I got into the Slender man game a year ago from friends who played it during a convention. At the time, I had no idea who was 'Slender' nor did I know anything regarding the game. After the convention, I asked my friend what was the game about, he told me it involved your character (a young child, early teens) lost in the woods and the only way to survive was to locate 8 mysterious paper notes avoiding the Slender man at all cost. If Slender catches you, you evidently get harmed by him, either way, the game restarts from the begining.
So I asked, if he's a ghost, a psycho, or simply a figment of the characters imagination? My friend replied saying it's just a man with no face, in a gark grey suit & tie with long arms. And I tought to myself, that isn't as scary as it sounds yet loads of people fear him.
So I wondered and asked my self, what was so horrifying about Slender? What makes him so fearful?
Months past since the convention and I decided to play the Slender game (since those past months game reviews and threads of the Slender had become rather popular).
I found 4 notes before confronting the Slender man, a tall, tin tree-like figure with long arms and white-faceless head. I died evedently, but I understood why the game was so scary, yet simply constructed. The game touches us so deeply of our fear of getting lost, not knowing how to get out in a dark vast space of land.
After New Years, I decided to create a project simply titled "The Slender Project" finding out further information regarding the origins of the game. Then I came accross a blog intitled Alternate Reality Game on Google search. In it, it indicated the origins of the game in which it specifies that it came from the small YouTube entry compilation simple titled MarbleHornets. The entry via YouTube has become a critical piece in the production of Slender; in the entries, the character Alex films his day-to-day encounters with the stalking figure they call "The Operator". Alex then gives the films to his friend Jay who then compiles it and posts it online. He then never here's from his friend Alex again, however, he begins his own investigation to find Alex and figure out this stalking figure.
The entry ends there but the myth begins, soon after the entries become viral amateur documentaries and unexplained figures in photo's appear online.
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| 1950's British Commercial postal card |
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| 1990 alleged Slender man sighting. |
Now which begs another question, is it valid. I always believed that seeing-is-believing, unless I see the Slender with both my eyes, I wont believe it. In a day and age where anything online can be fabricated, it's difficult to believe anything you watch and read. But what if there is a deeper meaning to "Slender". What if society has just given a name to common fears we already have had through out the ages, common fears that we know exsist.
In my opinon, Slender is a compilation of common fears such as the fear of being stalked or being watched, the fear of strangers in public, the fear of pedophiles, child molesters & rapist, all combined and manifested into one monsterous creature which we named, Slender. Is Slender man scary, yes. Is he real, Yes and No. The tall, faceless, grey suited, long-armed man may not exsist in reality, but he exsist in society.
The Indian teen rape case of 2012-2013, the case of Jack the Ripper (infamous stalker of the turn of the century), the case of Jerry Sandusky (convicted child molester in 2012)... All common fears in reality, all that has happened over the years. That is where Slender comes from in my perspective, and that is why he exsists in our society today. He is Sandusky, he is Ripper and he is the men accused in the rape trail. We don't know who they are, but they are out there.
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| Captured on my digital camera on a trip to Baguio, 2009 |
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