On the other side, folklore can almost be seen as an ancient form of memes, transforming with every retelling to fit the community and what it needs that story to represent. 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. "The scary stories that stick - the ones that matter, the ones that mean something - are the ones that really tap into larger cultural anxieties." "We've always told scary stories to convey our neuroses about the zeitgeist of the moment," she said. Original caption: "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 Credit: Something AWFUL, Eric Knudsen "VICTOR SURGE" University of Georgia media studies professor Shira Chess literally co-wrote the book on Slender Man's significance as internet folklore, analyzing his myth as a marriage of primordial traditions and modern uncertainties.
It's a portrait that's as seductive as it is terrifying - as familiar as it is unknowable.
#Real slender man movie#
Recently Hollywood tried to capitalize on his internet phenomenon with a movie that received a resounding "meh." Unsurprisingly, movie execs fail to grasp exactly what makes the legend of a nefarious man in a business suit so terrifying to millennials.īut understanding Slender Man and the psychology behind his permanent virality is about understanding who we've become as people raised online. But Slender rose above all, his empty face an uncanny reflection of the virtual void we summoned him from.
Countless internet urban legends existed before and after him. When the internet created the Slender Man, it did not realize it had made manifest the fears of a whole generation adrift in the digital age.įaceless, amorphous, and boundless, the tall black-suited figure sprang from the crowdsourced anxieties of our online hivemind.
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