How Slenderman Became Real
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- Опубликовано: 20 окт 2023
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Use STRANGEONS55off to get 55% off your first month at Scentbird sbird.co/3Lzq4iW
COOL VIDEO! GOOD JOB
COOL VIDEO! GOOD JOB
You need to talk about the ceo of scentbird
I feel like the insanity is right up your alley
hey strange you probably shouldnt be accepting sponsorships by them their ceo is like buying into/promoting insane conspiracy theorist type jazz!!
THE QUESTION IS NOT A SPIDER-MAN CHARACTER 😡😡
im from wisconsin relatively near where the stabbings happened, and around the same age. most kids my age knew creepypastas werent real, so seeing adults react so hard against the creepypasta rather than discussing the girls clearly awful mental health was kinda demoralizing
Yup, parents love to blame kids instead of each other.
Much easier.
i was about the same age as them when it happened and really liked creepy pasta. My friends all liked creepy pasta and Slenderman too but we all knew it wasnt real and didnt think anyone would believe it was real unless they had some sort of mental disorder.
Yeah I was into creepy pasta for like 8 years and this stuff happened right about halfway through 😅 what's 'funny' is my step dad had told my mom he was worried about me looking at that stuff, but she convinced him everything was fine. and then a couple years later this case takes place 💀 I was like " damn...yall are really giving us a bad look "
People love to blame the media, yet theres a dude who killed for a my little pony character, a show that does NOT promote this. Theyd rather blame the media than people's mental issues because they dont want to admit to themselves that they didnt look out for signs and that the mental health industry just sucks in america. Just my thoughts
I am from Wisconsin too, I had a friend who was playing football just outside the forest and saw the helicopters
So as per usual, the real horror was the mental health care system
people will make up nonsense about how our mental illnesses and disorders make us disturbing creatures, but the real horror is having said disorder in society. why cant they make media on the horrors of growing up mentally ill?? because i can tell you all this trauma, bullshit society puts us through, stigmatization and demonization constantly both in media and irl and so on are the real horrors. not us simply existing and WERE the bad guys. the real horror is the mental health care system and how people view mental illness
i was gonna like your comment but its at a perfect 666 so heres a thumbs up 👍
The real friends we made were the mental illnesses we did not have the resources to get help for along the way
@@GSFL1I wish I got treatment for my issues years ago.
Why do we bitch about crimes after they happen but don't bitch enough about the lack of effort being put into preventing them.
truly. It’s just so, stupid, in all honesty, when you look at it from an observers point of view entirely. Why go to such lengths to punish people who prevent crime, make people fear committing crime, or even push people to commit crimes, and never once stop to empathize and think about WHY they committed the crime and how this can be long term prevented rather than telling adults to fear the internet and their child’s access to it. Nobody ever mentioned Morgan’s schizophrenia on live tv or barely any other prominent media sources. Everyone blamed slender man, but we always forget that everyone blames the dog for the bite and nobody thinks to question the trainer. Bad metaphor but it’s 2am and I seriously feel so exhausted by the us mental health system.
"What if you looked at the horror and realized it deserves compassion." This is my favorite quote of the year. So beautifully said.
Those are my favorite kinds of monsters and monster stories. I LIKE the Twilight vampire craze, the shifting of monsters from innately evil beings to misunderstood and kind ones, or simply another creature doing what it must to survive.
oH pRoNoUnS, hOw dArE
@@crowdemon_archivesit's a known troll, do not feed it! ❤️
Yes!! I always felt connected to monsters and stories that empathised with them especially since people like me were often killed for being seen as changelings instead of children and are still one of the highest victims of infanticide today
reminds me of yumi and the nightmare painter - Brandon Sanderson
Thanks Father Strange for talking about the stabbing. I’m from the town where it happened, only a couple years older than the girls and was in middle school when it happened. People were understandably horrified by it, but everyone preferred to talk about creepypasta as being the cause, instead of Morgan’s mental health, and she had shown warning signs for years. In response to the stabbing, our school district banned even the mere mention of creepypasta. It was 100% a moral panic here. So, thank you for discussing it like you did, because that perspective is sorely missed in the conversation surrounding the events.
Did Strange ever get her hug from slender man yet😂
It's always something but mental health issues, bullying and irresponsible behaviour on adults part. Video games, music, movies - anything but accepting your blame as the supposedly more mature and responsible party.
Teachers and parents often shrug their shoulders at serious problems bc they dont want to do anything. Then, when things go wrong its anyones fault, but their own
@@craigusselman546I don’t think you meant to comment this as a reply
All you have to do is watch the girls’ interviews to know they didn’t believe in the Slenderman stuff. They heard that parents like to blame the media (social or otherwise) for children’s moral failings and tried to exploit that loophole, _and it worked._
I honestly feel like Slenderman's greatest contribution to the world was teaching a lot of young people to never trust a man in a suit.
Anti-capitalist icon
This is the best comment
never trust tall white men in suits
it's a good message, easy to understand and just solid life advice in general
@@Fawkseyness huh I never realized that 😂
My favorite ever photo of slenderman is the slenderman cosplayer sat in the ball pit at DashCon. It is more uncanny than anything anyone else has done with the character.
😮
I forgot about that image and now have mighty need to find that again.
that is the most beautiful meme-y thing i've seen in a while
I read a self-insert fanfic where someone got 3 of the most powerful Jojo stands from Slenderman, and then fought the SCP Foundation. It wasn't even made as a joke. It was completely genuine.
@@Ijustusethistocommentstuff thats sick as fuck where's the link
I think something that bums me out about Slenderman is that (hipster mode) Marble Hornets, arguably the codifier for so many tropes about Slenderman, is largely forgotten when it comes to its core themes. Marble Hornets is not a story about inevitability and despair. It's a story about how mental illness needs to be acknowledged and treated rather than ignored or demonized. The villain is convinced that Slenderman is a virus and everyone who has it just needs to be killed. He treats mental illness like a death sentence. Another character dies because he refuses to talk about his issues or try medication. He refuses to admit he has a problem.
The way Slenderman is defeated in the end is _literally_ by the guy taking his medication, and the ending is ambiguous, but hopeful--the POV is still haunted, but moving on with life. He has a condition that will affect him for the rest of his life, but he _has_ a "rest of his life" to live.
I feel like a lot of new Slenderman mythos doesn't get this.
I think the creators of Marble Hornets didn't want to be part of the Slender ARG Verse as it is now. It's best to consider the MH Slender and the SlenderVerse Slender to be two different explorations that have the same design.
@@softsounds8453 EvermanyHYBRID is kinda similar in my eyes. They made their own thing that is so different from what slenderman became, but that being said, they were one of the original and most popular slenderseries.
@@softsounds8453 And that's fine! But the SlenderVerse took massive portions from MH, and I wish they'd taken a bit of the mental illness positivity part. There's a lot of ableism in horror around "insanity".
@@haileyaskanawa2238 Yeah EverymanHYBRID should've been disconnected from the "Slenderverse" because of how different their Slender was. I love the story EverymanHYBRID had going.
yes! that is one of the biggest reasons why i love marble hornets so much but many other series fall flat for me.
Having schizophrenic hallucinations since before most folks form their earliest memories actually sounds like the most terrifying thing ever.
unfortunately the outcomes for childhood onset schizophrenia are poor. It's significantly more difficult to treat and hard to spot due to delusions and hallucinations being relatively common parts of early childhood to begin with (monsters in the closet, flying like Superman, etc.). Most people diagnosed before puberty end up unable to live independently and often some degree of brain-damaged from the prolonged psychosis.
@@trenaareen1216I guess that's what happend to me, I'm still guessing about whether I have undiagnosed schizophrenia and maybe if i do that'd explain a lot about my life.
I don't have schizophrenia at least i don't think so but I've had a lot of sleep paralysis crazy to think about that your mind love to play tricks on you
blair witch project: lesbian edition
I knew Morgan had schizophrenia and that information made the story make a lot more sense, but it never really occured to me that the illness would make her ACTUALLY SEE SLENDERMAN. I always thought about her condition as something that would make Slenderman stories she read on the internet more believable, but the fact that schizophrenia makes you hallucinate, PLUS the fact it's been happening for as long as she could remember so she had no reference for living a life without it... And the lore itself is (accidentaly) perfect for escalating a one-time hallucination into a tragedy - if you see Slenderman even once and keep thinking about him (as if you could not!), he IS going to hurt you. Trying to appease him by hurting someone else first seems like a completely logical option in these circumstances... It's all so fucking sad, I hope Morgan and her friend are doing okay...
A lot of the time with schizophrenia, your hallucinations (whether they be visual or otherwise - auditory, tactile) can be influenced by your real life experiences and anxieties. But obviously Morgan would have been oblivious to this as a child. It's sad really how she was just left to struggle untreated - there needs to be better mental health resources and awareness for those with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.
Visual hallucinations are incredibly rare, even amongst those who have schizophrenia. Having those at the age of 3 must’ve made the world a completely terrifying place, especially when you’ve never known any other form of reality. Even if she’d had access to good mental healthcare, she probably wouldn’t have known that she experienced the world differently from others. I can’t even imagine how she felt, and honestly the fact that she was able to lead a mostly functional life for 9 years is a testament of strength.
Morgan doesn't seem to be getting released any time soon (her sentence was for forty years in a state psychiatric facility, it is stated that when she was committed to the facility, she was the youngest patient there) but Anissa and her family did petition the court recently (2021) to have her released and she was released. part of her statement included that she felt that she had exhausted the resources available to her in the prison system, and that she wishes to be released so she can become a productive member of society. She was released with the conditions of her wearing a constant GPS tracking device, being escorted to therapy by a court official, not being allowed to leave the county, to not have social media, and to be supervised until she's 37. Peyton, the survivor, her family wishes she had served a longer sentence (Anissa was sentenced for up to 25 years, and as she was convicted in 2014 and only served seven), which I can understand from their point of view. Peyton is in college, and from all accounts, is happy and healthy.
@@notville_who are you??
Occipital lobe. This child may have suffered very common head trauma & has now been permanently branded psychologically unwell over a legitimate neurological manifestation. They are also a victim.
I really love the dynamic of how online you are compared to how offline your partner is
The fact that americans treated ACTUAL neonazis better than that poor girl and her friend who did something unspeakable because was left untreated and without a safe space for so long... Actually disgusting.
It's America.
What else is to be expected?
Our world hates to love and I'd not be shocked if it happened in my hometown in the UK.
Treats, not treated. America still treats neonazis better than those with untreated mental illness.
@@notville_
That's public knowledge???
America couldn't have existed without violent racism.
@@notville_ Dog you're on the wrong channel 💀
Yelling asking Slenderman to be your dad is the kind of chaotic energy I need right now.
The stabbing happened in my city and it was shocking to hear what parents said about the two girls. Lots of them wanted the girls to get the electric chair and some spread their fear about slenderman onto the special ed kids. I was in elementary school when this happened, but I still remember how horribly some of those kids were treated by classmates.
The fucking ELECTRIC CHAIR?
They wanted to violently electrocute two mentally ill preteens to death??? Jfc what is wrong with people
the worst part about the girl having untreated schizophrenia IS THAT HER FATHER HAS IT AND THEY NEVER BOTHERED TO PREEMPITVELY CHECK HER FOR IT.
Maybe they just assumed she wouldnt have it until her teenage years/early twenties like most?
It was a big misstep though
@@Lauren007E Yes that’s true.
Usually symptoms don’t start until teenage years. Still inexcusable tho…
Slenderman represented the fear of violence inflicted when you’re isolated to me personally. I lived at the end of a dirt road in the woods, didn’t have many neighbors, and spent a lot of time home alone. The concept of Slenderman was a natural extension of my already heightened fear of being kidnapped or killed because I spent so much time isolated, defenseless, alone. Twilight was always the worst time of day because the trees always looked just enough like a person.
Dang
I live near woods and twilight was also the same for me :(
This right here, back in middle school, when I was super into creepy pasta, this is one of the main things that scared me so much about him. I lived on a farm in the middle of nowhere, and my parents would sometimes go on trips for work or leisure. Often separately but also at the same time, which was always interesting. I always had this fear of someone or something watching me in the darkness amongst the trees, ready to break in and steal me away, or worse. There were a few times I even heard or thought I saw something, and I'd go hide under my parent's bed with a knife. It was always nothing. One time, it was the neighbor's dog at 2am, a giant black and white husky mix who jumped on the front door when I was sitting on the couch, I nearly peed myself, I swear. But, yeah, slenderman was definitely the embodiment of that fear for me.
@@notville_lmao my guy youre commenting this and shit about pronouns under every reply. You’re obsessed. Get original💀
i live in one of the most populated cities in the world, so i never really feared slenderman because i don’t have access to the woods. but for reasons unrelated to creepypasta, twilight also sucked for me, because the entire house turned gray and muted and the window’s lighting was gray as well. so i would always stay in my room with the light on and the curtains drawn.
i lived (and still live) close-ish to where the stabbings happened and pretty much the same age as the girls. vividly remember my parents asking me if I knew about slenderman and saying he wasn't real, before then telling me about what happened. i feel like most of my friends and classmates had their parents do the same thing, probably thinking that creepypasta had more to do with it than the girls' mental health
I was super into creepypasta growing up. I even drew a creepy slender man drawing for an art class assignment. I can recall the exact moment my mom sat me down and interrogated me about one of my weird, niche interests out of absolutely nowhere. “Do you know what slender man is?” And going on to explain what had happened. It was bizarre.
it’s kind of sad that the way media reported it made parents ask their kids if they believed in slenderman rather than check their mental health.
I watched a documentary about the Slenderman phenomenon (and the stabbing) a few years back. It touched a bit on the mental health aspect, but still mostly ended up in the "ooh, scary internet can corrupt kid brains" zone. Your video is genuinely a thousand times more insightful than that professional documentary released by goddamn HBO.
there's a whole thing about how HBO platformed a documentary that accused a youtuber here in brasil of consistently preying on children, going with the angle that the community of horror (specifically fnaf) creators basically compose of pedophile rings; none of which is true.
unfortunately HBO seems to have a history of handling stories with the utmost disrespect and then not doing anything about it
I tried watching that doc. Could not finish it it pissed me off so much.
Honestly as someone who was also a mentally ill child who thought slenderman was real its so easy to get swept up in that headspace. I had friends who agreed with me, egged me on, no supervision from parents or adults in general. The idea of running away to some big mansion full of killers who would protect and care about me felt comforting compared to the harsh reality that I was stuck in. I heard about the stabbing a few years after I had moved away from creepypasta content and felt so ashamed after hearing how people talk about those girls. I understood how they felt and how easy it is to remove yourself from reality (that doesn't mean Im condoning their actions of course) but it was a tough hearing everyone call them crazy and dumb for believing like that.
It's funny how for us ostracized people nightmarish monsters feel so much friendlier and safer than the people in reality.
It really strikes me how much people focused on the girls being "dumb" or "naive" or the internet having some scary supernatural ability to make kids believe even the most improbable stuff, as if THEY would never believe some silly monster was real. But WOULDN'T YOU? Wouldn;t you believe Slenderman was real if you saw him with your own eyes? Just like Strange said, Morgan was suffering from hallucinations since she was 3. She didn't read about some random monster on the internet and believed he was real, she LITERALLY SAW HIM STANDING IN FRONT OF HER. People think mental illness makes you behave irrational and stupid but all it does is change the reality around you in such a way that thoughts and actions that previously seemed irrational and stupid become completely rational. Morgan reacted completely understandably to what information was provided to her.
Yeah, I think also the lore of the story is pretty conducive to triggering unreality and paranoia in people with pre-existing often undiagnosed conditions, it's not really anyone's fault exactly those things are part of horror but better funding and education on schizo-spectrum disorders and normalising psychosis as a thing that people go through would do a lot. Kids deserve to have those scary story experiences and to a degree differentiating between reality and fiction comes with age but if it doesn't as its something that bothers you kids should be able to bring it up without fear of institutionalisation or being made fun of.
@notville_ oooh who's an edgy boy? who's an edgy boy?! yes you are!
@@chandra_creatorman has the MAP flag as a pfp and all their comments are copy paste, its lame bait methinks
About a year or two after the stabbings I was targeted for about a week by my school for being openly interested in creepypasta.
Even though I explained that they weren't real and I didn't believe that they were, the teachers still subjected me to a week of emotional abuse and treating me like I was going to be the next school shooter. This was to the point where another student lied about me and said I drew her getting killed by a creepypasta, making it worse. My parents confronted the school's abuse and it stopped, I got no apologies from teachers or that girl. I never knew about the stabbings until about a year later.
Edit: spelling
That's so horrible. Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry you had to go thru all of that
Tf @@notville_
@@notville_ Wtf? How does that relate to my comment?
@@zombieangel159 They're a troll
that sounds horific. I'm sorry that happened.
I vivdly remember the day the news of the stabbing broke, my mother calling me into the living room. She asked, cautiously, if I knew what Slenderman was. I told her that yeah, I did. My older sister had showed me a playthrough of the eight pages game, from Tobuscus I think (gross, I know). I remember her concerned face when she asked me if I believed in him. I didn't. She was pretty shaken by that incident, probably because I was the same age as the girls involved. It caused a lot of anxiety for me, wondering if I'd ever do something like that too. It was a real concern for me back then, since I struggled with anger issues and violent tendencies.
I relate to the last part. The part of, "I wondered if I ever would." I have had mental health struggles and have been unknowingly disabled for my whole life. It was a huge fear of mine to be 'bad' without realizing it, to be capable of such a thing. You're not alone
Same with the last bit and also Ace's bit about being unknowingly disabled. Seeing others with these experiences makes me feel a lot better
I had nearly the exact same experience, word for word.
This is the most engagement I've ever gotten on a comment talking about stuff in my childhood lol. It's really comforting to know it's a shared experience
@@laceyandlucy3529 I remember being worried if people thought I was evil after being diagnosed with bipolar. The maniac stigma is real and rubbed off onto me (not everyone knows maniac is a derogatory word for someone who experiences mania... but those that do use it with resentment)
as an indigenous american person, the whistling in the woods freaked me tf OUT 😭😭
wait why 😭😭 im sorry im just confused
@@eri.x.a in most cultures whistling at night, especially in the woods at night, is said to attract evil or malevolent spirits or creatures to you.
@@mikomiko. This makes sense even on a prosaic level. Making squeaky little prey noises is a good way to attract predators, and accidentally convincing an owl that your head is a squirrel seems like it would end badly.
@@mikomiko. ohh ok thanks for explaining to my tiny brain 😭🙏
@@Eloraurora that's actually sum ive never thought about before- makes a lot of sense
The post-stabbing moral panic around Slenderman and creepypasta as a whole is such a massive Adults Are Completely Disconnected From My Reality moment. Everyone experienced something like this growing up - an adult that has some kind of authority over you (a parent, a teacher, a politician) saying something that makes you realise they are completely oblivious about not only your and your peers' everyday life, but also your values and mental faculties, to the point that you might as well be a different species. You know, like the media taking an obvious joke completely seriously and reporting on it as if it's a new dangerous craze, you aunt giving you a Barbie doll for your 15th birthday, a headmaster gathering the whole middle school in the auditorium to dissiduate students from taking part in some bizarre sex game that's apparently so popular but you've never heard of it. You just stare at them and think "Woah, you GENUINELY have no idea what my life looks like even though you interact with me every day."
this is so true. older generations LOVE to crap on gen z specifically when they don’t even really know what our day to day life is like or how we see the world
@@libby0512you don’t think the adults around you were also treated that way by their own parents and teachers? It’s literally a part of life
And the stupid thing is that EVERY GENERATION has experienced that. In the 50s it was rock. In the 60s it was hippies. In the 70s it was disco and coke. In the 80s it was punks. In the 90s it was slackers and grunge. It just never stops. Remember this, kids don’t deserve to be abused by older generations who experienced the same behavior from their parents.
I feel like that’s a natural consequence of having generations of people raised as if they were simple property to their parents. The problem is that once you start seeing children not as tiny humans with their own thoughts and feelings and instead see and treat them as a non thinking entity that’s an extension of their parents, you stop being open to hearing what’s happening to them- good or bad- and you push them away because you’re communicating that you don’t care. I feel like now that there’s more of a rise of thoughtful parenting, we’ll hopefully see less of this eventually.
@@maddieb.4282It’s a cycle that we need to get rid of if we want to be able to have effective communication between people of different generations.
thank you for talking about the stabbing as sensitively as you did. it always grinds my gears when people fail to mention the early onset schizophrenia and how it was left untreated for years.
I am way too fucking high to be getting a notification telling me slender man is real
Thank you so much for acknowledging the little girl's untreated schizophrenia, I felt so enraged when I found out the details of the case and then people spun it as "SCARY STORY BAD !! INTERNET BAD !!"
and people also calling the girls stupid. infuriating
i am the same age as the girls who were involved in the stabbing, and i remember hearing about it when it happened and thinking, “there’s something else here that the media isn’t reporting.” because like, we would play charlie charlie in classes when the teacher left the room, but no one actually believed there was a ghost named charlie charlie who followed kids around on the off chance they crossed 2 pencils together. kids don’t just read one internet story and immediately resort to murder. it took me years to learn that the real culprit was a mental health disorder, but even as a twelve year old i knew something was up. you know a media outlet has failed when a TWELVE YEAR OLD can see through the bullshit
The coding of monsters as queer, as disabled, as ostracised really leads to interesting places. The adoption of that girl by slenderman speaks to the feeling of being a monster, of only feeing seen by monsters, relishing in this monstrosity that society has told you is wrong. It’s very interesting.
And when society sees those ostracized people they yell ‘MONSTER’ as loud and often as they can, then they wonder why the same people become interested in monsters. 🫤
I love your videos and how well-researched they are, this one is no exception! I do want to say Peyton, the victim, is not actually that fine. She's shared how she's struggled for years with trusting any new friends, not to mention the fact that she survived at all is a miracle. I just didn't want how horrible this was for her and her family and how brave she's been to get lost in this.
That’s very true. I looked up some recent-er interviews with Peyton and she did mention how the entire incident did inspire her to pursue a future in the medical field.
It's sad how we tend to only focus about the physical wounds healing and don't consider the trauma when talking about victims of violence being fine. No critique to Strange though, happens to all of us, but thanks for pointing it out!
I can't even imagine what it would be like to experience something that traumatizing as an adult, let alone as a 12-year-old. Geez.
@@Krolockinchen i think might have strange avoided mentioning her too much out of respect but the way she brushed off talking about her felt kind of rushed, though not intentionally dismissive
Bump this comment pls everyone
I was 17 when the story broke. I remember that my dad did bring it up, though it clearly never crossed his mind that me or my siblings could be capable of something like this. He asked if I knew what Slenderman was, and I told him "Yeah, he's an internet cryptid. A horror story". I think the news about the girl's schizophrenia hadn't come out yet, but my dad didn't blame Slenderman for the tragedy. He blamed the parents, saying that this is what happens when you allow children unmonitored internet access without teaching them basic media literacy and to not just believe everything they see.
I think the mental health aspect played the largest role but I do think my dad had a point. People don't just KNOW that what they see might not be real; they have to be taught how to discern fact from fiction, and children who were previously not exposed to horror/supernatural content may be tricked into thinking it's real because they haven't been taught what constitutes as realistic yet. PLENTY of kids who didn't have pervasive mental health issues believed in Slenderman because they had overactive imaginations and an underdeveloped understanding of reality. Hell, plenty of grown adults have trouble with the seemingly simple concept of "don't believe everything you see".
Since we're in an age of pervasive internet access, AI generated images (and soon sound), Photoshop and "first hand accounts", it's more important than ever for parents to teach their kids where the line between fact and fiction is and that you can't trust the honesty of randos online. Teaching kids critical thinking is imperative for their online safety and mental development.
This is so true! And now so many parents just plop a phone or an iPad in front of actual toddlers to keep them quiet. Unless it’s an actual playlist you put together yourself, or a Sesame Street-style learning game, it’s such a bad idea.
Hi Strange Æons ☺️ my pen name is Massive Times, I’m the author of Cold & Dark.
Thank you for your wonderful detailing of Slenderman! Growing up, I was deathly afraid of every little thing. Being introduced to Slenderman was especially haunting, so writing Cold and Dark was my coping mechanism - giving horrors compassion, as you put it. Because of the story, I got the opportunity to be a part of a documentary that interviewed the two girls’ parents after the incident. That was the tipping point for me. I felt guilty for being a part of the fandom, for humanizing a myth that caused real, tangible violence. I withdrew and went as far as archiving my story. But your video, these comments, past readers - you’ve all given teenage-me (and others, I'm sure) the reassurance she deserved years ago. Also, it’s such an important reminder that this unfortunate incident happened as a result of an unattended mental health crisis!! So sincerely everyone - thank you for that and for such a great discussion ❤️
Cold & Dark is one of my first works as a writer so the grammar, story, and everything makes me cringe now (god, it was so cliche) lol but it’s so sweet to hear people still talk about it 🥺 years ago, I started writing my own take on Slenderman’s origin story called “Untold: Tales of the Faceless Man”. It was put on halt for so long, but I think you just cleared my writer’s block. Once it’s published on Wattpad, I hope you’ll join me in going down memory lane ❤️ thank you again, Strange Æons!! I can’t wait to see more of your work!!
Do you ever plan on putting Cold and Dark back online at any point? It used to be one of my favorite stories to read back when I was big into creepypastas. I understand if you would rather not though. Glad to see you're still writing after all these years!
I’ll never forget the day my mother cornered my brother and I in the car and made us SWEAR that we didn’t believe in slenderman. We were 13 and 9 respectively at the time. Of course we knew he wasn’t real, but just like all urban legends sometimes it was fun to play pretend, we were kids after all. It was so harrowing to realize she would believe even for a moment that either of us were capable of doing something like that, and even worse that her response was to corner us like that instead of having a real conversation :(
I'm an Elder Millennial, so i was already out of college when the stabbing in Wisconsin happened. I remember immediately suspecting there was more to the story than what the news was reporting because it was clear no one in the media had any idea wtf Slenderman was. (I also remember having to explain Slenderman to my older (and even just less-online) coworkers.)
Well, this is the video where I learned that the author (Kathleen Hale) who stalked someone who gave her book a bad review has done a hard pivot into true crime content. Sounds about right lol.
least unhinged true crime enjoyer
Absolutely did a double-take when I heard that name. That situation deserves its own video for sure.
The way I ordered and then cancelled my order once I actually processed who Kathleen Hale was
@@notville_lol, lmao even
For me, the case of Andrea Yates was one of those wake up calls on how much the "crime and punishment" mentality was pushed when I was a kid. How you didn't question that she was a wicked horrible person- because only horrible people do horrible things, kids! But the reality was that she was failed by every system around her and was only properly medicated and treated for her mental health when she... had already lost everything. Imagine only being truly lucid -after- killing your children due to severe psychosis. But that is how so much of crime is handled in the US, even today. People want a simple narrative, not the whole story that reminds them how dysfunctional and broken the systems around them are. And I'd imagine the prison complex is more lucrative than proper mental health treatment and social reform?
We had that issue in Australia after the Lindy Chamberlain case. We all treated her like a monster who killed her daughter. Turns out a dingo really did eat the baby.
It's probably also made harder by the fact that if it's actually the system we all have little choice to live in that caused it, then no one is safe and anyone could be its next victim. So pouring all that fear and anxiety into one scapegoat and making them out as functionally supernaturally evil, means that you don't have to worry as long as the "evil" is purged.
This. Andrea Yates was mentally abused by her husband and pastor. They were warned repeatedly about how sick she was and did things to make it worse.
Let me introduce you to the private prison system. That's all I have to say on that topic
And nobody criticized her husband for insisting she keep having babies even after doctors warned him another pregnancy could cause her mental health to deteriorate even more. Took her to a church where the preacher ranted about how evil women are. And left her home alone with all those kids and no support when he knew she was ill and struggling to cope. He worked for NASA, they could have afforded help. But no, Rusty was The Man Of The Family and He Knew Best. She wasn’t really a person to him, just a walking womb. And now he walks free while she spends the rest of her life knowing she killed her children.
I was in 7th grade when the first round of Marble Hornets videos were released, the EARLY stuff, and my friends and I were totally convinced it was real for a few weeks. For the internet culture of the time, M.H. did something incredibly creative, immersive, and scary. It's wild to see how the landscape of RUclips has changed since then.
Yes I was waiting for someone to mention that!
Same here! I did a lot of research into Slenderman for a high school film project and being a perfectionist it consumed a lot of my free time. I knew it was fake, but the idea of it being a tulpa that became more real and more aggressive the more you thought about it really affected me and made me extremely paranoid by the end of the project. Putting myself in a situation where I was recording "found footage" in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, really messed me up haha.
@@notville_I think you should go to therapy. Hating a group for no real reason like this is not healthy. Please for the sake of your mental health please please please talk to someone. There is help out there, people do care.
It was the same with The Blair Witch Project, too. Plenty of audiences thought it was real at the time. The people who made it had an “official” website for their student film assignment, and the internet was still pretty new then, plus multimedia AR content was basically unheard of, much less the concept of fake found footage. The fact that nothing inherently happens in it (especially nothing definitively supernatural) made it all the more convincing to people. It’s practically a proto-creepypasta.
@@TheRealG5it's a bot, don't bother responding
The moral panic surrounding the stabbing was awful and I feel so bad that Payton's trauma was used as fuel for people to target anyone different than them. I grew up in a small town and I was about a couple years than these girls when it happened. I was targeted for harassment by other students and teachers due to the fact that I liked creepypasta and happened to own the same hoodie one of the girls was wearing in a photo used in the news. It got to the point where I was eventually banned from wearing the hoodie and had to attend weekly meetings with the counselor to ensure I wasn't dangerous which just made me even more of an outcast. Moral panics never help anything and I sincerely hope that Payton is doing well now
When creepypastas were at their peak, I was an unmedicated middle schooler suffering aftershocks of a lot of trauma. I was prone to delusions (still am, but it's less frequent now thanks to my wonderful support systems), and so I had a long-standing delusion for at least 2 years that the creepypastas (specifically the ones featured in "Slender Mansion" stories) were all real. I fully believed that they were real and coming for me to either have me join them, or to kill me. I was fully ready for it. I was in 7th grade when the stabbing happened. I could have been one of those girls, if I had just been a little deeper into my delusions. I think hearing about it all is one of the main things that snapped me out of it, though it took some time to fully recover. And I had similar delusions about the main antagonists of both TribeTwelve and EverymanHYBRID, which caused so much trauma for me that I can't consume them at all anymore.
Creepypastas were scary to me, when I thought they were going to kill me, but at the same time, they were comforting. My delusions swapped between them wanting to hurt me, and them wanting to take me away from the abusive situation I was in. I wanted to become a proxy, really and truly, because that meant that I'd be free and I'd be safe because I'd be protected by Slenderman and the other creepypastas. I'm not excusing what the girls did, but I can see why it happened. Mental illness, especially undiagnosed and unmedicated, can be really scary at their age. I truly hope Morgan (and Anissa) got proper help and is doing better, and I'm glad that Payton survived.
Sorry if this is worded strange or if I'm a little all over the place, Slenderman is a little bit of a hard topic for me to collect my thoughts about because of my personal past with it all. I just wanted to share my piece.
i think you worded your experience really clearly, thank you for sharing
i'm glad you have a support system now, hoping you're doing great ^^
TW: s-al ideation
Thank you very much for sharing your experience. While I never had any delusions about it, I understand what it's like to want to run away from your painful reality into one that would never let you get back. It's probably one of the most emotionally resonant wish fulfillment tropes of mine. On some days this can extend to a wish to stop breathing, fall asleep and wake up in a field of flowers as a 7-year-old. I know I should be working on what I have right now instead of hoping to be plucked away from it all, but so much in my life can feel insurmountable, impossible to change.
I'm glad you managed to find a good support system, and wish you best of luck. You deserve it
I’m glad you’re doing better, and I’m so, so sorry you didn’t have safe adults around you who could get you help. No child should have to go through that.
It's extremely horrific to blame the su*cide of Lakota teens on slenderman and not literal colonial violence.
“Literal colonial violence” lol lmao even
i was (a grown-ass adult) super heavy into the slenderverse community when the stabbing happened, and yeah, we were all horrified and confused about how something like that could've happened. there was a lot of discussion about what the appropriate response was--SHOULD we raise money for the girl's family? would they even WANT money from the community that indirectly led to their daughter's near-murder? and how should we talk about the perpetrators? something was clearly wrong with them, but how could we talk about that in a way that was respectful to the 99% of folks with serious mental illnesses who DON'T stab their friends? and christ, how could we acknowledge the obvious failures of the mental healthcare system while also not discouraging people from seeking treatment? i don't know that we ever figured out a good answer to any of it, but i do know that things got a lot quieter in the community after that. everyone was nervous about accidentally sparking copycat incidents or calling down the wrath of the authorities on random teenagers making scary videos for the internet.
But what you don't know is that his real name is Strange Aeons....
We never have seen them in the same room..🫢
Bo Burnham through gritted teeth: Straight white (slender) man
I got SO sad when Cold and Dark, which I have never read, wasn’t largely dark realism about a blind child and an eyeless faerie having their found family trauma dad and fight baby story. I’m always so down immediately for strange entities protecting abused children and that being not what happens AT ALL bums me out 💀
“He gifted her new eyes to fix her-“ oh bore off
I’m really glad Kathleen made a book about the actual horrors of the slenderman case. The child was deeply unwell and completely untreated, that was the problem.
He even talked to a whole T H I R T Y S I X P E O P L E
34:58 this hits though
i remember my mom scolding me for reading creepypastas after the stabbing happened (i was around the same age) and honestly it shocked the hell out of me. its perfectly normal for kids to believe in that stuff (i did too) because they cant always tell true from false. mental illness definitely played a huge role and it needs to be talked about more
Honestly same, I thought Slenderman was real too what with all the pseudo folklore and hieroglyphs created for the character lol, my dad was not a fan of it and worried for my mental health (which was completely for, I was a very mentally I’ll child). I don’t think it helped that a lot of adults from 4chan (cuz I’m pretty sure most of them are grown men and neets iirc) did want to get gullible children to believe it was real for shits and giggles cuz idk kids suck I guess? Like I think both of these reasons (mental illness in children and shitty adults who knew better on the internet) are the main factors at play.
There was an HBO documentary on the stabbings years ago that also deals with the mental health aspect of the event. Apparently, Morgan's father also dealt with schizophrenia all his life, and though he was being treated for it he didn't see the early warning signs in her until it was too late.
It also touches on how the other girl involved very likely had undiagnosed ASPD.
For give me, what is Aspd?
Antisocial personality disorder. Colloquially (and often pejoratively) known as sociopathy
@@Anton15243 thanks, I was thinking Autism spectrum disorder but I couldn't get the P to fit.
It's so interesting how we as humans want there to be a monster under the bed or a creature in the woods. We've always imagined these impossible things and it's always in this attempt to pin our fears on something real and logical.
Well, that makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. Humans are predators, yes, but we're also prey animals. So when we stay in the woods and we see something moving we think it's a super big scary wolf/lion/bear/whatever else. The ones that didn't got eaten.
It's like that red riding hood comic. She needs to be lucky everytime. The wolf needs to be lucky once.
Politics has real monsters. But supernatural monsters are more cathartic than human beings who are simply shit to each other.
I think you're the first person I've seen cover the stabbing story and mention the charity stream that happened too. I hope everyone is able to heal and move on from that story
Slenderman’s facelessness also stands in stark contrast to the human’s unconscious ability to anthropomorphize everything. We see faces in faucets, the Amityville house has a jack’o lantern appearance, we interpret our pets’ facial expressions as our own. But when something so overwhelmingly humanoid in appearance defies any attempt to reflect ourselves onto it, it creates something far more unsettling than even the scariest monster.
I lived in the town where the stabbing a happened. I didn’t go to the same school, but I knew people who knew the victim. I remember the morning that the news broke the busses were so quiet (which never happened). For most of the day it felt like nobody really wanted to talk about it. I heard teachers talking about wishing school had been canceled, but admin wouldn’t budge. It was an absolutely insane event that I don’t think I’ll ever forget.
Around 2012 a friend of mine was really into the slender man game and had a birthday party sleepover where we (a bunch of middle school girls) went to a park at night and looked for pages while her dad wore a slender man costume and chased us. I had kinda forgotten about it but it was actually an excellent party.
W family omg
the mention of Cold and Dark really makes me reflect on my own love of creepypastas at a terribly young age. at the age of , like , 10 , i was utterly obsessed and fixated on creepypastas , specifically any to do with slenderman. i was a terribly bullied (mainly because of my outward queerness and yet-unmasked autism) and also not very mentally healthy child and definitely should have been seeking some sort of mental health professional’s help but i was a tiny child and my parents just thought i was a little weird. we would often go to spend the day at my grandfather’s cabin on a mountain nearby to where we lived. one day i became so convinced that slenderman was coming to this specific area to take me away and make me a proxy. so that whole day i wandered around the woods waiting for slenderman to come. i craved some sort of understanding and compassion , and i really feel awful for the way my younger self was so hurt.
Honestly, same. I'm always confused when people talk about Slenderman but leave out Cold and Dark (SO glad I finally learned the name of the story I read so long ago, lol), since that was the side of the Slenderman narrative that I grew up on. So many young creepypasta fans just looking for some form of comfort and understanding, even if it was from monsters and killers. Around the age of 9-10 I would just lie awake at night hoping to be spirited away to his mansion, with him acting as a kind and caring father figure since mine was always pretty cruel to everyone. It's a really interesting phenomenon to think about.
My first Halloween at college in 2012 I have vivid memories of playing the Slenderman game in my friend’s dorm surrounded by a group of friends who were all high as balls and freaking out while I was completely sober.
There was also an abandoned mental hospital up on the hill near campus and someone drew a pretty good Slenderman on the wall. We used to go up there and hang out by it and tell ghost stories because what else are you supposed to do when you’re 18 and can’t buy alcohol yet.
my best friend knew the girl who was stabbed- it was crazy for us as kids who had interacted with slender-man media to have something so crazy happen so close to us. looking back i was a kid who also believed that slender man was real, bc i was dumb and easily scared, and the idea that it could have been me who was driven by my own mind and mental illness to such an act of violence is terrifying yet entirely possible.
it was not "entirely impossible"
This is the hard-hitting spooky gonzo journalism that I expect from this channel.
the devil works hard but father strange works harder 💜😈
older people way over reacted to slenderman and the stabbing, but there is a good point to be said about monitoring your children's internet access especially if they're mentally unwell because there's just so many things out there that could negatively effect them
s/o papa Strange for recognising that the causes of crime going deeper than weird kids telling spooky stories online
it was so cool when slenderman showed up and said "its slending time!" and slendered all over the place
in 2020 i was in a psych hospital and a girl i hung around with frequently told us when she was first hospitalized as a child she was horrified when her grandma told her her roommate was one of the slenderman girls
The story of the 2 girls is a cautionary tale for parents with mental health illness who think it's 'best' for them to keep their MH illness to themselves, thinking they will protect their children. Her father also had the same condition. I have MH illness myself. But have advocated for decades that parents be open with their children. If he had been...IF IF... they may have known what she was going through. Maybe not. But also theres a chance they could have. TY for speaking on this in this video. And also ty for that book rec. I am doing Forensic Psych atm and the topic you're speaking on is exactly what we're speaking about in class currently.
I don't think MH illness is Marble Hornets illness, lmao
So what is it, if I may ask?
@@radioactivepower600nanaspersec
Mental health.
@@radioactivepower600nanaspersecI think they mean mental health illness
@@radioactivepower600nanaspersec mental health illness
@@radioactivepower600nanaspersec Given the context, they're saying mental health illness, and shortening it to MH illness.
The real monster really is the moral panic we met along the way. Thank you for another thoughtful and thought provoking dive into Weird Internet Things!
Strange feeding my resurfacing creepypasta phase once more. Time to rewatch Marble Hornets
For me its listening to old Madame Macabre songs
I come from a small town in Brazil and there was a Slender-men scare here. Back in 2013-2014, a bunch of Slender Man graffiti started to show up at every single local school and the adjacent buildings. This made a small rural Brazilian city, whose most ppl couldn’t even speak English or use RUclips, started to be paranoid about Slender-Man and/or a copycat killer targeting kids. It (obviously) ended up being just an edgy teenager. At least, it was memorable
Yeah the Slenderman panic/hysteria died down SO DAMN QUICK imo, because god forbid addressing mental health.
I remember being obsessed with Slenderman as a kid going through my creepypasta phase. I would watch creepypasta stuff on my mom's RUclips account on the family computer in the dining room... facing the hallway that everyone walks through. I am shocked how my mom didn't catch me, did she know and just chose to ignore it? On more than one occasion I'd have a time stands still moment where my mom would scroll straight past all the scary gorey thumbnails to get to her The Voice compilations, or shed type something in and something i should not have been watching popped up in blue, shed pause... and then she'd finish typing and click search, never bringing it up.
Keep in mind I wasn't good at lying and creepypasta was my hyperfixation and I wouldn't stop talking about it. There's no way my parents DIDN'T KNOW! Then the Slenderman stabbings happened. I remember my mom called us into the living room and had like a sit down meeting about it. The first and only one I'd ever had. She said "I don't know if you've heard but as you know the Internet has some horrible people on it. Have either of you heard of somebody going by "slender boy"?
Anyways.... yeah everyone was shocked and appalled at Elsa gate but it'd been going on for a decade at that point and I'm shocked how hard you have to ignore your kids NOT to find out for that long.
im sorry but slender boy made me chuckle
Idk maybe it was that my at the time stepfather was an incredibly abusive tall as shit bald guy . He was crass and immature and regularly played mind games with us because he thought it was funny or perhaps at that moment he really did believe what he was saying...who knows. To a kid who never knew her father this mysterious faceless tall masculine figure represented to me the unpredictable nature of men. The hope to be comforted but only finding a monster.
Yes I still don't trust men...why do you ask?
I'm not completely alone in this feeling though. It was actually really common. The Slenderman mythos thrives on this story of a disturbed kid in an abusive household being kidnapped by Slenderman. That's like half of the proxis backstory. They were kids who were so messed up they couldn't tell the difference between a real person to look up to and this monster disguised as one. The story is tragic more than anything. This figure is a distorted and messed up image of how a child would see an adult. He's taller than you and you don't recognize him mut he's wearing a suit like a person would. This character is stranger danger+daddy issues incarnate.
Jesus. The word proxy triggers my fight or flight now because I was exposed to (and wrote!) bad creepypasta fanfiction as child. Still big into fanfic, just not of the slender mansion variety.
I forgot about the term proxy regarding MH 💀
I remember when the stabbing happened. Until that point, my parents didn't really care much about my siblings and I being interested in Slenderman, since they saw it as spooky Halloween-ish fun for kids. But afterwards, they explicitly banned us from consuming Slenderman content because they were worried something similar might happen to us. Of course, being edgy teens we didn't listen, but thankfully nothing ever happened and we eventually moved on to other interests.
It’s almost as if it wasn’t because of slender man
But because the kids had mental illnesses that went undiagnosed and treated
And neglectful parents
What a concept
@@solarboyaaron4652 ikr
@@notville_ ikr
The Pale Man from Pan's Labyrinth is my favorite example of that sort of uncanny character design, Guillermo Del Toro saying "it's not coincidental that he's pale and a man" has always stuck with me irt Slender Man, too.
While my gf was finishing her master's in psych she chose to do a study on the stabbing case, we watched through probably 6 hours of interview footage and I helped her take notes. It's a very *very* sad case, especially when you see how it all affected the victim afterwards and how the common narrative around the incident is kinda a shitty way to look at it. The court and mental healthcare system failed those two girls to such a ridiculous degree- 40 fucking years for a crime committed by a child is genuinely bat-shit insane. watching the interviews with that in mind was absolutely gut-wrenching at times. I can only hope they are all receiving the help they need to put this situation in the past
40 years?????? oh my god. so they are going to be in prison until they are 52? those poor girls never lived a life oh god
@@charlieisacastle yea, it's so sad to see
I’m only happy to see him I’m a kid so he will take me with him I really care if he takes me
(psst The Question is originally from Charlton Comics, who were bought out by DC sometime before Watchmen was released-- he has no involvement with spiderman. oh yeah also he died of lung cancer this one time and passed his identity onto the nearest convenient lesbian, so that was cool of him, Certified Ally Moment)
(Very cool, The Question, I’m sorry I did u dirty) (I am a fool and trusted a source I read that called him a spider man character. Now I would really like to know where THEY got that very wrong information??)
@STRANGEONS he was created by the same artist who created Spider-Man (Steve Ditko). Rorschach from Watchmen was also based on him and another character Ditko made called Mr. A
@@leRaritydelaFabulousthe Spider-Man guy who won’t pay the house not Spider-Man the guy in the old white who need to pay his rent
The creepypasta fanfic scene was a big part of my life when i was 11-14. I was on quotev and i would take these quizzes that would be like "which proxy is your boyfriend" ( i always got hoody) and I even made my own quizzes, wrote two creepypastas, and drew my own proxy oc (it was literally just hoody). when the news got to us, everything just collapsed.
Slenderman was especially terrifying to me as a child with undiagnosed OCD. I thought about him and I couldn’t STOP thinking about him. Even though I knew he wasn’t real my brain was convinced he lurked around every corner at night. At one time I got up in the middle of the night to take a leak and I got so afraid he would be lurking by my door, I stayed on the toilet for four hours and eventually fell asleep right there in the bathroom. 😅
You just described my entire experience as a child
@@rabiez_luvr6910 I am both sorry this happened to you and also relieved I am not the only one who experienced this
The Question isn't a Spiderman character, he was originally published by Charlton comics which was later acquired by DC Comics. Fun Fact he was also the inspiration for Rorschach from the Watchmen. (I apologise for the um actually moment, I loved the video)
I really hope that the $20 line is in reference to the mode (or mod?) of the Slenderman game where he sings the "GIMMIE 20$! GIMMIE 20$! GIMMIE 20$ TO GO WIFING IN THE CLUB".... Unless that was a fever dream i made up
Edit: Strange liked a comment also talking about the $20 reference, I am correct and also God
No, I 100% ALSO have this memory. I'm pretty sure it also included lots of colorful lighting spinning around, like greens and pinks of a dance club. Yet I cannot pinpoint if it was in the real game, a parody of the game that was exactly the same, or a RUclipsr playing it that I watched.
I remember seeing a Let's Play with that mod, and I remember the LPer saying it was already a meme before the mod was made that Slenderman just wanted $20.
I think part of the reason monsters inspire pity, sympathy, and compassion in some people is because they’re often people who have been bullied or are some flavor of neurodivergent and/or have behavioral issues, and they come to feel like they’re also a monster who’s been mistreated and misunderstood. Thus they end up having compassion for certain monsters and maybe even find comfort in the idea of living in a little found family of freaks just like them.
I remember when Slender was practically everywhere. The 8 pages, the lore, the videos, The Arrival, fangames, Marble Hornets. He's fizzled out quite a bit now. But Slender Man escaped the confines of Creepypasta and had a GRIP on the world of horror for a while. Who would've thought a tall man in a suit could be so iconic
I remember info dumping about Slenderman (and the Slenderman killings) to my therapist as a teenager. I later, when my mom asked me to send a text to my therapist for her (my mom often did that while she was driving) saw that my therapist had told my mom I'd talked about Slenderman, but that I acknowledged he was fictional.
I grew up in New England, so away from the killings, so I don't think I really connected the dots for a long time on why the reason for the concern. I just didn't see any adults talking about it myself.
The Question is actually a DC super-hero that was created by Spider-Man's creator Steve Ditko (well, Ditko created him for a since-defunct comic publisher and then DC bought the rights to their characters). The design is just awesome, there really is something about that featureless face contrasting with a suit that works really well.
Ditko was an objectivist, so his original Question stories were these awful (but well drawn) Randian morality plays where anyone who steps outside the law in any way is an evildoer who deserves to die (basically where Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons got the idea for Rorschach from Watchmen, plus the 9-panel-grid style that Gibbons used in Watchmen).
When DC bought the rights to the character, the Question got turned into like a wandering zen super-hero who's constantly questioning himself, his principles, and everything around him (easily the best version of the character, except for maybe the Justice League cartoon where he's a Fox Mulder-esque conspiracy nutjob who occasionally happens to be right).
Wow, that's an interesting history, thanks for sharing!
Also, fun fact for people new to the character, a few decades after DC bought the character from Charlton, the Question identity became a legacy one, with the second being Renee Montoya, one of DC's most prominent lesbian characters (alongside occasional love triangle members Kate Kane, Batwoman, and Maggie Sawyer, from the Superman comics).
I was looking for this comment, I wanted to set the record straight, but I didn’t want to repeat what someone else said. And you explained it far better than I would have, well done!
I’m from the Waukesha area. One of my friends used to be the victims neighbor. That same friend also witnessed the Waukesha parade incident. Super cursed town despite being very unimpressive. Still maintains a legacy on the region.
wild how ive been in this community for at least a decade (the creepypasta community i mean) and yet i can always learn new things from something ive heard about a million times. truly your coverage of things is some of the best and also super respectful. i also think i knew that one of the girls had schizophrenia but i forgot because people mention it so little when i hear people talk about it, so its good people _are_ talking about it so that its not forgotten that theres a very important aspect to be considered, not to mention discussion that shouldve been had, and honestly still needs to be had.
The thing is what that sheriff said isn't wrong at its core. Parents should know what their kids are doing on the internet because there are absolutely predators. But these predators aren't mind fucking creepypasta. It's pedophiles and groomers.
At its core parents need to be involved in their kids lives and listen to what they say and do. That stabbing was even reported about here in europe and the moral panic wasn't as bad, but it was there. And blaming a piece of art/entertainment for corrupting the youth is just never going to be a reasonable reaction.
this might be my favourite video of yours, it's so clearly well-researched, the script is really strong and well-written, and and the presentation is clear, entertaining, and invites viewers to consider the questions that the slenderman mythos makes you ask. really solid work!
I live in the Pacific Northwest and there's a shockingly narrow (like 10 feet) 3 story house in my neighborhood I've been calling The Slendermansion
Christ, mentioning Cold and Dark YANKED me back to being twelve/thirteen. I was in LOVE with that series (there were sequels!) on Wattpad. I can’t believe they’re gone….
I remember when the stabbing happened, literally everyone I knew who had been on SomethingAwful at any point during the Slenderman Creation Era was like "what the fuck why are kids stabbing each other over some ghost stories we made up".
Oh yeah, that was a real "I feel old, what the hell is up with the kids" moment.
this is the best birthday present ever thank you strange
Happy birthday fr!!!!
happy birthday !!! 🥳🫶
Strange is silly I like it
Happy birthday
Happy birthday! Hope it's a good one 🎉
Its interesting how you say "we all know slenderman was created on the SomethingAwful forum" because i didnt know that until this video. I first heard about slenderman when i was like 13, and sure i suspected my friend was fucking with me... but I wasn't sure. And then she showed me descriptions, and pictures. At the end of the night, I didn't necessarily believe in him, but I was sure as hell freaked out when walking home.
it makes me so so so so so happy to see one of my favorite youtubers talk about slenderman and creepypasta in a way that isnt dismissive and actually delves into the real mythos and cultural inpact that its actually had
I was in high school in Wisconsin when the stabbing occurred. I remember I had an oral Spanish test where we essentially had to have a conversation on a current event with the Spanish teacher entirely in Spanish and were graded on how well we carried on, and she chose to capitalize on the moment by making the topic "violent video games like Slender man." It was very surreal trying to explain the concept of creepypasta and that it wasn't the same thing as video games to my teacher, in Spanish, and being graded on it.
When she offered to give him $20 i was teleported back to 2010 and heard that song in my head immediately
For me the fear behind slenderman was that of "what if your ridiculous paranoia is legitimate?" And the very related "am I unknowingly insane?"
But it's possible he's a mirror, fear that I'm insane but unaware of it has been a fear for me for as long as I can remember.
His lack of motive or lack of knowledge on what he even does with people let's people put their own fears into the story.
A very well crafted internet folklore.
I didn't recognize the Eight Pages game as what it was the first time I saw it. I was at a summer camp where we studied 3D modeling and animation and we were all gathered around watching someone play, but just critiquing how the bathroom tiles didn't line up and stuff.
On the other hand, my mother learned about him when I made a mii of him and he appeared in one of her games.
The Gentlemen from Buffy being inspiration for the slenderman fascinates me. I've been watching the show for the first time and those things were THE most horrifying thing in all 4 seasons so far
The “found footage” bits are really good if you replace slender man with onion man
Thank you for acknowledging that the main cause of that attack was the girls’ mental health (iirc Morgan had a family history of similar disorders and very much had been showing signs of hers). I remember back when I watched that big doc on the case from a few years back, Morgan’s family (or at least her father who has also had visual hallucinations) seemed understanding of its role in the girls’ actions, but the other girl’s father was in full on denial. While I do understand that he was trying to cope with everything that happened and misplaced his blame, I was so frustrated hearing him rail against children having access to the internet. Iirc the school the girls went to would assign students iPads? And he basically placed all the blame on that, instead of trying to understand his daughters state of mind outside of his theory of her being basically brainwashed
I hope he has since then widened his scope
Man, I'm one of those "lucky few" who has had a psychotic disorder (schizoaffective- basically schizophrenia with a mood disorder in there) since childhood. I have had hallucinations since i can remember, which was also when i was 3. I didn't know anything at all was wrong with me until i was 19 or 20, and not having a good time being unknowingly traditionally unemployable while trying and trying and TRYING to just act how my coworkers did. All while seeing the world dismantle itself all around me. Yeah, a system where psychotic disorders go unchecked or- worse ignored- for so long with something being SO OBVIOUSLY WRONG is paltry, abysmal, and unacceptable.
also, how most disorders, ESPECIALLY the demonized ones, all go unnoticed until something extreme happens. recently ive been researching how others got taken seriously for their DID/OSDD and it was always because they ended up in a hospital from severe self harm, it terrifies me that'll happen to us too.
I can'r remember when or by who, but I did saw a video once here on youtube documenting the stabing and, much like yours, they brought up the issue about how news outlests barely touched on the mental health of the girls
It's conforting to see more and more contect creators adressign such issue; I think you did a fantastic job covering the character of Slenderman and how it has inpacted the internet and the words as a whole
Art truly is a cycle in which art reflects the values of humanity and humanity reflects what it values in art
So very spoks
The spokiest of spoks
Father Strange posted just at the right time. I just started a binge of their content last night and needed some new content
Welcome to the channel :)
Welcome to the channel :)
When I was 12 I had a slenderman phase and made up lore about him coming from a different dimension where all the people have blank faces and tentacles on their backs, and the one we know is just a random deranged murderer who found a portal. I had explanations for how they see and eat, and I drew members of his species just walking around in normal clothes. Dads in jorts. Mums using their tentacles to hold more shopping bags. Models in face polish ads posing sexily.