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The Slender Man phenomenon has been under debate and discussion on the internet for over a decade. This has resulted in debates, discussions, and even real-life events that blur the line between fiction and reality.
What is the Slender Man?
The Slender Man (also called Slenderman, Slender, or Slendy) is a fictional supernatural character that originated as a creepypasta internet meme created by 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. It was further offered up as images of children playing, with a tall, faceless figure lurking in the background. In some of these images, he added tentacles. – Wikipedia.com
Alleged photo of Slenderman in the background of a group of children.
vocalmedia.com
Slenderman went viral. People started making their own Slenderman images and memes, fanfictions, and even video games. Slenderman’s blank visage and creepy behavior tapped into the pit of our postmodern fears—of childhoods irrevocably lost, the ever-presence of death and decline, stranger danger, and so on.
In 2014, two 12-year-old girls plotted to kill a third girl at a sleepover. The victim was stabbed multiple times in the woods of Waukesha, Wisconsin, and then left for dead. Fortunately, she survived. The two perpetrators, believing they’d succeeded in their crime, proceeded to try to make it to a distant forest. Here they hoped to meet Slenderman, who, pleased with their deed, would take them in to live with him forever in his Slender Mansion. Many news outlets treated Slenderman as an actual character in the crime, a ghostly boogeyman who erupted from the dark corners of the internet to infect the minds of two impressionable kids. The Waukesha Police Chief warned parents that this “should be a wake-up call for all parents…The internet is full of dark and wicked things.” A talking head in an HBO documentary called Slenderman a “virus” that had somehow infected these kids. Slenderman had finally become real. Like Frankenstein, he’d torn free from his creators, leaped into the countryside, and wrought mayhem. The message that won out was a conservative one: Monitor your kids’ exposure to internet evil, lest a similar beast comes and influences their impressionable minds.
The problem with this narrative is that Slenderman is not, in fact, real. In reality, the girl who committed the crime was suffering from severe untreated schizophrenia, and her partner suffered a shared delusion. This narrative was not what the public wanted, nor what it got. Rather than a national call for mental health awareness, or demands for better childhood treatment and services, we got warnings about Slenderman. Lurking in the shadows, like a seductive nightmare, he became real. America wanted to enter Slender Mansion. – Troy Rondinone Ph.D. – https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-asylum/202209/slenderman-myth-come-life
However, understanding Slender Man and the psychology behind his permanent virality is about understanding who we’ve become as people raised online. Slender Man is no different from vampires or werewolves: a mythic monster who speaks to something universally haunting, or what Jungian psychologists call the collective unconscious.
Millennial Effect:
“Slender Man almost literally embodies The Man that millennials were fighting.” – Shira Chess, University of Georgia Media Studies Professor. She further states. “…readers and writers impose whatever anxieties or desires they have onto him.” As the tide turned in the country economically young people were faced with the economic instability of their futures. The recession shaped pop culture for years to come. Slender Man, positioning itself as a champion of the people fighting back against a corrupt and greedy capitalist system trying to infringe on our privacy and freedoms online took hold.
Why do others believe he exists?
“Slender Man fits just fine in the category of modern urban legends. What are called urban legends these days refer to stories often passed on as true, complete with twists of the supernatural and grotesque. These become ways that collective fears, or the fears of the unknown, such as a fear of stalking or of the supernatural itself, manifest. No exception to Slender Man—he speaks directly to that darkest heart of human fear, this: the fear of being tailed or spied upon, not seen, by something likely hostile. Faceless and seemingly omnipresent, his very horror has a psychotic feel to it. Most urban legends such as Slender Man usually start from collective anxiety and word of mouth, which the media and the internet amplify. The impact is fast and far and deep in the digital sphere. Such a story will likely make people believe in it, especially those people already fearful of supernatural events or those who need to seek a way of making sense over their fears and anxiety.” – Soman Goswami – https://vocal.media/horror/the-mystery-of-slender-man-is-it-real-or-not
Do you believe in him?