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Ngl when you started talking about mental health at the start of the Segway, I immediately thought you were swindled into a much worse sponsorship deal.
Slenderman became "not scary" to me because I was in the Wattpad creepypasta fandom It's hard to be sacred when you read a fanfic of him blowing some OC's back out
Not saying this would make the movie better, but apparently after the Slenderman stabbings in 2014 a lot of the scene were cut out like a scene where one of the characters stabs herself in the head with a scalp
@@Dat_icebrrrrrrrrrrrrsimpler to be sure, let’s try our best to remind each other of those great times, and to live so that we can have more good times
The backrooms is a good example of the internet butchering something cool. What made the backrooms click with me was it's simplicity, but then the internet decided a bunch of squiggly monsters roamed there and that there were certain rules to the backrooms and mysterious shadow organizations and I just... Got bored of it all. It's unfortunate.
i do agree on the rules and organizationsa and to a certain degree on the monsters, but weren't monsters always a part of the backrooms? if i recall the original 4chan (i think) post said something along the lines of "god help you if you hear something moving, because it definitely heard you" or something like that
I can feel you on that to an extent. Granted, I wasn't aware of the Backrooms' existence until about 2022, after the internet started adding all the monsters and mind-fucky lore, but even then, I played a Backrooms world on VRChat and thought it was pretty cool. Then I explored more and more of them until I realized it wasn't all that interesting. Then when I learned about the true origins of the Backrooms, I felt robbed of a truly unforgettable experience
@Milan-ul2xg I know exactly what you're talking about, but im pretty sure that in the youtube video I watched on the Backrooms origin, that line was meant to convey the idea that you may be going crazy from being isolated and that there was a good chance that the monster was just a figment of your imagination. But then again, I haven't seen that video in about 2 years, so take that with a grain of salt
@@Milan-ul2xg Sure, the original post did insinuate that there could be a monster, but what made the backrooms scary was the isolation and the idea that there could be something in the backrooms with you. When you specifically say "there is a monster here and it looks like this and it was born because of bla bla bla", the monster and the location it's in becomes instantly less scary and less interesting.
you touched on this a bit already, but my favorite part about slender man by far was how inherently malleable his mythos was, both in terms of his literal lore/abilities and what he'd represent thematically. it's a genuine shame that he's basically been delegated to meme status now, because honestly? especially given the analog horror wave that we've been experiencing lately, a new take on the character that made him scary & intruiging again would genuinely be really, really cool.
not sure if you've seen it, but Remy Abode (the creator of Gemini Home Entertainment) did do a Slender Man analogue horror series called Morley Grove a couple years ago i thought it was done really well, but i won't spoil just in case
Urban legends and folklore seem to thrive when people share stories with minor changes but the sheer speed and scope of the internet changed that. Its like the difference between a campfire being tended to overnight and a bushfire that burns out.
Slender man is the ultimate symbol of my childhood dread, I knew logically he couldn’t exist but at the same time people made such convincing stories, and people at my school always talked about sightings of him. He was once truly a terrifying being. I remember one time a friend and I were watching a lore video about him and we got so scared that we locked ourselves in her room that we didn’t come out for hours, but now I look back at that time fondly
Slenderman, like many other things of its kind, is constantly ruined and revived over and over. Something cool comes out, kids channels ruin it, dies due to it, something about it becomes popular reviving the topic, kids channels milk it to fucking death.
I remember I had a friend back in 5th graade who loved creepypastas, especially Slenderman. I haven't talked to her since she moved away, but i like to think Slenderman was probably a big part of her time on the internet, and she probably looks back on him very fondly, even after his popularity died out
Slenderman is in the Cryptid Club comics by Sarah Anderson, along with sirenhead, the flatwoods monster, mothman, etc. It's fun to see modern monsters with monsters that have been talked about for centuries. (One was a newspaper dating ad that said "Siren seeking Siren" and then it shows sirenhead on an awkward date with a traditional siren lol)
In my opinion, I think that Creepypastas just gave way to analog horror. Creepypastas worked simply due to how simple they were due to the nature of where they came from which were forums. But over time, forums gave way to Videos and many of them just couldn't replicate well into video due to the folks simply just not having the talent to do so. Now you can't just make spooky images and scare folks anymore, now you have to make scary videos to scare folks (Ben Drowned weirdly was kinda ahead of its time and Marble Hornets did it all very well), the time for telling was over, now it's the time of showing and theorycrafting. And boy did Analog horror use theory crafting to its advantage.
because when something genuinely good become fameous, people try to milk it to make money and children with unrestricted internet access are the most profitable for content farms/people only caring about the profit, so they make the big thing as appealing as possible
Blame the success of FNAF for that, companies saw it and went like: "oh sh*t, we can make horror characters that are plusheable, let's make more of then"
Honestly, Slender Man does have the potential to be scary. But him being utilized in cringy and terrible ways (see Sony's Slender Man movie 💀) made him just....not scary. Like, you could do something great with the Slender Man as a concept, like with what Marble Hornets did.
Everyone hates it now because 1) the unfortunate true crime case with those 2 girls killing "for Slenderman", 2) a terrible Hollywood movie and 3) Slenderman was basically a trend. It was surpassed by other more popular internet stories like Jeff The Killer and the SCP Foundation. Honestly, that Marble Hornets series was (I think) one of the first Analog Horror series that sparked a lot of attention and got the ball rolling for more content about Slenderman. Without that, Slenderman wouldn't have been as popular as it was, even with the games and stuff. Now, Slenderman is just a meme. His whole mythos became oversaturated with garbage, people stopped caring and moved on to other stories that will most likely fall the same fate. Trend becomes popular, trend becomes oversaturated, trend dies out, people move on and the cycle repeats.
Saying that everyone hates Slender Man isn't really right, as most people from what I've seen are more indifferent to him, which might even be worse. He's usually just acknowledged as a genuine icon of his era that has long become irrelevant. As you can probably tell by my username, Slender Man was a big part of my childhood and I loved pretty much anything involving him, but even I can admit that he lost his edge over the years. I still believe that he's capable of genuine terror if used right, as the stalking terror he was originally depicted as, but such careful stories are rare nowadays.
Slenderman wasn’t a huge part of my childhood, but I remember in my first grade of elementary school everyone who owned an iPod or an early iPhone would be playing Slender The Eight Pages and people would be swarming around them during lunch. Edit: I would like to apologize for my random bracketed rambling in this comment after this point. I added this apology here before I posted since I realized I have 2 really long bracketed tangents, due to my ADHD fueled nostalgia. I will try to make them *bold* too just so you can skip them easily, as I think brackets can be hard to see sometimes, and to hopefully make the comment more organized. That was the most I was exposed to the horror of Slender, the rest of my childhood with Slender would be the character the siblings on the VenturianTale channel made him be, and the most I can remember of actually watching videos with their version of the Slender character was from their Creepypasta Highschool video. Rest of the time he would just mentioned in some Top10 channels (Possible Danger/Planet Dolan. *OMG I can’t believe I forget they existed, somehow Slender seemed to pull that memory of that channel out of my subconscious. I should see what they are doing nowadays)* that I used to be obsessed with, mainly with just some small clips from Marble Hornets(I believe Mr. Nightmare also had a video on that. *I just realized other than Jacksepticeye Markiplier, and I guess VenturianTale before they retired the channel and TheYogscast despite me not watching their videos anymore, that’s he’s been one of the TH-camrs I’ve been watching/subbed to since childhood)* so I knew Slender existed and that he was a thing that was big but I guess was never into the lore and history of him, and I never even noticed how quickly he faded away until my recent years, since I’ve grown up to love horror and all that. So your statement about people being indifferent to Slendy is true for me, I was more indifferent towards Slender growing up. In fact he is more interesting to me now, than he was in his heyday, since I guess I don’t think I like horror content that much where people just pile up their own lore on top of it, like the SCP Foundation and Backrooms. No idea why.
Great video but I think you've glossed over a major factor for as to why Slenderman, and honestly any horror series, becomes an oversaturated mess. It's children who jump on the bandwagon. Now this isn't me waving my fist at the clouds screaming about how back in my day everything was better because it wasn't. I was one of those kids who wanted to be mature. I watched shows like South Park when I was like 9. I read and sought out horror stories online. So when I found something "mature" it was cool to explore it and come up with stupid theories. The issue in the 2010s and even worse today, is that more kids have access to the internet. The ones who go overboard and oversaturate a story aren't adults, they're the kids who would do something like 0:50. Even the creepypasta trend that you pointed out became saturated with the likes of sonic.exe, red mist, lost episodes, lavender town clones; were all created by bored teens who thought they could do the same as the writers that inspired them. Which I am not shaming them for trying, but it quickly becomes a game of telephone. Rather than letting the horror end you'll have kids trying to make it scarier with HYPER REALISM in a story about a haunted 16-bit game. Of course you also have the issue of massive corporations coming in and sucking out any creativity in them, but don't forget that the Slender movie was a huge deal. Finally internet horror coming to the big screen! Of course it turned out to be a boring waste of time, but someone in Hollywood gave internet horror a shot. Which in turn brought more eyes to the genre. As you said, the issue is actually much more complex with multiple moving parts. I just wanted to point out that the audience has a say in which direction a series will go. I also love Chucky. RIP to the show.
The stabbing was something people really need to move on. It happened a decade ago and we've had a fairly good movie, great book, and a fantastic arrival remake since.
The truth is I think what killed Slenderman was that he became a copyrighted character, originally he was a public domain character since his creator did not register him at the time, in those years Slenderman was like "a character that belonged to everyone", meaning you could use him in your projects, you could use him in your games, you could adapt him and invent a mythology for your work, it was something that everyone added a little bit of themselves to, like a Dracula of that time, you could make it more for horror, more friendly, and most importantly you could use it freely to monetize and if you think about it some of its characteristics were invented by fans, his black business suit, the static that it causes in analog artifacts, the pages, but now it belongs to only one person more or less since its creator sold it to this company that has done absolutely nothing with it since the movie came out, in which it was originally going to be heavier But it was super censored, (not that it saved the movie but it made it much worse) and well and if you think about it people stopped using it when it became copyright because normally you wouldn't want to be sued for copyright infringement, I don't think this is the only reason but I really see it as a very strong one
I remember this guy! I used to be terrified of him (and other creepypastas) when I was like 9 or 10 but there were good times with my cousins pretending that we were being chased by Slenderman when we were kids. Also I remember this specific video about this guy in a forest explaining who Slenderman was while using a Minecraft version of him (or was it Lego, don’t remember) and at the end of the video, he saw the “real” thing and ran away. Does anyone else remember that video or was it just a fever dream 😅
Heard of the story behind Randy Stair so many times, and to be honest, he truly earned a spot for the murder side of 'TH-cam Criminals'(and not just channels who committed child/animal abuse, and sexual violence towards minors). Stair was Number 2 of Savox's Most Evil TH-camrs Part 1 for a reason(Number 3 had Mr. Anime placed, and Number 1 with Alyssa Deyvalt on the same list).
I still believe the creator is feeling disgust when two psychopathic girls blamed it on (what’s worse is that the parents still wanted to get them out of prison, the victim and possibly her parents better warn the others to protect the kids and hopefully themselves by the time it happens)
I'd say "hate" is a bit of a strong word regarding the descalation of Slenderman's popularity. If anything it's just a bit taboo to talk about him because it was so long ago and everyone including the creators of the game and everything have just simply moved on. It was a fun experience and it definitely had it's bad downs but overall it's still a big part in why creepypasta's became huge at the time and why the fascination for horror took place for most of us in middle/high school. I think if you were to come back to the games at least you'd still have a fun experience and a few memories to fond over that are hopefully more positive than anything else. I still think it's a cool concept it's just horror has evolved a bit beyond it now and that's okay.
Why does the Internet turn something like Mickey Mouse and Garfield into cosmic horror, but yet it turns something that's supposed to be scary like Slenderman into a meme. I don't get it.
I will say you are wrong on 1 thing, popularity does kill horror. When a bigger crowd finds something, they are going to change it slightly to fit their wants, the bigger the crowd the more it changes until we have Jeff the killer fighting Slenderman, who is dating Jane the Killer and Zalgo is also part of the story for some reason. They are also all gods. Now that I think about it, a lot of creepy things get turned into OCs that are gods like the backrooms
Shout out to 8 year old me getting a virus on their laptop because I was clicking dodgey links trying to download the 8 pages because I didn’t understand the internet yet.
you totally forgot to mention the fact that in the age of creepypasta, they did slenderman so dirty by making him into an overprotective father-figure and owo-ifying him and the other creepypastas
Maybe a bit off-topic from the slenderman, but honestly with the end of the video, that is kinda how I feel about the whole backrooms thing too. Like, the original concept of it was/or I mean still is so fascinating - the emptiness, the scale, the liminality. But then it became the new hot topic mainstream thing, and people started throw in a billion monsters chasing you (like in any other horror) and endless levels that at some point have nothing to do with the charm of the original idea. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against adding to original lore, but to me it still needs to fit the original vibe (in the case of backrooms, I would say the pool rooms still fit in, since they have the same liminal vibe). Guess in that sense, you could say slenderman was the prediction of what is to come when you get too popular.
On the topic of creepy pastas, I think another creepypasta rabbit hole thay is interesting is rap rat, an obscure video board game in the early 90s that rose to popularity due to the creepypasta
The first thing I ever saw with Slenderman in it was Little Kuribohs “Concrete Giraffes.” I immediately read him as “a tall pale man in a suit who creeps on children at parks.” So, a scary story based on a PDF file.
For those who might be interested in a modern and refreshing take of the concept, Remy Abode (creator of Gemini Home Entertainment) has made a couple videos bringing a new take on the character, and it's very well worth the watch.
I remember one day in middle school one of the kids were talking about Slender Man, it was nuts honestly. There was even that one video that had the Requiem for a Dream sound track playing while going over the "lore" of the Slender Man that I watched around that time and it creeped me out for sure. I didn't know about Marble Hornets till like..... back in senior high which was around 2016. It was an interesting era to be sure, growing up.
Damn, just by watching this video I feel incredibly old. I remember when slender man first started getting incredibly popular. Every TH-camr that I watched at the time was playing slender, the eight pages or just talking about slender man. And when I found out about the slender dabbing, that definitely scared me more than the character.
I currently have a Slender fan game in the works built in Unreal 4, thinking of adding some new stuff that could look new and scary for months, but I doubt it would just be a treat to some old fans like I.
my ex friend from a few months ago would love to beg to differ. I told her (which no not why we're ex friends lol) that people have slowed down on it and he wasn't as popular anymore because for her, and mind you she's 31, she's a year older than me, and she had over 800 different fanmade characters for the "slender universe" and loved it and told me no the fandom is still strong, there's a whole thing of him on the site I go too. etc etc and I'm like maybe he's referenced? But he's not as beloved as he used to be. I couldn't believe a 31 year old was THIS obsessed with this one character.
the three big slender things on the internet I still adore are Marble Hornets, Slender 8 Pages, and Slender The Arrival (official sequel to the former and created by both the creators of 8 Pages and Marble Hornets)
I think the other issue is, people aren't allowed to make him scary. Remember the parents of the girl from the incident you mentioned in the beginning, were going to sue because "You're making light of a victim!" And "this movie is going to encourage more kids to do this!" So they had to cut a lot of scenes, and a lot of other things to keep the lawsuit away. Which could have scared a lot of others from making him scary, because they don't want to be threatened with a lawsuit too.
I remember hearing about Slenderman in elementary school and I would hear about him and my mother made sure I never played the game or watch any videos
I think what made Slenderman and other Creepypastas go down as a genre of horror Is the OC-ification and Ship-ification of the genre When the genre went from amateur internet horror stories to "everything-the killer, omg look at my ocs that unalive people, teehee they are all so quirky and live in a mansion owned by Slenderman and they all get shipped together in different match ups. I'm so edgy ™️"
I wouldn't say hated. Just disappointed. It still feels like everyone's waiting for Slenderman to get a proper revival. Hell, even Jeff the Killer has been slowly rising from the dead due to creators like David Near and Pastra (and I plan to throw my hat into the ring as well whenever i get around to it, i'm currently sitting on a really fun idea for a Jeff VS story).
I don't think Slender Man is exactly faded from everyones memories, since most horror indie games follow the same idea as the Slender 8 Pages game. A lot of indie games have you walk around and do tasks with a looming threat watching you, and getting closer and closer as you progress, and the Jump scares you encounter are much like when you go around a tree in Slender and he's just standing there with the loud Piano key being played and static building up on the screen. One popular one that comes to mind from recent years is the unofficial but still popular SCP-1471. A wendigo looking Skull dog creature that operates through an App called Mal.0 that you download on your phone. Upon downloading the app, it just vanishes, as if you never downloaded it. Soon after though, you start getting messages from an Unknown name, being a mix of texts that sound innocent to then Pictures of locations you've been too recently, with SCP-1471 being hidden somewhere in the picture. At first its hard to spot her, but after more pictures are sent from the number, she starts showing up more clearly in the photo's, and after some time of constant erie messages and photo's, she starts sending you pictures of her in the same room as you, but you can't see her. It isn't until you open your phone's camera is when she is seen, to which then she can attack you, and there is no escape from her. Once you download the app, you've effectively started your own countdown to when you die. If I remember correctly, you can prolong the death by responding to her as if nothing is wrong, to which the messages become more aggressive, and your death more brutal and slow. Of course the Internet did what it does and immediately started to NSFW'ize her, to the point where everything under the search term Mal.0 and SCP-1471 term on Tiktok and even TH-cam, is mostly sexual, with various 3D artists creating models of her that have all been very popular. But even still, the story behind the Non Canon character is still very similar to Slender Man, in which once you come across the entity, you essentially have days left to live before being killed or captured, never to be seen again. I think Mal.0 is for sure scarier, since she can constantly remind you of her existence, and remind you that death is getting closer and closer. Even just the thought of there being an Entity that is never once visible to the naked eye, but only through your phone's camera lense is just terrifying, as she could potentially jump out of view of the phone, leaving you franticly move your phone around just to find her.
Slendrina was a Slenderman fangame for mobile and the 1st game was literally just Slenderman but with Slendrina but she has 10 games that change and have different family members in them, even Slenderman, In Slendrina they made Slenderman as her father.
This video finally gave me an idea on who else to reference for an alien character I am designing. Slender is literally perfect for what I am trying to go for, since I don’t want to accidentally recreate the Xenomorph with what I am going for. Lol
if someone mentions scp in killing them bc scp has only gotten better with time those old articles were not tightly critted or anything and some of them are the authors barely disguised fetish the new ones are beautiful stories that have made me cry multiple times
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Ngl when you started talking about mental health at the start of the Segway, I immediately thought you were swindled into a much worse sponsorship deal.
When I was younger, I made a slenderman mii and my mom saw him randomly jogging while using the wii fit.
He’s got to stay in shape.
That’s how he stays slender
@@hadookin47you win lmao
Slenderman was rendered “not scary” to me the day some kid at school told me he was a guy who accidentally glued a sock on his head 😭
how stupid do you have to be to accidentally glue a sock to your head
@@suger.cakepopz you have to be as stupid as slenderman, duh
@@suger.cakepopzApparently pretty stupid, I guess.
@@suger.cakepopzidk ask slenderman
Slenderman became "not scary" to me because I was in the Wattpad creepypasta fandom
It's hard to be sacred when you read a fanfic of him blowing some OC's back out
It doesn’t help that Slender Man got a Hollywood film adaptation that sucked and came out years after he stopped being relevant.
Was gonna say, the internet didn't 'ruin' Slenderman
Hollywood did.
I can forgive the irrelevancy part since movies do take years to finish. It still doesn't save the film from being bad though.
Not saying this would make the movie better, but apparently after the Slenderman stabbings in 2014 a lot of the scene were cut out like a scene where one of the characters stabs herself in the head with a scalp
That film never existed! We do not acknowledge that trash!
And that’s why we don’t acknowledge it. The Slenderman movie doesn’t exist. Only Marble Hornets😂
Yeah he used to be the top dogs of horror... now he just comes by my house for a therapy session talking about the *"Good Ol' Days"*
i miss the past too
@@somechupacabrawithinternet8866 yeah me too- things were better back then
@@Dat_icebrrrrrrrrrrrrsimpler to be sure, let’s try our best to remind each other of those great times, and to live so that we can have more good times
I miss the days I used to be afraid of Slendy.
@@gimmeyourrights8292 if you haven’t watch marble hornets, really great horror with Slendy
The backrooms is a good example of the internet butchering something cool. What made the backrooms click with me was it's simplicity, but then the internet decided a bunch of squiggly monsters roamed there and that there were certain rules to the backrooms and mysterious shadow organizations and I just... Got bored of it all. It's unfortunate.
i do agree on the rules and organizationsa and to a certain degree on the monsters, but weren't monsters always a part of the backrooms? if i recall the original 4chan (i think) post said something along the lines of "god help you if you hear something moving, because it definitely heard you" or something like that
I can feel you on that to an extent. Granted, I wasn't aware of the Backrooms' existence until about 2022, after the internet started adding all the monsters and mind-fucky lore, but even then, I played a Backrooms world on VRChat and thought it was pretty cool. Then I explored more and more of them until I realized it wasn't all that interesting. Then when I learned about the true origins of the Backrooms, I felt robbed of a truly unforgettable experience
@Milan-ul2xg I know exactly what you're talking about, but im pretty sure that in the youtube video I watched on the Backrooms origin, that line was meant to convey the idea that you may be going crazy from being isolated and that there was a good chance that the monster was just a figment of your imagination. But then again, I haven't seen that video in about 2 years, so take that with a grain of salt
@@Milan-ul2xg Sure, the original post did insinuate that there could be a monster, but what made the backrooms scary was the isolation and the idea that there could be something in the backrooms with you. When you specifically say "there is a monster here and it looks like this and it was born because of bla bla bla", the monster and the location it's in becomes instantly less scary and less interesting.
@@TheLindenbeat yeah, i agree that the overexplanation does ruin it quite a bit
you touched on this a bit already, but my favorite part about slender man by far was how inherently malleable his mythos was, both in terms of his literal lore/abilities and what he'd represent thematically.
it's a genuine shame that he's basically been delegated to meme status now, because honestly? especially given the analog horror wave that we've been experiencing lately, a new take on the character that made him scary & intruiging again would genuinely be really, really cool.
not sure if you've seen it, but Remy Abode (the creator of Gemini Home Entertainment) did do a Slender Man analogue horror series called Morley Grove a couple years ago
i thought it was done really well, but i won't spoil just in case
@@CheeseYourselfdon’t forget about the OG, Marble Hornets
Urban legends and folklore seem to thrive when people share stories with minor changes but the sheer speed and scope of the internet changed that.
Its like the difference between a campfire being tended to overnight and a bushfire that burns out.
That was a very perfect summary.
The fact this creepypasta got so popular that it led to two girls stabbing another girl is beyond me…
They are beyond mentally insane
Nothing good ever came from SA ..
@@ThatDawg.115 I would not say that. They were just cultist wannabes
I mean some lady killed her daughter because “SpongeBob had came out of the tv and told her to”
Sounds like Schizophrenia or something like that. Dx@@Gav1623
Slender man is the ultimate symbol of my childhood dread, I knew logically he couldn’t exist but at the same time people made such convincing stories, and people at my school always talked about sightings of him. He was once truly a terrifying being. I remember one time a friend and I were watching a lore video about him and we got so scared that we locked ourselves in her room that we didn’t come out for hours, but now I look back at that time fondly
Slenderman, like many other things of its kind, is constantly ruined and revived over and over. Something cool comes out, kids channels ruin it, dies due to it, something about it becomes popular reviving the topic, kids channels milk it to fucking death.
You say that as if Slenderman has become popular again, but that's the total opposite, now he's nothing but a "joke" for people to laugh at.
Five nights at freddy's is a good example. It was so scary before, now it is use for deviant things and not considered scary anymore
@@MC-wm1obngl i’ll say the fourth game is still scary since im not into the fandom like that
Milking him to death????
Freaky ahh kid channels
More proof that kids ruin everything.
Ahh yes, the thing my parents were concerned about me liking. Good times.
I remember I had a friend back in 5th graade who loved creepypastas, especially Slenderman. I haven't talked to her since she moved away, but i like to think Slenderman was probably a big part of her time on the internet, and she probably looks back on him very fondly, even after his popularity died out
Slenderman is in the Cryptid Club comics by Sarah Anderson, along with sirenhead, the flatwoods monster, mothman, etc. It's fun to see modern monsters with monsters that have been talked about for centuries. (One was a newspaper dating ad that said "Siren seeking Siren" and then it shows sirenhead on an awkward date with a traditional siren lol)
In my opinion, I think that Creepypastas just gave way to analog horror.
Creepypastas worked simply due to how simple they were due to the nature of where they came from which were forums.
But over time, forums gave way to Videos and many of them just couldn't replicate well into video due to the folks simply just not having the talent to do so.
Now you can't just make spooky images and scare folks anymore, now you have to make scary videos to scare folks (Ben Drowned weirdly was kinda ahead of its time and Marble Hornets did it all very well), the time for telling was over, now it's the time of showing and theorycrafting.
And boy did Analog horror use theory crafting to its advantage.
I have a question, why can't horror characters just stay terrifying? why does everything need to be family friendly now?
because when something genuinely good become fameous, people try to milk it to make money and children with unrestricted internet access are the most profitable for content farms/people only caring about the profit, so they make the big thing as appealing as possible
@@lauragrigoletto906 That is straight up pure facts.
Because of gen z
Blame the success of FNAF for that, companies saw it and went like: "oh sh*t, we can make horror characters that are plusheable, let's make more of then"
Honestly, Slender Man does have the potential to be scary. But him being utilized in cringy and terrible ways (see Sony's Slender Man movie 💀) made him just....not scary. Like, you could do something great with the Slender Man as a concept, like with what Marble Hornets did.
Everyone hates it now because 1) the unfortunate true crime case with those 2 girls killing "for Slenderman", 2) a terrible Hollywood movie and 3) Slenderman was basically a trend. It was surpassed by other more popular internet stories like Jeff The Killer and the SCP Foundation.
Honestly, that Marble Hornets series was (I think) one of the first Analog Horror series that sparked a lot of attention and got the ball rolling for more content about Slenderman. Without that, Slenderman wouldn't have been as popular as it was, even with the games and stuff. Now, Slenderman is just a meme. His whole mythos became oversaturated with garbage, people stopped caring and moved on to other stories that will most likely fall the same fate. Trend becomes popular, trend becomes oversaturated, trend dies out, people move on and the cycle repeats.
Saying that everyone hates Slender Man isn't really right, as most people from what I've seen are more indifferent to him, which might even be worse. He's usually just acknowledged as a genuine icon of his era that has long become irrelevant. As you can probably tell by my username, Slender Man was a big part of my childhood and I loved pretty much anything involving him, but even I can admit that he lost his edge over the years. I still believe that he's capable of genuine terror if used right, as the stalking terror he was originally depicted as, but such careful stories are rare nowadays.
Slenderman wasn’t a huge part of my childhood, but I remember in my first grade of elementary school everyone who owned an iPod or an early iPhone would be playing Slender The Eight Pages and people would be swarming around them during lunch.
Edit: I would like to apologize for my random bracketed rambling in this comment after this point. I added this apology here before I posted since I realized I have 2 really long bracketed tangents, due to my ADHD fueled nostalgia. I will try to make them *bold* too just so you can skip them easily, as I think brackets can be hard to see sometimes, and to hopefully make the comment more organized.
That was the most I was exposed to the horror of Slender, the rest of my childhood with Slender would be the character the siblings on the VenturianTale channel made him be, and the most I can remember of actually watching videos with their version of the Slender character was from their Creepypasta Highschool video. Rest of the time he would just mentioned in some Top10 channels (Possible Danger/Planet Dolan. *OMG I can’t believe I forget they existed, somehow Slender seemed to pull that memory of that channel out of my subconscious. I should see what they are doing nowadays)* that I used to be obsessed with, mainly with just some small clips from Marble Hornets(I believe Mr. Nightmare also had a video on that. *I just realized other than Jacksepticeye Markiplier, and I guess VenturianTale before they retired the channel and TheYogscast despite me not watching their videos anymore, that’s he’s been one of the TH-camrs I’ve been watching/subbed to since childhood)* so I knew Slender existed and that he was a thing that was big but I guess was never into the lore and history of him, and I never even noticed how quickly he faded away until my recent years, since I’ve grown up to love horror and all that. So your statement about people being indifferent to Slendy is true for me, I was more indifferent towards Slender growing up. In fact he is more interesting to me now, than he was in his heyday, since I guess I don’t think I like horror content that much where people just pile up their own lore on top of it, like the SCP Foundation and Backrooms. No idea why.
I really can't get over how you feel like a natural continuation of Thafine, in every amazing way. I love your channel man.
No bc I feel the same way!
Great video but I think you've glossed over a major factor for as to why Slenderman, and honestly any horror series, becomes an oversaturated mess. It's children who jump on the bandwagon. Now this isn't me waving my fist at the clouds screaming about how back in my day everything was better because it wasn't. I was one of those kids who wanted to be mature. I watched shows like South Park when I was like 9. I read and sought out horror stories online. So when I found something "mature" it was cool to explore it and come up with stupid theories.
The issue in the 2010s and even worse today, is that more kids have access to the internet. The ones who go overboard and oversaturate a story aren't adults, they're the kids who would do something like 0:50. Even the creepypasta trend that you pointed out became saturated with the likes of sonic.exe, red mist, lost episodes, lavender town clones; were all created by bored teens who thought they could do the same as the writers that inspired them. Which I am not shaming them for trying, but it quickly becomes a game of telephone. Rather than letting the horror end you'll have kids trying to make it scarier with HYPER REALISM in a story about a haunted 16-bit game.
Of course you also have the issue of massive corporations coming in and sucking out any creativity in them, but don't forget that the Slender movie was a huge deal. Finally internet horror coming to the big screen! Of course it turned out to be a boring waste of time, but someone in Hollywood gave internet horror a shot. Which in turn brought more eyes to the genre. As you said, the issue is actually much more complex with multiple moving parts. I just wanted to point out that the audience has a say in which direction a series will go.
I also love Chucky. RIP to the show.
Not the HarleyTBS and Definitely Bored Oranges divorce saga 😭
investing at 2 views, expecting 1 Slenderillion
God, I used to be scared as a kid, thinking he'd get me in the forests near my nannas' house.
Good times
Wake up babe, Definitely Bored Oranges posted
I never thought anyone hated Slenderman, just everyone grew up and realized "Man this could be super cool, but it's too late cause now it's a meme."
The stabbing was something people really need to move on. It happened a decade ago and we've had a fairly good movie, great book, and a fantastic arrival remake since.
The truth is I think what killed Slenderman was that he became a copyrighted character, originally he was a public domain character since his creator did not register him at the time, in those years Slenderman was like "a character that belonged to everyone", meaning you could use him in your projects, you could use him in your games, you could adapt him and invent a mythology for your work, it was something that everyone added a little bit of themselves to,
like a Dracula of that time, you could make it more for horror, more friendly, and most importantly you could use it freely to monetize and if you think about it some of its characteristics were invented by fans, his black business suit, the static that it causes in analog artifacts, the pages, but now it belongs to only one person more or less since its creator sold it to this company that has done absolutely nothing with it since the movie came out, in which it was originally going to be heavier But it was super censored, (not that it saved the movie but it made it much worse) and well and if you think about it people stopped using it when it became copyright because normally you wouldn't want to be sued for copyright infringement,
I don't think this is the only reason but I really see it as a very strong one
I remember this guy! I used to be terrified of him (and other creepypastas) when I was like 9 or 10 but there were good times with my cousins pretending that we were being chased by Slenderman when we were kids. Also I remember this specific video about this guy in a forest explaining who Slenderman was while using a Minecraft version of him (or was it Lego, don’t remember) and at the end of the video, he saw the “real” thing and ran away. Does anyone else remember that video or was it just a fever dream 😅
Slenderman🤝amber maclean🤝jeff the killer
Fictional characters that are now associated with horrible crimes
wait whos amber maclean?
@@Togmalunchbox I believe that's the ghost girl with flames from Danny Phantom
@@TogmalunchboxShe’s the rockstar ghost from Danny Phantom
Ember McClane?
Heard of the story behind Randy Stair so many times, and to be honest, he truly earned a spot for the murder side of 'TH-cam Criminals'(and not just channels who committed child/animal abuse, and sexual violence towards minors). Stair was Number 2 of Savox's Most Evil TH-camrs Part 1 for a reason(Number 3 had Mr. Anime placed, and Number 1 with Alyssa Deyvalt on the same list).
I still believe the creator is feeling disgust when two psychopathic girls blamed it on (what’s worse is that the parents still wanted to get them out of prison, the victim and possibly her parents better warn the others to protect the kids and hopefully themselves by the time it happens)
Slender is still alive, just replaced with gajillion of Mascot Horror made to take kids' money.
I'd say "hate" is a bit of a strong word regarding the descalation of Slenderman's popularity. If anything it's just a bit taboo to talk about him because it was so long ago and everyone including the creators of the game and everything have just simply moved on. It was a fun experience and it definitely had it's bad downs but overall it's still a big part in why creepypasta's became huge at the time and why the fascination for horror took place for most of us in middle/high school. I think if you were to come back to the games at least you'd still have a fun experience and a few memories to fond over that are hopefully more positive than anything else. I still think it's a cool concept it's just horror has evolved a bit beyond it now and that's okay.
I love your videos. Ima binge most of all of them cuz i forgot but you are one of the few youtubers i can consistently re-watch ❤❤
4:07 I genuinely thought that was jerma for a second lmao
Why does the Internet turn something like Mickey Mouse and Garfield into cosmic horror, but yet it turns something that's supposed to be scary like Slenderman into a meme. I don't get it.
That's a good point
I will say you are wrong on 1 thing, popularity does kill horror. When a bigger crowd finds something, they are going to change it slightly to fit their wants, the bigger the crowd the more it changes until we have Jeff the killer fighting Slenderman, who is dating Jane the Killer and Zalgo is also part of the story for some reason. They are also all gods.
Now that I think about it, a lot of creepy things get turned into OCs that are gods like the backrooms
Slenderman was a Tenno???? 6:12😮. If you get it, you get it.
Everyone knows about Slenderman. Who’s less know is Slenderman’s cousin, Ilikemenderman.
As a big time creepypasta creature I still to this day want to get a proxy tattoo anyway love ur videos ^^
I get to remind people that I live near the water tank place in the opening shot of the series
Marble Hornets is the goat! Jay and Tim my beloveds
live laugh love Marble Hornets🫶
What about Seth 🥺
@@Sleepwalkinglogs Well.... I mean.... He brought his dog
One of my favorite inside jokes with my friend istg "YOU BROUGHT YOUR DOG!😡"@images9536
@@images9536 but Alex looks like dhamer
Shout out to 8 year old me getting a virus on their laptop because I was clicking dodgey links trying to download the 8 pages because I didn’t understand the internet yet.
you totally forgot to mention the fact that in the age of creepypasta, they did slenderman so dirty by making him into an overprotective father-figure and owo-ifying him and the other creepypastas
Maybe a bit off-topic from the slenderman, but honestly with the end of the video, that is kinda how I feel about the whole backrooms thing too.
Like, the original concept of it was/or I mean still is so fascinating - the emptiness, the scale, the liminality.
But then it became the new hot topic mainstream thing, and people started throw in a billion monsters chasing you (like in any other horror) and endless levels that at some point have nothing to do with the charm of the original idea.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against adding to original lore, but to me it still needs to fit the original vibe (in the case of backrooms, I would say the pool rooms still fit in, since they have the same liminal vibe). Guess in that sense, you could say slenderman was the prediction of what is to come when you get too popular.
That was the best ad i saw in my live. Love All your Videos
The bored orange has fed us once again
Refreshed your page and found a fresh new vid... awesome!
Yippie new video, cant wait to see the next topic you talk about
On the topic of creepy pastas, I think another creepypasta rabbit hole thay is interesting is rap rat, an obscure video board game in the early 90s that rose to popularity due to the creepypasta
Slender man had the potential of being fnaf before fnaf
3:16 is when the sponsor ends
I feel Zalgo is the internet Cryptid people wanted Slenderman to be.
The first thing I ever saw with Slenderman in it was Little Kuribohs “Concrete Giraffes.”
I immediately read him as “a tall pale man in a suit who creeps on children at parks.” So, a scary story based on a PDF file.
11:48 "and slendy's got a weird case, Why is he around?"
Please do Siren Head next D: I used to love that monster
Immediate watch!! Love your take on these
10:57 Where’s the Slender Queen Slendrina
I think most creepypastas have faced this kind of fate, but I will always view them as a classic of the past.
No matter what Slenderman will always be the creepypasta legend.
For those who might be interested in a modern and refreshing take of the concept, Remy Abode (creator of Gemini Home Entertainment) has made a couple videos bringing a new take on the character, and it's very well worth the watch.
Calling Marble Hornets analog horror hurt my soul.
Wow your raycons can last through your entire relationship divorce and settlement!!!!
I remember one day in middle school one of the kids were talking about Slender Man, it was nuts honestly. There was even that one video that had the Requiem for a Dream sound track playing while going over the "lore" of the Slender Man that I watched around that time and it creeped me out for sure. I didn't know about Marble Hornets till like..... back in senior high which was around 2016. It was an interesting era to be sure, growing up.
The creepypasta universes needs a video from you to sally to Ben drowned as a fan of the fandom it is how I got into horror
Theirs a documentary on HBO MAX about this
THERE IS?????
@@DefinitelyBoredOrangesit’s specifically about the murder that you discussed in the intro - a true crime doc if I recall.
@@DefinitelyBoredOranges Yeah, but more towards the 2 kids who tried to kill their friend, though it does go into his orgins as well
@@DefinitelyBoredOranges It's called "Beware the slenderman"
Damn, just by watching this video I feel incredibly old. I remember when slender man first started getting incredibly popular. Every TH-camr that I watched at the time was playing slender, the eight pages or just talking about slender man. And when I found out about the slender dabbing, that definitely scared me more than the character.
Thanks cute man for feeding my decade old fixation in the background of my art :>
THESE ORANGES ARE ENTERTAINED!!!
I currently have a Slender fan game in the works built in Unreal 4, thinking of adding some new stuff that could look new and scary for months, but I doubt it would just be a treat to some old fans like I.
my ex friend from a few months ago would love to beg to differ. I told her (which no not why we're ex friends lol) that people have slowed down on it and he wasn't as popular anymore because for her, and mind you she's 31, she's a year older than me, and she had over 800 different fanmade characters for the "slender universe" and loved it and told me no the fandom is still strong, there's a whole thing of him on the site I go too. etc etc
and I'm like maybe he's referenced? But he's not as beloved as he used to be.
I couldn't believe a 31 year old was THIS obsessed with this one character.
I like your vest during your unhinged ad.😂😂👍🏽
But he made Marble Hornets.
Funnily enough, Slenderman wasn't the entity haunting Marble Hornets, it was the Operator's doing (which is inspired by Slenderman)
I just think Slenderman is our 90's horror icons not forgotten but not brought back
0:38
Is... is that the burger King foot lettuce guy?
yeah his name is mr chills
the three big slender things on the internet I still adore are Marble Hornets, Slender 8 Pages, and Slender The Arrival (official sequel to the former and created by both the creators of 8 Pages and Marble Hornets)
I love you definitelyboredoranges
Ever since I saw Butchy Kid’s Slenderman videos, it was never the same
I think the other issue is, people aren't allowed to make him scary. Remember the parents of the girl from the incident you mentioned in the beginning, were going to sue because "You're making light of a victim!" And "this movie is going to encourage more kids to do this!" So they had to cut a lot of scenes, and a lot of other things to keep the lawsuit away. Which could have scared a lot of others from making him scary, because they don't want to be threatened with a lawsuit too.
I remember hearing about Slenderman in elementary school and I would hear about him and my mother made sure I never played the game or watch any videos
I also believe the introduction of FNAF kinda killed the hype of Slenderman/Creepypastas.
Definitely not the case….
True. Fnaf is basically candle cove but bad
Can we also talk about the slendersona's?
I think what made Slenderman and other Creepypastas go down as a genre of horror
Is the OC-ification and Ship-ification of the genre
When the genre went from amateur internet horror stories to "everything-the killer, omg look at my ocs that unalive people, teehee they are all so quirky and live in a mansion owned by Slenderman and they all get shipped together in different match ups. I'm so edgy ™️"
I wouldn't say hated. Just disappointed.
It still feels like everyone's waiting for Slenderman to get a proper revival. Hell, even Jeff the Killer has been slowly rising from the dead due to creators like David Near and Pastra (and I plan to throw my hat into the ring as well whenever i get around to it, i'm currently sitting on a really fun idea for a Jeff VS story).
who is "everyone" lol? I still love my boy
At 11:29 i used to watch that guy when I was little. Now I'm 17 and go back to see what shit can garbage 3 am videos he makes lmao
I don't think Slender Man is exactly faded from everyones memories, since most horror indie games follow the same idea as the Slender 8 Pages game. A lot of indie games have you walk around and do tasks with a looming threat watching you, and getting closer and closer as you progress, and the Jump scares you encounter are much like when you go around a tree in Slender and he's just standing there with the loud Piano key being played and static building up on the screen.
One popular one that comes to mind from recent years is the unofficial but still popular SCP-1471. A wendigo looking Skull dog creature that operates through an App called Mal.0 that you download on your phone. Upon downloading the app, it just vanishes, as if you never downloaded it. Soon after though, you start getting messages from an Unknown name, being a mix of texts that sound innocent to then Pictures of locations you've been too recently, with SCP-1471 being hidden somewhere in the picture. At first its hard to spot her, but after more pictures are sent from the number, she starts showing up more clearly in the photo's, and after some time of constant erie messages and photo's, she starts sending you pictures of her in the same room as you, but you can't see her. It isn't until you open your phone's camera is when she is seen, to which then she can attack you, and there is no escape from her. Once you download the app, you've effectively started your own countdown to when you die. If I remember correctly, you can prolong the death by responding to her as if nothing is wrong, to which the messages become more aggressive, and your death more brutal and slow.
Of course the Internet did what it does and immediately started to NSFW'ize her, to the point where everything under the search term Mal.0 and SCP-1471 term on Tiktok and even TH-cam, is mostly sexual, with various 3D artists creating models of her that have all been very popular. But even still, the story behind the Non Canon character is still very similar to Slender Man, in which once you come across the entity, you essentially have days left to live before being killed or captured, never to be seen again. I think Mal.0 is for sure scarier, since she can constantly remind you of her existence, and remind you that death is getting closer and closer. Even just the thought of there being an Entity that is never once visible to the naked eye, but only through your phone's camera lense is just terrifying, as she could potentially jump out of view of the phone, leaving you franticly move your phone around just to find her.
Slendrina was a Slenderman fangame for mobile and the 1st game was literally just Slenderman but with Slendrina but she has 10 games that change and have different family members in them, even Slenderman, In Slendrina they made Slenderman as her father.
The Akira clip in the beginning is hard
This video finally gave me an idea on who else to reference for an alien character I am designing. Slender is literally perfect for what I am trying to go for, since I don’t want to accidentally recreate the Xenomorph with what I am going for. Lol
I love the inclusion of a Butchykid video. He never fails to make me laugh with his cryptid videos.
0:44 what the hell lmao
btw there a actual Slenderman movie
It does exist btw
A video without the topic of a awful dude having a freakfest near children? Finally you need it🔥🥶
are we just saying things now
what hate train, i haven't seen it
yo I thought this was gonna be a Better Help sponsorship, the Raycon threw me off 😂😂
if someone mentions scp in killing them bc scp has only gotten better with time those old articles were not tightly critted or anything and some of them are the authors barely disguised fetish the new ones are beautiful stories that have made me cry multiple times
Everyone always forgets his gay cousin, Ilikemenderman
Oversaturation is what killed Slender Man. That, and the stabbings.
arrival is a official sequel last i checked