Slenderman (Over)exposed

I was a young teenager when Slenderman: The Eight Pages burst onto the Youtube space, every single Youtuber I watched back then, from Pewdipie to Markiplier to even Yummimash I watched them play Slenderman: The Eight Pages (and its many clones), overreacting to the horror of jump scares and the tension.

It was effective, I sometimes wonder if that was when I started to like horror, an element of my life that I struggle to document fully. Nevertheless, I fully immersed myself in the strange nightmarish lore of Slenderman. I was obsessed with the creature; I still have the painting I did of Slender hanging on my bedroom wall. Some of my earliest horror stories contained Slenderman. The monster, a viral piece of modern folklore, completely took me.

So, why am I talking about this?

I want to talk about how cultural events, often so perhaps powerful figures and stories, can wear out their welcome and fade away. At least share my thoughts on the topic at hand.

Slenderman is a scary monster, from the simple design to the wide range of powers that lean into the fear of the unknown. He is scary in a way that feels uncanny, the business suit and the mostly humanoid shape suggest a monstrous parody of humanity. Something trying to be human to lure its prey but hasn’t fully understood the subtle aspects.

The nebulous powers, vague motives, and contradicting lore. Built up by the years of crowd-sourced legend, helped create a sinister messy cobweb of contractions that amazed many a person including myself.

Marble Hornets, the only good piece of film media including Slenderman came out in 2009 and that helped boost the suited horror’s popularity with careful lighting and masterful pacing, however, the deluge of poor video games, a lame spin-off movie of Marble Hornets in 2015 along with the final season of Marble Hornets wrapping up in 2014. People were starting to get bored with Slenderman. He was everywhere in media and wasn’t in good depictions of media.

Slender: The Eight Pages was considered to be rather scary but it would mark the start of a limitation for Slenderman games. The random collection of items would be the hallmark of Slender: The Arrival. While the former is rightfully credited for reviving horror games, the latter was considered to be boring and repetitive, hiding in The Eight Pages shadow.

Things however would only take a turn for the worst when in 2014, two teenage girls lured Payton Leutner out to a forest, where she was stabbed nineteen times as a sacrifice to Slenderman. This tragic event caused irreparable damage to Slenderman’s reputation. The magic has been destroyed, the fun horror had given way to real horror, real suffering, and a potential loss of life.

Fortunately, Payton Leutner survived, and she has gone on to live her life, while her killers, which I do not want to give the dignity of being named, are serving time for a long while still.

Slenderman however, was tarnished by the tragedy, there was no grand declaration of leaving Slenderman, he just faded away from the cultural consciousness. So when the Slenderman movie came out, the excitement that should have been around the film was met with a shrug. An expression of collective meh for a once powerful icon of horror.

Slenderman was a terrible movie, following in the grand tradition of post-Marble Hornets media. A shoddy failed chiller that left a bitter taste in the mouths of people who couldn’t shake off the tragic event linked to Slenderman.

And that was the end of Slenderman as a creature. A monster ruined by the cultural obsession that let it become a household name. Just like Cathulu, Slenderman became so overused (including by yours truly) that all the horror and mysticism has been sucked out of him in the eyes of the public consciousness.

Maybe one day Slederman can become scary in a fun way. Maybe one-day Slenderman will regain some of his cultural prowess in folklore.

I guess we will have to wait and see. In the meantime, I will see how I can make something with Slenderman that is cool and scary.

Please consider reading Black Masquerade: The third entry in the Eight Nightmares Collection, now available at selected retailers.

Where Dreams are Lost is on special at Smashwords for 1.23$ for the month!

Acknowledgments

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