Slender Man’s Face: the Religious Foundation of an Online Mythology
Vivian Asimos
Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture November 30, 2023 DOI: 10.1163/21659214-bja10109 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that the Slender Man's lasting popularity results from community solutions to narrative inconsistency (via apophatic theology) and loss of scare reality (via the Tulpa concept), producing a boundary-crossing mimetic excess. |
Abstract
In 2009, the internet gave birth to a monster. The Slender Man, like many other forms of online storytelling, is a product of mass communal storytelling. What has led to the Slender Man’s unique long-lasting position online is in part due to the way the community initially dealt with the issues which arose in mass communal storytelling. These issues are primarily found in two modes: 1) the inconsistency of the narrative, which is typically related to the creative freedom given to every member of a community, which was solved using apophatic theology; and 2) the reality of the scare, which begins to lose traction when the narrative is online and thus easily searchable, solved through the notion of the Tulpa. Participants play with knowledge and religious conceptions, through which mimetic excess occurs (Taussig, 1993), leading to a crossing of boundaries between reality and fiction.