The Rise And Fall Of Slenderman

Forgot to add the timestamp on screen at around 26:00!! If you want to skip that content go to 28:50 :}

I find the whole "Slenderman and the other Creepypastas all hang out in a mansion and are friends" trope fascinating. With old horror, it took more than half a century to go from Dracula to The Munsters, but in internet time, we can do the same thing to our modern horror icons in barely a year!

The little girl that survived 19 stabs is absolutely a badass. I can't even begin to imagine the horror she went through, but to persevere and survive is incredible

Back in the Marble Hornets days, I gave a 30 minute school presentation about SlenderMan for an English Writing class. It thoroughly terrified everyone in the class along with the teacher, But whilst it went really well I actually gave the presentation feeling horrendously ill and shortly after I had to go home and didn't show up to school for the next 3 days. From everyone else's perspective, I had told them all about this spooky internet legend that steals or kills children and then vanished with no trace. Easiest A of my school years x

The funny thing is, the meme-ification of Slenderman and the watering down of his mythos to this easily digestible jumpscare bait with tons of low effort games, memes, and lore written by 10 year olds filling it with their OCs is EXACTLY what is happening to The Backrooms right now. History truly DOES repeat itself

As a parent, I don't understand those other parents trying to shut down the creepypasta community "to protect the kids". I grew up reading the scary stories to read in the dark series and R.L. Stine which were pretty dark looking back. They shaped my entire childhood in a way I imagine creepypastas have done for kids today. Let kids enjoy their innocent spooks before they gotta deal with the real ones.

The fanart of Jeff the Killer kissing Slenderman is everything, I’m losing it. What a masterpiece. I hope that artist is doing great now, wherever they are

As someone that's been in the creepypasta community for years, almost seven now jeez- it's kind of amazing how this fandom just REFUSES to die- It is still somehow incredibly popular, not as much as it was before as the idea of fandom itself seems to be dying, but it's still very prominent if you know where to look

On top of 'the child assailant had schizophrenia' she had hallucinations of a figure like slenderman before knowing he was a thing. Seeing media on the figure 'confirmed' it for her. It was just a perfect storm of tragedy, though I can't say what her accomplice was thinking.

Slight correction: the Marble Hornets series wrapped up seamlessly. The even did a few retrospectives about the show immediately afterwards. It was during their next project that the three founders of that production company had a falling out and left that new series unfinished. Troy works solo on a new project now, and the others have largely stepped back from online content creation

I was a child during the main rise of Slenderman and was terrified of him as a child considering I lived right next to a woods. I didn’t know any of the lore around him and the somehow made him scarier to me. And despite all the memeing and terrible media around him as a character I can still say he’s actually quite scary, definitely compared to the other creepypastas he shared the stage with

It broke my whole soul seeing the girls father come forward about his mental illness and how he was taking so much blame for not realizing his daughter was having the same issue with breaks in reality 😓 definitely an interesting case, and this was super interesting to watch! I didn't realize slender man had a sexy Tumblr man phase.. 😭✋ but why am I not shocked..

At the time of the infamous stabbing, I was actually writing creepypastas pretty regularly (and had a tumblr roleplay blog for my own character). I had a couple of my stories narrated, even by MrCreepyPasta so I felt I was deep in the fandom. I remember my little eighth grade brain being furious at the accusations against the fandom.

I believe that one of the girls involved in the stabbing incident was later diagnosed with schizophrenia, and found to be having audio and visual hallucinations of slenderman. this wasn't a case of "two girls get a little too into internet lore and decide to stab their friend for fun" but of two children whose perception of the world literally confirmed their belief in slenderman. it's somewhat understandable that they would believe that committing the crime they did was their only option (not that there is ever a way to justify a crime like this). i think as adults we hear about this story and go "oh children are ridiculous to believe in things like this, it's clearly fake" but as a child who grew up on the internet, i believed in creepypastas even without having a mental illness that confirmed it. so when considering that she saw slenderman in her everyday life, of course she would believe it was real. those girls needed serious help and it was just heartbreakingly unfortunate that no one knew until after something like that happened.

I was just entering film school when Marble Hornets was at the peak of its popularity, and EVERYONE wanted to make their own found footage horror. Some of the projects my classmates and I made were pretty silly, but overall I think it's amazing that filmmaking is so accessible to everyone these days. You don't need expensive equipment to tell a good story. Creepypasta influenced a generation of creators, and I think that's pretty cool.

To be honest i think the Creepypasta fandom as a whole deserves a video on its own, back in the day there was so much wild stuff going on

It’s so frustrating what happened in the stabbing case aftermath. It took things going this far for people to recognize that children shouldn’t just be wandering around the internet, yet generally ignored the part mental illness played in this incident.

i lived in the town where the slenderman stabbing happened. it was so, so heartbreaking. i was in high school at the time, and it tainted the world around us. all my memories of playing 8 pages at sleepovers with my friends were replaced with absolute horror in my community. i felt responsible -- maybe if i'd indulged in and talked about this stupid game less, it wouldn't have happened. it was like overnight, no one was able to speak about slenderman anymore and he became as horrific as we'd all first remembered him as. to this day, i can't see anything about him without thinking of the poor girl. thank god she lived. i hope she's ok today.

One thing I wanted to mention about the stabbing case: it was actually found that one of the perpetrators was literally hallucinating Slenderman IRL. She had undiagnosed schizophrenia, a disorder that her dad had been diagnosed with for years. I'm not defending her AT ALL bc plenty of people have mental illnesses and hallucinations and don't kill people, but it just adds a bit more context as to why she believed so hard that he was real. Because she literally thought she was seeing him. This is a great video btw!! Taught me stuff I didn't know abt Slenderman's history, even though I was like 15 at the height of the popularity and played The Eight Pages! That's what I love abt your vids; even if I'm knowledgeable on the topic, I'll still learn a thing or two from you! 😊

For those on the internet after The Slenderman Stabbing, do you remember it being misreported that the victim had died? I was unaware that she actually did survive until this video. A very good thing that she did survive, but I wonder if the assumption that she didn't might have fueled the fire when the moral panic around Slenderman and creepypasta started up.