Slenderman

2009

Date: 10 June 2009 · Place: Something Awful forums, Create Paranormal Images thread · Figures: Eric Knudsen aka Victor Surge, creator · Tags: Creepypasta, Collaborative Folklore, Something Awful 01. Two Photoshopped Black And White Photographs On 10 June 2009 Eric Knudsen, posting as Victor Surge on the Something Awful forums, contributes two black and white photographs to a thread titled Create Paranormal Images. Each shows children with a tall, thin, faceless figure in a black suit standing behind them. The captions reference disappearances. The character has no name in the original post. Knudsen calls him The Slender Man in a follow-up reply two days later. 02. The First Collaboratively Authored Internet Monster Slenderman becomes the first widely-adopted collaborative folklore figure of the internet, mythology built additively by thousands of unaffiliated writers, video makers, and artists. The Marble Hornets YouTube series, launched June 2009, develops the canon. The video game Slender: The Eight Pages establishes the gameplay template. In May 2014 two twelve year old girls in Waukesha, Wisconsin stab a classmate citing Slenderman as motivation. The case forces a public reckoning with creepypasta culture and the limits of folklore liability. HBO produces the 2016 documentary Beware the Slenderman. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Slender Man' • Eric Knudsen, original Something Awful thread post (10 June 2009) • The New Yorker, 'The Professor of Internet Monsters' (5 May 2018)