Hot News: So who is Slender Man?

This week, two 12-year-old girls may have nearly stabbed their friend to death because they allegedly said they were trying to please the mythological creature Slender Man. The thing is, Slender Man is fake. Not fake in the way that all urban legends about supernatural creatures are fake, but fake as in a person created the character expressly as a fictional character in public on a message board in 2009.

So who is Slender Man? Slender Man is described as a unnaturally tall man who has all his features stretched. He is usually depicted wearing a dark suit and tie. His face is completely white, hairless and he has no face. In addition to his usual appendages he has a set of tentacles that extend from his back. He is often depicted blending into the background of a scene, particularly in a darkened forest or woods. In later depictions, looking directly at Slender Man makes him come after you.

So he's an urban legend? Not quite. He was created in 2009 on the forum Something Awful as a postmodern urban legend. Something explicitly created fictionally, but treated in all other ways as an 'real' urban legend.

So who made him? On a Something Awful photo-editing message thread created to insert 'supernatural creatures' into photographs, a user going by the handle 'Victor Surge' created Slender Man. Surge posted two photographs of children and the following text.

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.

One of two recovered photographs from the Stirling City Library blaze. Notable for being taken the day which fourteen children vanished and for what is referred to as 'The Slender Man.' Deformities cited as film defects by officials. Fire at library occurred one week later. Actual photograph confiscated as evidence. // 1986, photographer: Mary Thomas, missing since June 13th, 1986.

Who is Victor Surge? Surge is a young man named Eric Knudsen. He is explicitly referred to in several places that have used the Slender Man character as it's creator. When asked in an interview about the creation of Slender Man, Knudsen said the inspiration for the character was came to him quickly. 'It was pretty spontaneous. I saw some of the pictures in the thread and just decided to make something that I myself would find creepy,' he told ' Know Your Meme.'

Knedsen himself said that he found the idea of Slender Man as a 'real' urban legend was a bit strange.

'In my personal opinion, an urban legend requires an audience ignorant of the origin of the legend. It needs unverifiable third and forth hand (or more) accounts to perpetuate the myth. On the Internet, anyone is privy to its origins as evidenced by the very public Somethingawful thread,' he told 'Know Your Meme.'

If this is all fake, how did the character spread and become so 'real' that girls stabbed each other over him? 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.

What is Creepypasta?'Creepypasta' comes from the terms 'Copy and paste' and 'copypasta': types of stories that are copied and pasted to spread through email and Internet message boards. 'Creepypasta' specifically refers to this type of horror that's become popular on the message boards mentioned above and on places such as creepypasta.wikia.com. Creepypastas can sometimes just be strange or weird or dumb instead of horrific.

What about more mainstream adaptations of Slender Man?That's another reason Slender Man has seemed more 'real' than other 'fake' urban legends, the way he was adapted into other works of fiction. For example, on the show Lost Girl, the show is filled with all sorts of creatures based off of actual folklore. A Slender Man inspired creature appears alongside these characters as being just as legitimately based off of folklore. This isn't always the case however. In a March 2014 episode of the CW show Supernatural a version of Slender Man is depicted as just a normal human who is faking everything.

What about other mediums?There have been several web video series based around Slender Man, as well as several video-game adaptations. The most notable adaptations was the short web game Slender: The Awakening and Slender: The Arrival where you had to avoid Slender Man while collecting a certain number of notes scattered around a creepy forest.

Post By http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/06/03/slender-man-urban-legend-two-girls-allegedly-attempted-murder-over-is-fake-it-was-created-on-a-message-board-in-2009/