Post by QuirkyBestiary on Aug 5, 2018 14:00:09 GMT
Okay, okay - I'm going to come clean. I have a softspot for the Slender-Man just because he was the first internet horror character that I encountered back when I was much younger. There have been arguments for Slender-Man being a form of modern folklore, and I think that in the early days of the character it certainly was of the same ilk as other urban legends like Bloody Mary and Hanako-San, but then the creator of the character stepped forward and some of the mystique behind the figure was destroyed. It was now no longer a strange urban-mythical creature and was now much closer to a garden-variety fictional character. Does this change the folkloric status that it had previously achieved?
Slender-Man is now a copyrighted character, which makes proceedings even harder, and this is certainly not helped by the upcoming Sony movie. Obviously real-world politics and crime shouldn't come into this much, but the internet has also recently been trying to distance itself from the Slender-Man due to the infamous 'Slender-Man Stabbing'. The most comparable event in true crime history would be the Cropsey case on Staten Island, in which an insane man (perhaps inadvertently) ended up bringing a local urban legend to life, leading to a court case and a general atmosphere of fear. I still have Cropsey listed as an urban legend monster in Lore and Order, but almost no other sources count him as such - despite the fact that he was a folkloric thing long before he became real.
There are also some arguments in the paranormal community for Slender-Man being counted as a tulpa (the term 'tulpa' isn't actually the correct name for a thought-form but I'll cover that later). They claim that he has literally been brought to life by the belief in and fear of his character that was present in the early days of his life on the Internet. It almost seems like a lot of the related groups of people are vying for ownership of the Slender-Man figure - and the popularity of the character has, in my opinion, thrown him out of the folklore category and into that of popular culture.
However, all of the aforementioned negative factors mix together into a potent blend which almost makes me think that Slender-Man should no longer be counted as among the ranks of modern folklore monsters, both because of the real-world trauma associated with the character and its obviously fictional nature.
Slender-Man is now a copyrighted character, which makes proceedings even harder, and this is certainly not helped by the upcoming Sony movie. Obviously real-world politics and crime shouldn't come into this much, but the internet has also recently been trying to distance itself from the Slender-Man due to the infamous 'Slender-Man Stabbing'. The most comparable event in true crime history would be the Cropsey case on Staten Island, in which an insane man (perhaps inadvertently) ended up bringing a local urban legend to life, leading to a court case and a general atmosphere of fear. I still have Cropsey listed as an urban legend monster in Lore and Order, but almost no other sources count him as such - despite the fact that he was a folkloric thing long before he became real.
There are also some arguments in the paranormal community for Slender-Man being counted as a tulpa (the term 'tulpa' isn't actually the correct name for a thought-form but I'll cover that later). They claim that he has literally been brought to life by the belief in and fear of his character that was present in the early days of his life on the Internet. It almost seems like a lot of the related groups of people are vying for ownership of the Slender-Man figure - and the popularity of the character has, in my opinion, thrown him out of the folklore category and into that of popular culture.
However, all of the aforementioned negative factors mix together into a potent blend which almost makes me think that Slender-Man should no longer be counted as among the ranks of modern folklore monsters, both because of the real-world trauma associated with the character and its obviously fictional nature.
