WARNING: OPINIONS INCOMING

I just posted this on another forum, and since i took the time to write it up I figured I might as well share it here as well.

Here goes.

When you were a child, what were you afraid of? The dark? The boogie man? Monsters under your bed? Of course you were, all children are. While your specific fear may have been different, you still feared something. It could be specific, it could be abstract, but it was there. It lurked in shadowy corners, behind shower curtains and under beds. Something was out there, something was after you. Why? What did it want? We didn't know, and it didn't matter. It wanted to "get" us, and that alone was enough to scare us all.

Now, what does this have to do with the Slender Man, you may be wondering?

EVERYTHING.

First of all, what is the Slender Man? I'm sure you all know, but I'll go over the basics anyway. He is depicted as an unnaturally tall, unnaturally thin man in a jet-black suit. His arms are not normal arms, usually replaced by waving tendrils. And he doesn't have a face.

This last detailed has become his most defining trait but is also one of his most overlooked, because there is a reason behind it that most people miss- but that's not really important now.

He stalks children and kidnaps them, and has been known to prey on lost travellers in remote areas.

The character first appeared in a series of photoshopped images made for a 'paranormal photoshops' thread. There were other impressive shops in the thread but the Slender Man quickly eclipsed them in popularity. What did these photographs depict him doing, that could be so shocking? Nothing. Nothing at all. He merely stood in the background while other things were happening in the foreground.

Which is how it should be.

See, this is what made the character so great originally- he didn't do anything, but he was always there. Always waiting, always watching. He was, through and through, the very embodiment of a child's fear. He was the boogieman, he was the monster under your bed. He was the thing that went bump in the night, the creature in the shadows waiting to 'get' you.

His generic, nondescript appearance, utter lack of motivation, and general vagueness of the character made him essentially a blank slate onto which we could project our own fears and insecurities- and it was terrifying.

Unfortunately, what was is not longer what is.

So after the original 'shops, a few other people got in on the action making their own images with the character, and each one was better than the last. Unfortunately, as the library of images grew larger, more people started to notice, and a terrible thing happened- he grew a fandom. And nothing ruins a great story like a terrible fandom...

You ever read fanfiction? It's usually terrible. There are some good fanfics out there, but in general fanfiction is poorly-written and fails to capture the spirit of the franchise on which it is based. Now imagine an entire franchise that consists of nothing but fanfiction... yeah, that's what we're dealing with here.

The issue is, most people don't understand why the Slender Man is scary, so they try to make him scary, which actually works in reverse. They stick him in with insane cults and supernatural phenomena and other 'scary' stuff, and it only hinders him. Someone made a GAME about the character, which features him actively chasing you. Which is not how it's supposed to be. He's supposed to follow without chasing, staying in the background. If you're running from him, that's a problem, because you know were his is (behind you) and what his is doing (chasing you). Suddenly, it's not as scary. You know what the issue is and what to do to solve it (run). Not knowing where, when, what and how is much, much more frightening than anything any writer can come up with, because we will fill in those gaps with whatever we fear the most. The best part of the character was his vagueness, and that is slowly withering as his 'fans' continue to try to define his traits, motivation, abilities etc.

We've now got a split between two extremes, those who take him way, way, way too seriously, and those who can't take him seriously at all anymore. The latter group has reduced what was once one of the scariest things on the internet to a laughingstock, a punchline at the end of an overused joke. Granted, some of the stuff is pretty hilarious, but it still makes me sad that this is what the Slender Man has become... though it's not as bad as the other group, who goes around stabbing their friends because they worship the character as some sort of god.

There's nothing I or any of us can do except hope that the fandom dies and the character either is forgotten or returns to his previous state...

Fandoms. Will they ever learn?

Leave the storytelling to people who actually know what they are doing.