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404notfound posted:My friend in Reno who I showed Marble Hornets to said she sat next to Slenderman on the campus shuttle today. It's weird to think how widespread the mythos has become. On my way back to my apartment this evening, I passed a group of folks in costumes who were obviously on their way to a party somewhere. Slender Man was among them, although the guy was a bit short.
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Nov 1, 2012 02:49
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Mode_Seven posted:Not MH specifically, but this is an interesting look at Slenderman that's obviously inspired by it. I should stop watching anything Slenderman related at night  . Have to say though the visual effects are very well done and scared the poo poo out of me when I saw him.Can't wait for the next MH video, I hope we get some video from the chest cam Tim was wearing. Tim has done slipped back to being masky again though  .
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Nov 1, 2012 03:02
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404notfound posted:My friend in Reno who I showed Marble Hornets to said she sat next to Slenderman on the campus shuttle today. It's weird to think how widespread the mythos has become. While the BBC piece was perhaps a bit overwrought, I have to say that I agree with the idea that the Slender Man is a new myth or monster. I was reflecting awhile back that nearly all of our horror archetypes are really old- vampires, werewolves, demons, and ghosts are ancient, mummies as an object of horror are around a century or so, and our present conception of zombies dates to 1968. The most recent horror archetype we have is the slasher, which only really came into its own around 1978 with Halloween and 1980 with Friday the 13th (despite earlier instances such as Psycho). What Victor Surge did, and what Troy and Joseph and Tim are doing, is creating a new thing and building its mythology, and perhaps most crucially, there's a horde of people with no qualification save that they think it's cool coming up with their own takes on it, tweaking or twisting the existing story, and generating new ideas about it. That's how things go from story to myth- that process of telling and retelling and changing details here and there- and while we can quibble about the quality of this Slenderblog or that YouTube series, the fact that it's slowly seeping into the mainstream consciousness is ridiculously cool, and it's neat to watch it happen in real time. e: The only other modern myth I can think of is Shadow People, and that's mostly limited to dodgy parapsychology websites inhabited by people who don't know what sleep paralysis is. Pope Guilty fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Nov 1, 2012 |
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Nov 1, 2012 03:38
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I keep encountering people who know about Slenderman entirely through hearsay but have no idea what he's called or any real specifics. I've heard folks talking about "slendermen" as if there were many or "a slender" again thinking it's the generic name of a type of monster. I think that's pretty good evidence it's taken off to the point of myth.
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Nov 1, 2012 03:44
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Pope Guilty posted:While the BBC piece was perhaps a bit overwrought, I have to say that I agree with the idea that the Slender Man is a new myth or monster. I was reflecting awhile back that nearly all of our horror archetypes are really old- vampires, werewolves, demons, and ghosts are ancient, mummies as an object of horror are around a century or so, and our present conception of zombies dates to 1968. The most recent horror archetype we have is the slasher, which only really came into its own around 1978 with Halloween and 1980 with Friday the 13th (despite earlier instances such as Psycho). There's grey aliens, inspired by '50s sci-fi and grown out of the cultural conditions produced by the satanic panic and recovered memory culture of the '80s.
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Nov 1, 2012 03:46
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Jack Gladney posted:There's grey aliens, inspired by '50s sci-fi and grown out of the cultural conditions produced by the satanic panic and recovered memory culture of the '80s. Oh yeah, I remember seeing a really good article (I think in SkepInq?) about how if you look at "abductee" drawings of greys over the last fifty years, they change based on how the aliens in recently-released movies look.
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Nov 1, 2012 03:54
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Slenderman is really a modern horror and myth in many ways. It started on the 'net and evolved on it. It was never copyrighted so it belongs to the people who make their own versions on forms of social media. And Slenderman's abilities are related to modern technology that nearly everyone has. This phenomenon could really only happen in this little time period. It would have never happened a decade ago and it probably wouldn't fit in the next decade. This has become a once a generation thing. I feel privileged for having seen it from the start.
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Nov 1, 2012 04:30
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Falls Down Stairs posted:I keep encountering people who know about Slenderman entirely through hearsay but have no idea what he's called or any real specifics. I've heard folks talking about "slendermen" as if there were many or "a slender" again thinking it's the generic name of a type of monster. I'm glad that I'm not the only person has run into this. A fair amount of my friends have read tidbits about Slenderman on reddit or other generic internet bullshit; to me it is a fascinating phenomena that can only really happen at this stage. I've had to explain the origins of Slenderman so many times it's down to a good old fashioned ghost story in my eyes. Mukulu fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Nov 13, 2012 |
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Nov 1, 2012 04:58
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Mode_Seven posted:Not MH specifically, but this is an interesting look at Slenderman that's obviously inspired by it. I agree that this is pretty well done, for what it is, but I think it cements the idea that Marble Hornets (and the original Victor Surge images) managed something that nothing has since: a creeping, insidious paranoia. It's something that seems to come more naturally to low budgets than hi-effects type stuff, maybe because higher budget productions allow for more than just a glimpse of Slenderman, and personally that ruins it for me. I don't care for the recent film-like creations where we get a tall, weirdly lumpy dude with claws. I don't know how to put it better than by saying that when I watched MH for the first time it made me feel like if I paid too much attention to the whole phenomena, I could find myself seeing a tall man out of the corner of my eye, suffering random coughing fits, that kind of stuff. It was more terrifying because he was omnipresent, but not doing anything that you could actually observe directly. You could only see the effect he had on everything around the characters, and to me that was way more terrifying than a tall monster in the woods.
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Nov 1, 2012 05:07
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MockingQuantum posted:I agree that this is pretty well done, for what it is, but I think it cements the idea that Marble Hornets (and the original Victor Surge images) managed something that nothing has since: a creeping, insidious paranoia. It's something that seems to come more naturally to low budgets than hi-effects type stuff, maybe because higher budget productions allow for more than just a glimpse of Slenderman, and personally that ruins it for me. I don't care for the recent film-like creations where we get a tall, weirdly lumpy dude with claws. It helps that Slenderman stuff is almost all made and consumed by young, internet-savvy people, and so the people you're seeing in the pictures and videos and writing the blogs are people very much like yourself. It's not hard at all to imagine yourself in the place of the protagonists.
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Nov 1, 2012 05:18
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MockingQuantum posted:I don't know how to put it better than by saying that when I watched MH for the first time it made me feel like if I paid too much attention to the whole phenomena, I could find myself seeing a tall man out of the corner of my eye, suffering random coughing fits, that kind of stuff. It was more terrifying because he was omnipresent, but not doing anything that you could actually observe directly. You could only see the effect he had on everything around the characters, and to me that was way more terrifying than a tall monster in the woods. That and the fact that once you actually see him for more than a second or two, he stops being scary and starts being funny. Nobody I've seen has made a half decent slenderman prop or in game model that was anything other than awkward and hilarious. This forces the storywriters to keep him in the shadows, where he's a thousand times more effective and scary.
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Nov 1, 2012 05:43
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I'm rewatching the series and I had totally forgotten how painful the audio distortion is to listen to in the early episodes.
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Nov 1, 2012 06:07
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Mode_Seven posted:Not MH specifically, but this is an interesting look at Slenderman that's obviously inspired by it. While I do very much enjoy the technical skill of this, I can't forgive them for leaning on the audio jump scare crutch like an asthmatic amputee. Seriously, we don't need a musical sting every time he shows up.
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Nov 1, 2012 06:22
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Mode_Seven posted:Not MH specifically, but this is an interesting look at Slenderman that's obviously inspired by it. Meh...production wise is was above average but the pacing, story and actual scares were pretty poor. It was all "boo!" style scares rather than scares based on atmosphere or situation. Slenderman also looked kind of ridiculous. The problem I'm having with Slenderman the more I watch these things is that he just doesn't do much. I love ambiguity but I need to know what his appearing is actually doing. It's freaky at first but after a while I need to feel there are consequences to being caught by him. I know bad stuff happens to those he appears to but nothing they can really do seems to stop him so his appearing doesn't really have that much of a connection to bad things happening. I find Slenderman scarier when people aren't aware of him. Like I think one of the reasons MH season 1 was so much better because J was seeing things and wasn't sure what to make of them. Alot of Slenderman's appearances were catching people unaware. When you have someone directly confronting Slenderman, it's hard to know where to go from there. You can't have Slenderman really do anything without damaging the ambiguity, so he just kind of hangs out. This is creepy when other characters aren't aware he's there, but when they're just freaking out over a stationary man for vague reasons, it's harder to take seriously.
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Nov 1, 2012 06:56
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Has there been a cosmic horror style Slenderman story? Like someone discovers him and goes mad from trying to solve the mystery without a lot of Slenderman necessarily. Like he could be stalked and haunted by him or maybe he just finds artifacts related to him and goes mad by proxy. I think that'd be a cool story.
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Nov 1, 2012 07:06
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Falls Down Stairs posted:I keep encountering people who know about Slenderman entirely through hearsay but have no idea what he's called or any real specifics. I've heard folks talking about "slendermen" as if there were many or "a slender" again thinking it's the generic name of a type of monster. I think the "Slender" nomanclature is because of the game. I think there are a lot of people who only know about Slenderman because of it. My 9-year-old son came home one day asking me about "The Slender," which took me a bit off guard, until he told me that his friends had been playing the game at school. He ended up watching videos of the game on Youtube and had nightmares and wouldn't go down the hall to brush his teeth by himself for a few nights.  It's interesting, because the myth has a resurgence with every subsequent type of media. It started off as images and stories, got a boost from the video series', and then again thanks to the game.
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Nov 1, 2012 08:27
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Semi-Normal posted:I think the "Slender" nomanclature is because of the game. I think there are a lot of people who only know about Slenderman because of it. My 9-year-old son came home one day asking me about "The Slender," which took me a bit off guard, until he told me that his friends had been playing the game at school. He ended up watching videos of the game on Youtube and had nightmares and wouldn't go down the hall to brush his teeth by himself for a few nights. Oh, and let's not forget the importance of Minecraft and the Enderman in cementing it in American youth culture. I thought when it first came up that he was called "The Slender Man", not just "Slenderman". The first way is a lot creepier, in my opinion.
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Nov 1, 2012 08:42
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Actually, I think you're right about that. "Slenderman" is just a pretty obvious corruption given English idiom (like how "Spider-Man" becomes "Spiderman").
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Nov 1, 2012 10:15
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See also the Tall Man from the CHZO games.
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Nov 1, 2012 10:47
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axleblaze posted:The problem I'm having with Slenderman the more I watch these things is that he just doesn't do much. I love ambiguity but I need to know what his appearing is actually doing. It's freaky at first but after a while I need to feel there are consequences to being caught by him. I know bad stuff happens to those he appears to but nothing they can really do seems to stop him so his appearing doesn't really have that much of a connection to bad things happening. In a lot of stories involving Slenderman, his appearance seems to have a generally negative psychic influence on his victims. He doesn't physically seem to do anything, but people get angry, scared, irrational, and violent when exposed too much to his influence. In Marble Hornets we have Alex especially and arguably the Maskies, EverymanHybrid has Evan (though they have a lot of other mythology going on too), etc. This "Proxy" video also makes this idea pretty explicit. Being "caught" by him only seems to give him more direct, controlled influence over you, like erasing specific memories or directing you to kill people. I don't see how having a way to stop him would necessarily make it better. I guess, if you want to go with the above theory, you could posit that being consciously aware of the effects of his influence "stops" him; still, having such a concrete definition of what he does kind of ruins the effect. Slenderman is most effective when he's an ambiguous horror, his actions and motivations unfathomable. The scariest thing is the unknown, because you can't reason about it, you have no control over it, all you can do is fear it.
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Nov 1, 2012 17:46
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sleeptalker posted:In a lot of stories involving Slenderman, his appearance seems to have a generally negative psychic influence on his victims. He doesn't physically seem to do anything, but people get angry, scared, irrational, and violent when exposed too much to his influence. In Marble Hornets we have Alex especially and arguably the Maskies, EverymanHybrid has Evan (though they have a lot of other mythology going on too), etc. This "Proxy" video also makes this idea pretty explicit. Being "caught" by him only seems to give him more direct, controlled influence over you, like erasing specific memories or directing you to kill people. I'm not really asking for a way to stop him as much as I'm asking for some sort of stake. What I meant when I said that is if he appears, you're just kind of hosed. Further appearances don't really add to this and nothing can be done to avoid it. The stakes aren't really being raised when he appears again. It's just the same situation repeating itself over and over again. Nothing new is happening except maybe new people getting caught up in the same situation that they have no control over. It just gets old after a while an loses some of it's impact. I mean part of the problem is I alot of tension comes from hope. I have to believe that it's possible for the characters to effect their situation in some positive way for me to have a real investment in it. I'm not saying this has to have a happy ending (in fact it probably shouldn't) but without that feeling that the characters change anything that's happening it loses alot of impact.
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Nov 1, 2012 18:20
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axleblaze posted:Meh...production wise is was above average but the pacing, story and actual scares were pretty poor. It was all "boo!" style scares rather than scares based on atmosphere or situation. Slenderman also looked kind of ridiculous. Slender Man could be seen as a metaphor for the onset of mental illness, especially in "Proxy". Most of the protagonists are just the right age for the onset of schizophrenia. Things are going out of control and you don't know what is real anymore. You can't trust anyone, not even yourself. He could also be seen as a metaphor for growing up. Twentysomethings coming to the end of the age of possibility, where (you believe) you can be anything when you grow up, and into the endless gray adulthood where (you believe) your choices are curtailed by the responsibilities and reality of adult life. As a kid you thought you would be able to do whatever you want when you grew up, and it would be awesome, but you are realizing that isn't really the way it works. The magic is ending, and soon you will be just another faceless, voiceless drone in a uniform. Slender Man is you. Anyway, being stalked is drat scary even if the stalker never does anything. Just having a dude follow you around and watch you all the time is hella scary, which is why we have anti-stalking laws now. I knew a woman who developed a phobia of cameras after a weirdo kept following her around filming her, even putting cameras in the bushes to film her house when he wasn't around. The police weren't that helpful because he wasn't actually doing much, filming in public is legal and she couldn't prove the camera she found on her property belonged to him. Just being watched constantly literally made her crazy. For all we know the Slender Man is the inter-dimensional equivalent of a bird watcher, and means no harm at all. He just likes to watch. Unfortunately being watched by Slendy will make you sick and crazy.
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Nov 1, 2012 22:34
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axleblaze posted:I mean part of the problem is I alot of tension comes from hope. I have to believe that it's possible for the characters to effect their situation in some positive way for me to have a real investment in it. I'm not saying this has to have a happy ending (in fact it probably shouldn't) but without that feeling that the characters change anything that's happening it loses alot of impact. This seems to be the specific death-knell for most Slender series, blogs included. Once it goes from people trying to escape, or understand, or defeat Slender Man to just hiding and hoping it all goes away, that particular work just sort of disappears. MH season 1 was really eerie for me in part because of what someone said a few posts ago: Jay is watching old tapes from Alex, and trying to make sense of what he's seeing. You know Alex is embroiled in something pants-peeingly terrifying, and whatever it is is bad news, but Jay still tries to find out what's going on. That's the epitome of what makes Slender Man stories cool and frightening, for me. One of my favorite "theories" that appeared in probably a number of different storylines was the idea that giving thought to Slender Man actually draws his attention to you, or that coming into contact with one of his victims made it more likely you'd become one-- kind of the Bloody Mary syndrome of scary poo poo, but on a much more subtle scale.
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Nov 2, 2012 01:25
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So, which one of you was this? http://imgur.com/a/17y54 Dragyn fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Nov 2, 2012 |
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Nov 2, 2012 01:56
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Dragyn posted:So, which one of your was this? Hahaha that is the best.
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Nov 2, 2012 02:20
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Troy on Twitter posted:Thanks to everyone for being so patient on the next MH entry. We're putting a lot of stuff in it, so it's taking a little while to shoot! Hopefully this means the story will be moving forward with the next entry.
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Nov 7, 2012 23:54
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Guy playing SM had to give a concession speach last night, so they've been unable to shoot without him.
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Nov 7, 2012 23:57
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Dragyn posted:So, which one of you was this? That is amazing, I'm half tempted to do that myself
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Nov 8, 2012 02:23
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Elon has always said, Dragon was designed as an interplanetary lander first and foremost. They made a simpler cargo version first to make the money to build the human rated ones.
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Nov 8, 2012 09:49
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Zaran posted:Elon has always said, Dragon was designed as an interplanetary lander first and foremost. They made a simpler cargo version first to make the money to build the human rated ones. Ah, that clears it up.
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Nov 8, 2012 12:32
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TTA>To The Ark>An ark to Mars?
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Nov 8, 2012 16:30
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Zaran posted:Elon has always said, Dragon was designed as an interplanetary lander first and foremost. They made a simpler cargo version first to make the money to build the human rated ones. Oh, come on, spoiler that poo poo. 
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Nov 8, 2012 16:36
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Pope Mobile posted:Guy playing SM had to give a concession speach last night, so they've been unable to shoot without him. hahahaha, well played. I always think it's cool how watching some of the older videos you STILL think you catch a glimpse of him somewhere, even though you have seen it a billion times. I hope success doesn't change the guys!
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Nov 8, 2012 17:16
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Zaran posted:Elon has always said, Dragon was designed as an interplanetary lander first and foremost. They made a simpler cargo version first to make the money to build the human rated ones. Well, obviously
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Nov 8, 2012 21:50
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Zaran posted:Elon has always said, Dragon was designed as an interplanetary lander first and foremost. They made a simpler cargo version first to make the money to build the human rated ones. There is literally no proof of that. 
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Nov 9, 2012 04:49
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Wait wait wait... Elon MASK??  And Ku Klux Klan leaders were called "Dragons", it's all finally starting to come together!
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Nov 9, 2012 15:44
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Angela Christine posted:There is literally no proof of that. You obviously haven't decoded all of the TTA videos yet 
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Nov 9, 2012 16:07
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It's clearly been too long since the last entry, we're losing it here 
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Nov 9, 2012 16:53
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That's half the fun of Slender Man. You get to watch the fiction, then see the fans unravel at the seams!
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Nov 9, 2012 19:17
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MockingQuantum posted:That's half the fun of Slender Man. You get to watch the fiction, then see the fans unravel at the seams! When this series first began and I was watching Season 1, I lost a lot of sleep over being creeped out. My bed was right under my window and when night came I would be kind of spooked to the point where I didn't want to sit up in case something was out there just looking into my window. That sense of dread seems to have disappeared in the series sadly.
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