I Owe It All to the Slender Man

(If you'll look to your right, you'll see a corkboard on the wall. It's suspiciously empty, for a corkboard. Don't worry; it's gonna fill up fast. At the right edge of the board, which we'll call Point B, I'll pin a photograph of the present. My apartment, my partner, my cat, my job -- my life as it is now. At the left, Point A, I'll pin an illustration of the infamous Slender Man. Yes, that one. Please don't laugh; I wasted a lot of printer ink on this drawing.)

In April of 2023, Vocal hosted the Passing Ships Challenge. I haven't really stopped thinking about it. My entry was called, "The Granola Bar Fairy," and was about a stranger sharing their purse snacks with me when I was a kid in serious need of something to hold me over until lunch. That memory was just one of so many moments I could have chosen to write about. I love that kind of stuff, the little things that end up meaning a lot. This time, rather than "passing ships," I'm going to outline the "butterfly effect" series of events that put me where I am.

On June 10th, 2009, the first ever image of "The Slender Man" debuted on the Something Awful forum in response to a Photoshop competition. Ten days later, two young creative dudes posted the first video in a groundbreaking found-footage web series titled, "Marble Hornets," inspired by the Slender Man image and associated lore. Some time that year, I was at a friend's house, and my friend asked me if I'd seen "Marble Hornets." I hadn't heard of it. My friend tried to describe it to me. What I remember them telling me was that the Slender Man shows up out of the corner of your eye, or standing in places he shouldn't be, such as outside a second-story window. When I went home, I tried giving it a watch.

It scared the pants off me. I think it only took five videos or so before I "noped" out. I love horror, and I always have, but I love it because it affects me so deeply. I was sure that if I continued watching, I would be seeing the Slender Man behind every tree or streetlight in the waking world. Doing the math, I was apparently 17 when "Marble Hornets" premiered. Sitting here, now 33, that feels wrong. I had to have been 10, or 12, or 14. But the numbers don't lie. The Slender Man appeared in 2009, and I graduated high school in 2010.

(Okay, that's the first one done. So, I'm going to take this little ball of red yarn and wrap it around the pushpins as I go. The next page I'm going to pin to the board is a print-out of a YouTube thumbnail for a video titled, "Marble Hornets: Explained - Season One." Yes, I know, this one also ate up a lot of black ink. Just try not to think about that.)

In 2015, a YouTuber who goes by the name Nick Nocturne launched his channel, Night Mind. He kicked it off with a deep dive into the story of "Marble Hornets." It's a story that had a lot of moving parts: the main channel, a second channel seeing uploads from an in-universe character, social media tie-ins, stuff like that. Nick's video seemed like the best way for me to circle back around and find out what all the fuss was about. Clicking on that thumbnail was the moment that the butterfly flapped its wings.

Nick Nocturne is a pleasure to listen to. He's a talented video producer with a voice and narration style that pulls you in. On top of that, he's extremely passionate about the "unfiction" genre, especially horror projects produced by independent creators. As his videos racked up the views, his channel became an avenue for a new audience to join the online horror community.

One of the great things about online horror, be it creepypasta, video web series, or alternate reality games, is accessibility. If you have a phone to record with, a pen to write with, and an Internet connection, you can create a compelling story. These stories bend reality in ways that don't need big budget special effects or a studio. The audience is with you for the experience, and they're not necessarily expecting a polished product. I was, an still am, totally enamored by this DIY brand of storytelling.

And in that community I was about to find my people.

(Up here I'm pinning a print-out of the Discord logo. Thankfully, this is purple ink and incorporates a lot of negative space. Wrapping the yarn around this pin, this board is almost starting to look like something! And then along the bottom here, we're pinning a sheet of paper torn from a wide-ruled notebook with a big letter X on it, drawn in red Sharpie. And this one also gets a strand of yarn connecting it to the Discord logo. Hm? What's the X for? Hold on, we're getting to it.)

I don't clearly remember how I heard about Discord or when I downloaded it. There's this phenomenon experienced by kids (and now adults) who have grown up with the Internet where you and your friends migrate from platform to platform. The moments and reasons for switching don't stand out in memory, but I can associate different people and periods of my life with different instant messaging programs and online forums. So, around the time of discovering this horror community, I entered my Discord era.

The Night Mind Discord server was probably the first that I joined. There, I had the opportunity to listen to Nick chat and collaborate with other creators in our sphere of interest. On one such evening, one of Nick's guests was a guy named David from the Creative Horror Podcast Network. One of the podcasts David hosts is "Undercooked Analysis." The format is that the hosts and their guests take turns reading aloud (back then it was mostly creepypasta, but has since branched out into pulp and listener-submitted stories), they banter, they crack jokes, and they offer thoughtful critique of the writing. That night in the Night Mind server, Nick, David, and the others read a creepypasta called "Ticci Toby." It was barrels of fun, and it was the happiest I had felt in a while.

Why's that? I won't dive too deeply into my previous relationship, but my ex and I were a pretty toxic couple. We were something like six years into our relationship, and spent nearly every moment of every day connected. I didn't really keep friends or go out because I knew he didn't trust me, and I thought I got all the social time I needed from him. Back to the phenomenon of jumping messaging platforms, this is where the end of my Skype era overlapped with the beginning of my Discord days. The key detail here was that my boyfriend wasn't on Discord. Whatever I did and said there was all mine.

After the creepypasta reading, I was sure that these were people I wanted to hang out with. I joined a creative writing server where I could interact with them and other fans of the Creative Horror projects. Slowly, I was rediscovering what it was like to get used to new friends online. Screen names and profile pictures become familiar people with identities and personalities and lives. You start to speak more frequently and find that people don't ignore you. You start to enjoy your time together. I built something of a new safety net with these horror nerds, and my confidence started to re-emerge.

(Please, hold your applause as I dramatically snip the yarn that connects the X to the Discord logo. And yes, these are "the good scissors.")

They helped me leave that toxic relationship and gave me somewhere to start fresh. There was someone a little older and wiser who stayed up late with me to talk out my feelings before, during and after the breakup. There was someone else who took the time to watch a movie with me to help me take my mind off things the night after I said it was over. I felt lost, but not alone.

(Okay. Here's the last picture before we get to the photo of the present day. This is a boat made of chocolate cake. I will not elaborate on this. Just know that it represents my core friend group.)

For a few weeks I went through all the emotions that come with cutting yourself free of a long-term, toxic relationship. I said weird, embarrassing stuff. I posted a lot of selfies. Then one day, one of my favorite nerds over in Sweden decided to tempt fate by letting me in on a secret. One of the other people in the server had a huge crush on me. Max and I started talking more one-on-one. I was still a bit of a mess, and she was pretty nervous, lacking experience in the romantic relationship department. I thought I was looking for a rebound, but when the dust settled, Max was there to catch me at the end of my fall.

Having met online and dated long-distance in true millennial fashion, we decided to stick together. Max graduated college in the middle of the pandemic. Then she moved out here to be with me and our cat, Lily, in August of 2020. We're still very close with our Discord friends. We spend a lot of time in both text and voice chat, we play games, and each October we celebrate all things spooky by watching horror movies every night. We push each other to be creative. And we share lots and lots of cat photos.

When I step back and look at the little moments of connection and weird, niche hobbies that brought me here, I have to smile. It's very silly, but it's completely true: I am who I am today because of the Slender Man.