The last entry uploaded to Marble Hornets’ YouTube channel in 2014 totaled 87 videos with nearly 460,000 channel subscribers and an average of 500,000 views per video. The Marble Hornets’ series blurs the lines between folklore and reality all while inducing fear through an audio-visual narrative. This massive influx of public viewers can be credited to the Youtube platform, which allows viewers to share, follow, and engage in a “first-hand” experience. Slender Man was brought into the “greater public consciousness” by pairing a unique film style with a widely accessible platform. The YouTube video captures Slender Man as it physically and psychologically tortures a teen boy. Within two weeks of the photographs original posting date, a Youtube video titled “Entry 1, Marble Hornets” provided a larger Internet audience with film “documentation” of Slender Man– notably similar to Blair Witch Project videography. But, as it would seem, fiction is complex within the digital age.
Let’s point out that these are fictional encounters, created for the sake of entertainment by and for Something Awful forum users. Users shared their personal encounters with the faceless man by uploading written narratives, photographs, and sketches. Over the next few days, the forum saw growing engagement. Was it the swarm of children caught expressionless on a playground? Or had it been the tall, faceless man standing just a few feet away from ignorant children. There was something unsettling about the images. In 2009, a bizarre set of photographs caught the attention of many Something Awful users.
One of Knudsen’s two original “photos” of Slender Man, seen in the background (left) beside a group of children. Eric Knudsen / DeviantART
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