The Face of the Slender Man

Abstract

This chapter tells the origin story of the Slender Man as he was created by Eric Knudsen (under the pseudonym “Victor Surge”) and developed by users on the humor forum Something Awful. The chapter then further describes early variations that came in the form of the web series Marble Hornets, TribeTwelve, and Everyman HYBRID. Drawing from forms unique to new media—alternate reality games, memes, viral and spreadable media—the early Slender Man stories built on the expectations of transmedia storytelling to yield something that was different from digital stories that preceded it. An examination of these formative Slender Man texts not only observes the early Slender Man mythos taking shape, but also identifies the malleability of the character as it passed through multiple creative hands.