feedmyleg posted:

I saw the Slenderman thread at the time but thought it was impossibly lame—the same as when creepypasta started its rise. It all just read as an experiment in collective fiction/storytelling to me, which didn't tap into what I thought was interesting about the subject. In retrospect I can see both of them as births of modern myth, but at the time neither had yet to have any cultural impact so they felt akin to reading fanfiction—separate from and lesser than the "real thing." But despite the fact that the big crop circle hoaxers of the 80s had already been exposed by the time I became aware of them, I thought that whole subjevt was really interesting because it was presented as fact—and despite the reveal so many people still believed in them.