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5 Feet of Fury

Kathy Shaidle's blog. Est. 2000

One for our bulging ‘Stupid Dead Kid Ruins Cool Toy For Everyone’ files

June 4, 2014 By Kathy Shaidle

After his introduction on Something Awful, Slender Man started making regular appearances on other message boards dedicated to horror, specifically the 4Chan board /x/ paranormal. On boards like this, and other places such as the Reddit board /r/nosleep there is an entire culture of horror on the Internet designed around the idea of fictional stories treated like reality.

Much like how wrestlers try not to break “kayfabe” and recognize that wrestling is fake — despite the entire audience knowing it is — so too do online “real-life” horror writers treat every story as “real” despite the fact that most of the audience knows they probably aren’t. Within these communities, Slender Man became a recurring memetic device and character.

 

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Filed Under: Kathy Shaidle

« ‘First they took his guns, now the government wants firearms law protester’s house too’
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