![]() So much did they want this power that they were willing to kill their innocent friend, to stab her 19 times and leave her to die in the woods, in order to gain sway over the menace. This girl, like Wednesday, seems self-possessed beyond her years and has an air of authority that Slenderman clearly acknowledges.Īnd that is what the Wisconsin girls wanted, they wanted power over this intimidating force of nature who would solve all their problems. But the girl in the Slenderman image is older, more like a tween, and has a bit of Wednesday Addams to her. The classic scene from the original Frankenstein of the monster playing happily with a little village girl (before accidentally drowning her) comes to mind. What secret do they share? What hold does the girl - half his height - have over this fearsome figure? Be Like Wednesday The girl stands erect in an old-fashioned dress, with a vague Mona Lisa smile. Though huge, Slendy seems submissive to the girl, with his head hung down, his eyeless “gaze” looking at a spot on the ground. In this “naturalistic” image, Slenderman and a young girl are holding hands in a misty forest setting. His face and head are white and featureless, and he wears a dark suit and white gloves on his hands. In this particular image, Slendy is enormously tall and thin, but only has the usual four limbs that most humans have, as opposed to the multiple Doc Ock-like appendages with which he is sometimes shown. It is my contention that one specific image, the image at the top of the page, particularly influenced this jump from shared fantasy in “ creepypasta” tales and images on the Internet to impacting real world behavior, specifically the Wisconsin stabbing. Suddenly, Slenderman was “fleshed out,” so to speak. This is the ultimate compliment for a meme - “an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture” - when it jumps from concept bandied about on the Internet, to causation in the real world. In a sense, Slenderman did become “real” when humans believed he was real and took action accordingly. ![]() As the most powerful memes do, this one seeped into the very fiber of online culture to the extent that five years later young girls were willing to kill for it. These real life homages are all the more disturbing because the creation of the character is readily traceable to writer Eric “Victor Surge” Knudsen on the “Something Awful” Internet forum in 2009, in response to a contest asking “ participants to turn ordinary photographs into creepy-looking images through digital manipulation and then pass them on as authentic photographs on a number of paranormal forums.”Īnd did they ever. ![]()
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