He’s a creature iconic of modern folklore. Slenderman, with his long limbs, suit, faceless...
Face and sometimes tentacles is the subject of endless scary stories, games, videos, apparently
a movie now, and even… a real crime. The question today is where does Slenderman fit
in our modern folklore? I’m Tristan, and this is Step Back, where
we look at history sideways. Last year a judge sentenced a teenage girl
to over two decades in a mental institution. Depending on evaluations, she could be spending
nearly 80% of her life incarcerated. You might remember her story. She and a friend of hers
almost stabbed a fellow girl to death. I will spare their names and details because of their
age, and because it distracts from the video, but these two girls were trying to kill a
third girl to appease the Slender Man, a creature born in internet scary stories.
Slenderman probably needs no introduction, but for the completely uninitiated, I got
your back. In June 2009, a website and forum called Something Awful held a photoshop contest.
This contest was to create paranormal images, and poster “Victor Surge” made a monster.
With it, he added some spooky text, and an internet meme was born.
Already we can see some mythical angles. He sites as inspiration Stephen King and H. P.
Lovecraft, but also other things big in the millennial zeitgeist like Resident Evil and
Silent Hill. He even has an inscrutable, fairylike motivation. And I mean fairy as in back when
they were scary creatures, not Tinkerbell. So the creature hits the notes of the popular
horror of its period but also takes mythical aspects to make something special. I mean,
he’s a work of genius for hitting culture so well on the head.
The work inspired cosplay, fan art, and tons and tons of short internet scary stories called
creepypastas. Within days a myriad of people built a Slenderman mythos. Some invented 16th-century
German connections to him. This, and a rash of found footage films, and alternate reality
games made the Slenderman feel almost like a real creature if you decided to take a leap
of faith to scare yourself, or in the case I mentioned earlier, a 12-year-old girl on
the internet who hasn’t fully developed the ability to differentiate fact and fiction.
I’m not being unique by referring to Slenderman as folklore. In fact, if you click the card
here, you can see the Idea Channel episode about the Slenderman. RIP Idea channel, we
all miss you. But yes, folklore is a now a quite broad term
for cultural products shared by a group. Cultural products being an academic category to label
all the things a culture produces from food to high art, to methods of making baskets.
Folklorists then are experts who try to use these products to find out information about
societies. It opened the door to a lot of insights about the past, and also gave some
voice to those who didn’t have writing or writing surviving to modern day.
That’s me speaking as a historian, however. In the Idea channel video, Mike points out
we can use folklore to study ourselves, and folklore is still a thing made every day.
I think no one questions that Slenderman is part of folklore. The problem is what category
or categories of folklore he fits in. Is Slenderman modern mythology? Often when
we think of mythology, we think of classical pantheons, and origin stories and while those
are part of mythology, they hold another purpose. It doesn’t answer WHY we make myths. Myths
are stories, and one function is to explain the world. In many ways, myths tell us how
things work, and where we come from. You can see this in the indigenous North American
story of the sky mother explaining the formation of Turtle Island or North America. You have
the Roman tale of Romulus and Remus to give a heroic origin to their country. However,
there are other purposes. Early scholars of myth thought it was just
bad science, but myth has a different purpose. Myths, even when known not to be true, create
community, a sense of belonging. They don’t reflect actual history, but definitely, reflect
the ideals and lessons a group wants to impart to others. I mean, look at how much of the
American Revolution or Civil War has been mythologised. We then teach it as history,
which causes many problems but that’s a different video.
So, is Slenderman a myth? Does he reflect a lesson about origins or morals? Or as a
cautionary tale? Some of that is in here. The Slenderman typically has elements of fear
of the unknown; the unfamiliar is dangerous and malevolent. It’s a story plucked right
out of old European tales, and I think that’s what makes it resonate so much with people.
The Slenderman has modern aspects such as the online nature of its creation, the references
to the resurgent interest in Lovecraft, and inspiration from popular video games. However,
it shares a lot of elements with an old tradition, the fairy tale.
Have you ever read fairy tales? Like the old Grimm brothers ones? I had to once when I
was a TA, and they were horrifying. They come from a very Victorian, very Prussian cautionary
tale tradition of terrifying children into obedience. Compared with the cannibal witch
from Hansel and Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin, and … the other witch from Snow White, the Slenderman
feels right at home, albeit with some modern touches. He lives in the woods instilling
fear of the unknown, check. He preys on children, check. Many of us in the west are clued into
these fairy tales, their tropes, and moral lessons. So it’s no surprise the Slenderman
resonated with us, and doubly so with children who have much closer proximity to those fairy
tales. Ok, we talked about folklore, mythology, and
fairy tales, but is the Slenderman an urban legend? What even is an urban legend? Well,
it’s another form of folklore. It’s a modern form which dwells on the funny or the
macabre. They’re sold as true stories, and it’s here I think we found a home for Slenderman.
Elements of him fit all of these categories of folktale just enough to, I believe, explain
how he got so popular. Despite being invented less than ten years from the publication of
this video, he has lived in this grey area between internet creation, and to the impressionable
or young, maybe a real creature. At least enough to motivate at least one attempted
murder. Hey guys,
Intermission Tristan here for this week’s CALL TO ACTION. This is the last reminder
there’s going to be a meetup in Toronto THIS WEEKEND on May 19th, 2018. At 7 PM come
to Disgraceland where Mexie, Thought slime, and myself will hang out, tie a few on, and
generally have a really fun time. I hope to meet a bunch of you there.
Ok, so let’s revisit the stabbing. Would it surprise you if I mentioned only one of
the two girls who committed the stabbing were even clued in at all to the internet scary
story community? Let’s talk about childlore. It’s a new and underdeveloped area of folklore
studies and history. It’s the study of the culture of children, the culture that develops
without the adults. Naturally, it’s quite a hard thing to study as an academic, but
when source bases are spotty, or challenging to get information from, it might be more
important to spend that energy to find out what’s there. Otherwise, you get surface
level histories written by the powerful and literate. You know, old white man histories
like the ones I keep getting yelled at for not parroting.
Scary stories like the slender man pass down from adult culture into children’s culture
either through a person telling it, or in this case, one girl spending a lot of time
on the internet. These then filter through an entire oral childhood culture we haven’t
navigated before. You know what these are, the scary stories, rumours, rhymes, and clapping
games that both begin and end on the playground. And we’ve been surprised by the result.
One study of child culture found one rhyme which passed down from child to child has
roots as far back as the reign of the Roman Emperor Nero nearly 2,000 years ago. Who knows
what other bits of cultural history are repeating every day on the playground?
And now in August, there’s going to be a Slenderman movie. In some ways, it’s the
perfect example of corporate America making a tone-deaf product about an internet meme,
and even making some allusions to the real act of attempted murder in 2012. Great job.
I Imagine it’s going to be as great as the Shit My Dad Says sitcom. On the other hand,
you could take the Slenderman movie we’re all going to endure as a way of solidifying
this monster in our cultural milieu, exposing this internet creature to like at least ten
people who will pay to see it. Anyways, I think I started a whole lot of
conversations without finishing any. Folklore studies is fascinating to me as a historian,
but it is far from my speciality. I would like to use this as a beginning to a conversation
about where the Slenderman fits in modern folklore in the comments. After you call me
a blue pill beta of course. Thanks to 12 tone for the theme, and Patreon
patrons Don and Kerry Johnson, Kolbeinn Mani, Garrick Kwan, and Scott Smith.
Be sure to subscribe and hit the notification for more history every week. Be excellent
to each other.