OPEN-SOURCING HORROR

Abstract

On 8 June 2009, a member of the online forum Something Awful began a new thread, challenging members to ‘create paranormal images through Photoshop’. For two days forum members created the expected fare: a variety of ghostly or generally creepy images (often adding half-seen spirits into backgrounds of real pictures). On 10 June, the tenor of the forum shifted dramatically, though, when a user posted two ‘photos’ and a news story identifying a faceless ‘Slender Man’ in a suit who stalked children. Almost immediately, an obsessive interest in the Slender Man took over the forum discussions. Near constant additions were added to the Slender Man mythos with new photographs, drawings, short fiction, and even wood cuttings showing his appearance in different times and places. Additionally, the story was made into a web show called Marble Hornets. In many ways, the development of the Slender Man character as an ‘open-sourcing’ of generic horror conventions can be understood. Within this process, the communal construction of the Slender Man sheds light on genre negotiations in online spaces. In what follows, the Open-Sourcing, creation, and negotiation of the Slender Man as an Internet-born horror villain, paying specific attention to final iterations as they have been portrayed in Marble Hornets is discussed. By exploring how specific (yet, anonymous) individuals construct, debug, and de-construct a newly forming horror monster, the ways that generic form is negotiated both through ‘social action’ and pre-established expectations are examined.

Keywords:

• communication studies
• media studies
• social media
• cyberculture

Notes

Marble Hornets is currently on the second season of their web show.

Something Awful is not owned by a corporation. It was founded by Richard Kyanka as a personal web site and has grown into a larger Internet presence, organically.

While it is impossible to determine the real-life sex (and therefore correct pronoun) of an anonymous forum user, I will be referring to Victor Surge with masculine pronouns for the remainder of this paper. This decision is because Victor Surge is a masculine name (and the user obviously identifies himself as masculine through this name).

Although ce gars’ name does not identify himself as masculine nor feminine with his username, the creators of Marble Hornets later identified themselves and are both men, therefore I refer to ce gars using a masculine pronoun.

As a point of comparison, the first episode of The Guild (considered to be one of the most popular web series to date) currently has over five million views on YouTube.

For example, Reagle's previously noted example of Wikipedia being a form of open-source cultural production notably does not have these attributes either. Nonetheless, the spirit of Open Source is still alive in their development process.