P Lovecraft the surrealist work of William S Burroughs and the survival horror video games Silent Hill and Resident Evil 17 Knudsen s intention was to formulate something whose motivations can barely be comprehended and which caused unease and terror in a general population 18 Other pre existing fictional or legendary creatures which are similar to the Slender Man include the Gentlemen black suited pale bald demons from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode Hush men in black many accounts of which grant them an uncanny appearance with an unnatural walk and oriental features and The Question a DC Comics superhero with a blank face whose secret identity is Victor Sage a name similar to Knudsen s alias Victor Surge 7 In her book Folklore Horror Stories and the Slender Man The Development of an Internet Mythology Professor Shira Chess of the University of Georgia connected the Slender Man to ancient folklore about fairies Like fairies the Slender Man is otherworldly with motives that are often difficult to grasp like fairies his appearance is vague and often shifts to reflect what the viewer wants or fears to see and like fairies the Slender Man lives in the woods and wild places and kidnaps children 7 Early development The Slender Man soon went viral 19 spawning numerous works of fanart cosplay and online fiction known as creepypasta horror stories told in short snatches of easily copyable text that spread from site to site 20 Divorced from its original creator the Slender Man became the subject of myriad stories by multiple authors within an overarching mythos 3 Many aspects of the Slender Man mythos first appeared on the original Something Awful thread One of the earliest additions was added by a forum user named Thoreau Up who created a folklore story set in 16th century Germany involving a character called Der Grossman which was the writer implied an early reference to the Slender Man 7 36 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 21 22 As of 2013 Marble Hornets had over 250 000 subscribers around the world and had received 55 million views 23 Other Slender Man themed YouTube serials followed including EverymanHYBRID and TribeTwelve 21 In 2012 the Slender Man was adapted into a video game titled Slender The Eight Pages and the official website crashed after too many people tried to download the game 24 Several popular variants of the game followed including Slenderman s Shadow 25 and Slender Man for iOS which became the second most popular app download 26 The sequel to Slender The Eight Pages Slender The Arrival was released in 2013 27 Several independent films about the Slender Man have been released or are in development including Entity 28 and The Slender Man released free online after a 10 000 Kickstarter campaign 29 In 2013 it was announced that Marble Hornets would become a feature film 23 Waukesha stabbing Main article Slender Man stabbing On May 31 2014 two 12 year old girls in Waukesha Wisconsin held down and stabbed a 12 year old classmate 19 times When questioned later by authorities they reportedly claimed that they wished to commit a murder as a first step to becoming proxies for the Slender Man having read about it online 1 They also stated that they were afraid that Slender Man would kill their families if they did not commit the murder 30 After the perpetrators left the scene the victim crawled out of the woods to a roadway A passing cyclist alerted authorities and the victim survived the attack Both attackers were diagnosed with mental illnesses 31 but were charged as adults and faced up to 65 years in prison 32 One of the girls reportedly said Slender Man watches her could read minds and could teleport 1 Experts testified in court that she also said she conversed with Lord Voldemort and one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles On August 1 2014 she was found incompetent to stand trial and her prosecution was suspended until her condition improved 33 On December 19 2014 the judge ruled that both girls were competent to stand trial 34 In August 2015 the presiding judge ruled that the girls would be tried as adults 35 They were tried separately 36 On August 21 2017 one of the girls now 15 pleaded guilty to being a party to attempted second degree homicide but claimed she was not responsible for her actions on grounds of insanity 37 Although prosecutors alleged that she knew what she was doing was wrong the jury determined that she was mentally ill during the attack On December 21 Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren sentenced Anissa Weier then 16 years old to be hospitalized for 25 years from the date of the crime which would keep her institutionalized until age 37 38 In a statement to the media on June 4 2014 Eric Knudsen said I am deeply saddened by the tragedy in Wisconsin and my heart goes out to the families of those affected by this terrible act He stated he would not be giving interviews on the matter 39 On September 25 2017 it was reported that Morgan Geyser then 15 had agreed to plead guilty to attempting to commit first degree homicide in an arrangement that would allow her to avoid jail time 40 On February 1 2018 the Associated Press reported that Geyser had been sentenced to 40 years in the Wisconsin mental hospital the maximum sentence allowed 41 Moral panic and other incidents The stabbing in Waukesha spawned a nationwide moral panic over Slender Man across the United States 42 43 Parents nationwide became worried about the potential dangers that stories about Slender Man might pose to their children s safety 42 43 Russell Jack the police chief of Waukesha warned that the Slender Man stabbing should be a wake up call for all parents that the internet is full of dark and wicked things Many media outlets publicized Jack s warning 42 After hearing the story an unidentified woman from Cincinnati Ohio told a WLWT TV reporter in June 2014 that her 13 year old daughter had attacked her with a knife and had written macabre fiction some involving the Slender Man who the mother said motivated the attack 44 On September 4 2014 a 14 year old girl in Port Richey Florida allegedly set her family s house on fire while her mother and nine year old brother were inside Police reported that the teenager had been reading online stories about Slender Man as well as Atsushi Ōkubo s manga Soul Eater 45 Eddie Daniels of the Pasco County Sheriff s Office said the girl had visited the website that contains a lot of the Slender Man information and stories It would be safe to say there is a connection to that 46 During an early 2015 epidemic of suicide attempts by young people ages 12 to 24 on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation Slender Man was cited as an influence the Oglala Sioux tribe president noted that many Native Americans traditionally believe in a suicide spirit 47 48 similar to the Slender Man 49 50 Other Sioux describe the Big Man a as a messenger or sign warning that society is developing in a dangerous direction 52 A documentary film on the incident called Beware the Slenderman directed by Irene Taylor Brodsky was released by HBO Films in March 2016 and was broadcast on HBO on January 23 2017 53 After the Waukesha stabbing The Waukesha stabbing and the negative media attention it generated irreversibly altered the Slender Man legend and the online community surrounding it 42 43 What had previously just been a creepy horror meme to most people suddenly acquired a new level of reality that most fans of Slender Man found horrifying 42 43 Meanwhile by around the same time the Slender Man character had lost much of his original popularity 42 43 Most of the original blogs that had once been devoted to Slender Man either shut down completely or became less popular 42 Slender Man s presence in mainstream popular culture also contributed to a decline in how frightening he seemed to many people 42 43 The late 2010s also saw an increase in benevolent portrayals of Slender Man with many depictions of him from this period portraying him as an antihero who protects victimized children from bullies although often by violent means 43 In some portrayals of Slender Man from the late 2010s he has a daughter named Skinny Sally who is portrayed as a young girl covered in cuts and bruises 43 Slender Man sometimes is portrayed carrying Skinny Sally on his shoulders protectively 43 Lynn McNeill assistant professor of folklore at Utah State University observes that the increase in benevolent portrayals of Slender Man seems to have begun shortly after the stabbing in Waukesha and states that this trend towards a benevolent Slender Man may be a reaction by fans of the character to the violence of the stabbing 43 Despite the decline in popular interest in Slender Man commercial adaptations of the character continued 42 43 In 2015 the film adaptation of Marble Hornets titled Always Watching A Marble Hornets Story was released on VOD where the character was portrayed by Doug Jones 54 In 2016 Sony Pictures subsidiary Screen Gems partnered with Mythology Entertainment to bring a Slender Man film into theatres with the title character portrayed by Javier Botet 55 The film generated considerable controversy soon after it was announced with many accusing the filmmakers of trying to capitalize off the Waukesha stabbing 43 Bill Weier the father of Anissa Weier stated It s absurd they want to make a movie like this All we re doing is extending the pain all three of these families have gone through 43 The progressive advocacy group Care2 created an online petition which received over 19 000 signatures demanding that the film not be released labelling the film crass commercialism at its worst and a naked cash grab built on the exploitation of a deeply traumatic event and the people who lived it 43 Sony representatives insisted that the film was based on the fictional character that had become popular online and not on the Waukesha stabbing 43 Upon its release in August 2018 the film Slender Man despite being declared a box office bomb 42 and receiving both little marketing and overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics 56 57 42 went on to gross several times its 10 million budget worldwide 58 David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a D writing a tasteless and inedibly undercooked serving of the Internet s stalest creepypasta Slender Man aspires to be for the YouTube era what The Ring was to the last gasps of the VHS generation But there s one fundamental difference that sets the two movies apart The Ring is good and Slender Man is terrible 59 Writing for The Verge Carli Velocci called the Slender Man movie a nail in the coffin of a dying fandom 42 Folkloric qualitiesSeveral scholars have argued that despite being a fictional work with an identifiable origin point the Slender Man represents a form of digital folklore Shira Chess argues 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 fact that the Slender Man s mythos can be tracked and signposted offers a powerful insight into how myth and folklore form 14 Chess identifies three aspects of the Slender Man mythos that tie it to folklore collectivity meaning that it is created by a collective rather than a single individual variability meaning that the story changes depending on the teller and performance meaning that the storyteller s narrative changes to reflect the audience s response 7 nbsp Cosplay of the Slender Man in 2013 Media scholar and folklorist Andrew Peck attributes the success of the Slender Man to its highly collaborative nature Because the character and its motives are shrouded in mystery users can easily adapt existing Slender Man tropes and imagery to create new stories This ability for users to tap into the ideas of others while also supplying their own helped inspire the collaborative culture that arose surrounding the Slender Man Instead of privileging the choices of certain creators as canonical this collaborative culture informally locates ownership of the creature across the community In these respects the Slender Man is similar to campfire stories or urban legends and the character s success comes from enabling both social interaction and personal acts of creative expression 60 Although nearly all users understand that the Slender Man is not real they suspend that disbelief in order to become more engrossed when telling or listening to stories 61 This adds a sense of authenticity to Slender Man legend performances and blurs the lines between legend and reality keeping the creature as an object of legend dialectic 62 This ambiguity has led some to some confusion over the character s origin and purpose Only five months after his creation George Noory s Coast to Coast AM a radio call in show devoted to the paranormal and conspiracy theories began receiving callers asking about the Slender Man 63 Two years later an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune described his origins as difficult to pinpoint 2 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 4 Shira Chess describes the Slender Man as a metaphor for helplessness power differentials and anonymous forces 2 Peck sees parallels between the Slender Man and common anxieties about the digital age such as feelings of constant connectedness and unknown third party observation 60 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 unaccustomed to ignorance that they now fear what they cannot understand 64 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 4 Tina Marie Boyer noted that The Slender man is a prohibitive monster but the cultural boundaries he guards are not clear Victims do not know when they have violated or crossed them 7 Andrew Peck also considers the Slender Man to be an authentic form of folklore and notes its similarity to emergent forms of offline legend performance Peck suggests that digital folklore performance extends the dynamics of face to face performance in several notable ways such as by occurring asynchronously encouraging imitation and personalization while also allowing perfect replication combining elements of oral written and visual communication and generating shared expectations for performance that enact group identity despite the lack of a physically present group He concludes that the Slender Man represents a digital legend cycle that combines the generic conventions and emergent qualities of oral and visual performance with the collaborative potential of networked communication 60 Jeff Tolbert also accepts the Slender Man as folkloric and suggests it represents a process he calls reverse ostension Ostension in folkloristics is the process of acting out a folk narrative According to Tolbert the Slender Man does the opposite by creating a set of folklore like narratives where none existed before It is an iconic figure produced through a collective effort and deliberately modeled after an existing and familiar folklore genre According to Tolbert this represents two processes in one it involves the creation of new objects and new disconnected examples of experience and it involves the combination of these elements into a body of traditional narratives modeled on existing folklore but not wholly indebted to any specific tradition 61 Professor Thomas Pettitt of the University of Southern Denmark has described the Slender Man as being an exemplar of the modern age s 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 allowing the lore to expand and evolve with time 4 CopyrightDespite his folkloric qualities the Slender Man is not in the public domain Several for profit ventures involving the Slender Man have unequivocally acknowledged Knudsen as the creator of this fictional character while others were civilly blocked from distribution including the Kickstarter funded film after legal complaints from Knudsen and other sources Though Knudsen himself has given his personal blessing to a number of Slender Man related projects the issue is complicated by the fact that while he is the character s creator a third party holds the options to any adaptations into other media including film and television The identity of this option holder has not been made public 13 Knudsen himself has argued that his enforcement of copyright has less to do with money than with artistic integrity I just want something amazing to come off it something that s scary and disturbing and kinda different I would hate for something to come out and just be kinda conventional 63 In May 2016 the media rights to Slender Man were sold to production company Mythology Entertainment 55 but the company split up in 2019 leaving the ownership of the character s rights in question 65 In popular cultureIn 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 66 In 2013 the Slender Man appeared as the antagonist of the season 3 Lost Girl episode SubterrFaenean in which the Slender Man was said to be the basis for the Pied Piper legend 67 In 2014 the TV series Supernatural parodied Slender Man as Thinman in the Season 9 episode of the same name 68 That same year the sixteenth season of the crime drama TV series Law amp Order Special Victims Unit featured an episode Glasgowman s Wrath inspired by the Slender Man stabbings 69 In 2018 Slender Man appeared in the episode The Planned Parenthood Show in Big Mouth 70 See alsoBogeyman Mythical creature Kunekune Another message board urban legend with wriggly appendages Pope Lick Monster Another urban legend of a compulsive being with real consequences The Silbon A Colombian Venezuelan legendary figure who shares some traits with Slender ManNotes Which relation may be explored via attributes related by Matthieson 51 as cited by Redfern 48 and Wilson 52 References a b c Gabler Ellen 2 June 2014 Charges detail Waukesha pre teens attempt to kill classmate Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Archived from the original on 4 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Belcher Wants to Create True Terror with the Faceless Figure GameTrailers Archived from the original on 9 February 2013 Retrieved 20 February 2013 If These Girls Knew That Slender Man Was a Fantasy Why Did They Want to Kill Their Friend for Him 25 August 2015 Archived from the original on 25 June 2016 Retrieved 30 June 2016 Dunlap Bridgette 29 July 2016 Slender Man Trial RollingStone com Archived from the original on 16 June 2018 Terry Jermont Kust James 31 May 2014 Girls charged in Waukesha stabbing motivated by Slenderman character WTMJ Archived from the original on 5 June 2014 Retrieved 3 June 2014 Vielmetti Bruce Luthern Ashley 1 August 2014 Judge rules 12 year old incompetent for now in Slender Man trial Journal Sentinel Milwaukee Wisconsin Archived from the original on 2 August 2014 Retrieved 2 August 2014 Varandani Suman 2014 Slender Man Stabbing Case Wisconsin Girls Accused Of Attempted Homicide Are Mentally Fit To Stand Trial International Business Times Archived from the original on 2 January 2015 Retrieved 5 January 2015 Slender Man case Young suspects to be tried as adults BBC News 10 August 2015 Archived from the original on 13 August 2015 Retrieved 14 August 2015 Separate trials ordered in Slender Man case Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Archived from the original on 13 December 2016 Retrieved 14 December 2016 Slender Man stabbing suspect pleads guilty to lesser charge CBS News CBS Archived from the original on 22 August 2017 Retrieved 21 August 2017 Slender Man case girl who stabbed classmate gets 25 year hospital sentence The Guardian Archived from the original on 22 December 2017 Retrieved 22 December 2017 Wagstaff Keith 4 June 2014 Slender Man Creator Speaks on Stabbing I Am Deeply Saddened nbc com Archived from the original on 4 June 2014 Retrieved 4 June 2014 Slender Man suspect will plead guilty in stabbing nbcnews com 29 September 2017 Archived from the original on 14 March 2018 Retrieved 29 September 2017 ap 1 February 2018 BREAKING Judge sentences Wisconsin girl to maximum 40 years in mental hospital in Slender Man stabbing case Tweet via Twitter a b c d e f g h i j k l Velocci Carli 30 August 2018 The failed Slender Man movie was a nail in the coffin of a dying fandom The rise and fall of Slender Nation the community that lived for the internet s most notorious Creepypasta The Verge Vox Media Archived from the original on 28 May 2019 Retrieved 28 May 2019 a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Greene Jayson 7 August 2018 Slender Man Is Still Making People Uneasy But Now for New Reasons Vulture New York Archived from the original on 28 May 2019 Retrieved 28 May 2019 Evans Brad 6 June 2014 Hamilton Co mom Daughter s knife attack influenced by Slender Man WLWT com Archived from the original on 9 August 2016 Retrieved 9 July 2014 Melrose Kevin 8 September 2014 Teen Claims Soul Eater Slender Man Led Her to Set Home on Fire Comic Book Resources Archived from the original on 7 February 2015 Retrieved 7 February 2015 Murray Rheana 5 September 2014 Teen Inspired by Slender Man Set House on Fire Police ABC News Archived from the original on 5 September 2014 Retrieved 5 September 2014 Bort Cree 26 May 2015 Sioux Natives Fear Walking Sam The Odyssey Washington State University Archived from the original on 24 August 2019 Retrieved 24 August 2019 He has been described as a seven foot tall man that has no mouth and wanders the land at night carrying the bodies of Lakota men and women a b Redfern Nick 30 May 2019 The Terror That is the Tall Man Spirit Mysterious Universe Archived from the original on 10 June 2019 Retrieved 24 August 2019 He says that the Tall Man Spirit Walking Sam seems to be telling the young people on the reservation to take their lives Bosman Julie 1 May 2015 Pine Ridge Indian Reservation Struggles With Suicides Among Its Young The New York Times Archived from the original on 3 May 2015 Retrieved 5 May 2015 Romero Miguel 24 July 2015 Slenderman amp the Suicide Spirit Mysterious Universe Archived from the original on 24 August 2019 Retrieved 24 August 2019 So what seems to be happening here is a cultural remix between the older myth of the Tall Man Suicide Spirit which already existed among Native Americans prior to the rise of the World Wide Web and the newer more potent icon of Slenderman introduced to these communities through the pervasiveness of new social networks all this coupled with the copycat contagion effect which arises during a cluster of suicides or mass shootings Matthiessen Peter 1 March 1992 In the Spirit of Crazy Horse The Story of Leonard Peltier and the FBI s War on the American Indian Movement Penguin Books ISBN 978 0140144567 He is both spirit and real being but he can also glide through the forest like a moose with big antlers as though the trees weren t there a b Bigfoot Sasquatch Legends Ya Native Reamus Wilson Archived from the original on 2 July 2019 Retrieved 24 August 2019 Ray Owen son of a Dakota spiritual leader told a reporter We needed a sign to put us back on track and that s why the Big Man appeared DePaol Tommy Slenderman is Coming to HBO in a True Crime Documentary MoviePilot com Archived from the original on 12 April 2016 Retrieved 21 April 2016 Clow Mitchel 8 April 2015 Always Watching A Marble Hornets Story Movie Review Tell Don t Show Hypable Archived from the original on 7 November 2015 Retrieved 26 September 2015 a b Rogers Katie 2016 Slender Man a Horror Meme Gets Ready to Step Out of the Shadows The New York Times Archived from the original on 27 October 2017 Retrieved 7 May 2016 Slender Man 2018 Rotten Tomatoes Fandango Media Archived from the original on 24 September 2018 Retrieved 4 October 2018 Slender Man Reviews Metacritic CBS Interactive Archived from the original on 16 August 2018 Retrieved 16 August 2018 Brad Miska 3 September 2018 Let s Talk About Slender Man s Performance and The Meg s Stupid Budget Bloody Disgusting Archived from the original on 23 April 2020 Retrieved 28 April 2020 Ehrlich David 9 August 2018 Slender Man Review A Tasteless and Inedibly Undercooked Serving of Creepypasta IndieWire Penske Business Media Archived from the original on 9 August 2018 Retrieved 9 August 2018 a b c Peck Andrew 2015 Tall Dark and Loathsome The Emergence of a Legend Cycle in the Digital Age Journal of American Folklore 128 509 333 348 doi 10 5406 jamerfolk 128 509 0333 S2CID 143218081 a b Tolbert Jeffrey A 2013 The Sort of Story That has You Covering Your Mirrors The Case of Slender Man PDF Semiotic Review 2 Archived from the original PDF on 10 October 2015 Retrieved 13 July 2015 Ellis Bill 2001 Aliens Ghosts and Cults Legends We Live Jackson University Press of Mississippi a b Vogt PJ Goldman Alex 30 January 2014 13 Managing a Monster On The Media TLDR Archived from the original on 7 June 2014 Retrieved 4 June 2014 Van Horn Tye 15 February 2013 Behind You The Cultural Relevance of Slender Man Archived from the original on 20 February 2013 Retrieved 20 February 2013 Fleming Mike Jr 22 February 2019 Mythology Entertainment Splitting Up Deadline Hollywood Archived from the original on 26 October 2021 Retrieved 26 October 2021 Jessica Conditt 2011 The Endermen are coming for you in Minecraft mob update engadget com Retrieved 21 February 2013 McFarland Kevin 21 January 2013 Lost Girl SubterrFaenean The A V Club Archived from the original on 7 October 2018 Retrieved 7 October 2018 Supernatural Thinman Archived 2017 01 29 at the Wayback Machine The A V Club 2014 Accessed 2016 28 01 Gerson Uffalussy Jennifer 2014 Law amp Order SVU bends the conventions of the cop show The Guardian Archived from the original on 5 February 2016 Retrieved 29 January 2016 Rought Karen 8 October 2018 Brandi Delhagen ed Big Mouth delivers best episode with season 2 s Planned Parenthood Show Hypable Retrieved 22 February 2019 Further readingCurlew Kyle 2017 The legend of the Slender Man The boogieman of surveillance culture First Monday 22 6 doi 10 5210 fm v22i6 6901 External links nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Slender Man Forum thread in which Slender Man was created somethingawful com Eric Knudsen s gallery that contains all of his Slender Man images deviantart com Pixel Gun 3D Slender Forest level YouTube com Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Slender Man amp oldid 1220532696, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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