[watercooler_guy]

I‘ve always been a big fan of creepypastas —- they can be really well done and scary in novel ways. To some extent, I believed some of them to be real when I was a kid.

If creepypastas were “invented” today, would they have made as big of a cultural splash? Or would they get lost in a sea of other content, or be debunked and discarded too quickly?

Edit: I re-read the list and noticed some more recent creations on there, like The Backrooms. Maybe it’s less about believability and more about being a good story, which the Internet is still great at facilitating. So I guess my question is, did anyone else believe some of the earlier creepypastas, and was believability important to the popularity back then?

[bentcorner]

While it wasn't a creepypasta, The Blair Witch Project tried really hard to convince movie-goers that it was found footage and wasn't a scripted movie. I think it was certainly a product of its time and a similar effort today wouldn't be nearly as successful.

[momentoftop]

Here's one crossover: the Blair Witch Project was marketed as an Alternate Reality Game, as were many of the later low budget found-footage horrors. It turns out that the top-of-the-list creepypasta "Slender man", in the form of the "Marble Hornets" youtube series, was mistaken for an ARG by the members of Unfiction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game

[Tao3300]

Not to mention it was a one trick pony. I remember it was great when I saw it with friends in the theater. We rented it later on to see the extra scenes and couldn't get through half of it because of how boring it was.

[sph]

The worst thing about The Blair Witch Project was its viral marketing campaign.

Because as someone that has first seen it just a couple years ago, it's my #1 favourite horror movie bar none. A true masterpiece of the underrated found footage genre.

Few horror movies can truly get under your skin you without ever showing the "monster", so they rely on cheap jumpscares and CGI.

If you've never seen it and want to be unnerved from start to finish, go watch it.

[jlarocco]

I don't know. I worked in the projection booth of a movie theater when that came out. I don't think anybody actually believed it was found footage.

But it was still pretty creepy shutting down for the night after it played.

[nsajko]

Like the 1980 movie Cannibal Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannibal_Holocaust

[pawelduda]

Personally I've been felt a lot more scared by creepypastas (or still images/photos of creepy places, entities or w/e) than horror movies for instance. Especially when it comes to images - some have such unnerving vibe to them that I find it fascinating (smile.jpg anyone?).

I was always skeptical (aka treated it as fantasy) of supernatural things these stories are about, but I think the mere fact of getting engaged into reading them and using your imagination (suspending the disbelief) was enough.

[bitwize]

Most horror movies are meh, but one... Lights Out (2013) was a horror film that genuinely terrified me. It's only a few minutes long, but it's more frightening than the jumpscare-laden slasher movies of the era ever could be. It's phenomenally subtle in its setup, showing how the slightest thing "off" in the dark can portend unimaginable horror. Check it out: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lykiTPUbtgs

[david_allison]

David Sandberg has the HD version uploaded to his channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUQhNGEu2KA

[bloaf]

In that same vein, I really like the Alan Tutorial channel on youtube. Starts off as slightly off comedy, and subtly builds to horror.

[permo-w]

I hadn't seen smile.jpg before, but after googling, you are right, it is truly a haunting image. I wonder what makes it so creepy? what subconscious fear instinct makes that image so much more haunting than a normal picture of a dog?

[Banana699]

If you hadn't already seen it, check out Vsauce's "Why Are Things Creepy" on youtube.

Be advised that the thumbnail of the video is creepy though.

[wsinks]

Ha - how about "Bloody Mary"? I was 8 and that story scared the shit out of me. I love reading creepypastas, and when I was younger, I never knew if they were real or not. It was part of learning how to trust information. They always had enough of a disturbance in the story that made me feel odd.

I JUST saw The Backrooms (the one where she puts the tape measure down the portal) and... holy shit. This is the same level of odd feeling. I can only imagine what sort of VR stuff is out there... That Black Mirror episode has me wondering if I'll actually do something like that.

I think it's also the same sort of thing as the innocuous conspiracy theories I've seen like "Did you know that Spongebob characters are based on the seven deadly sins?" Could be true, you'll never be able to fully verify it unless you know the person who made the content, and ... sounds good and seems to hold up. Why would you want to dispel the theory even if it is untrue? It's kinda fun.

[jim-jim-jim]

> The Backrooms

Reminded me of a micro meme towards the end of the previous previous decade: The Mandrill Maze. It surfaced during an inbetween stage in my life and was an unpleasant obsession for a while. Featured in many dreams.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=sMc4Lcxmmso

The footage itself is older still.

I don't think any inhabitants are necessary for settings like this.

[actually_a_dog]

Not exactly creepypasta, but I do believe the SCP Foundation would make a cultural splash if it were invented today: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-series

[Sebb767]

It might be my bubble, but it feels like SCPs are quite known in the internet culture. I've seen surprisingly many references on HN alone, for example.

[chasd00]

Hah! My 10 year old knows every single one of those things, their rating, and the complete history of the scp foundation. It’s a pretty complex story.

[bitwize]

I don't think believability as in fooling you into thinking the events were real are as important as verisimilitude, the feeling that it could happen.

An example: In the late 90s, back in the days of pervasive browser pop-ups, there was a Japanese creepypasta-equivalent called "The Red Room", about a browser pop-up that read "Do you like the red room?" Ignoring or closing the pop-up was said to seal your doom. The most popular form of this story took the form of a Flash animation which depicted a boy who saw the popup appear on his computer.

As a finale, after showing the boy meeting his grisly fate, the Flash site caused the popup to appear on your computer.

Not really believable when you think about it. But scary, because it gets you into a headspace of the fictional universe and then breaks the fourth wall, giving you a fleeting feeling that the Red Room curse is real.

I think if creepypasta didn't exist we would have to invent it. It's part of a horror tradition that encompasses Poe and Lovecraft, and even before. Creepypasta comes from the same place as primordial ghost stories told around a campfire, just with updated media and sensibilities.

[permo-w]

"red room" seems to be a recurring term in creepy stories. I can only specifically recall this and those dark-web stories you hear on clickbait youtube channels, but I feel I've heard it in other creepy/negatively-emoted settings too

[bitwize]

H.G. Wells wrote of a red room as well in a "creepypasta" of his own: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Room_(short_story)

[Apocryphon]

Creepypastas are just myth and legend, which humanity will always have. Amusingly, the sci-fi pen-and-paper RPG setting GURPS Transhuman Space had an entire supplement (published in 2004) with a large section of urban legends of the future, some of which might have already come to pass.

http://www.sjgames.com/transhuman/toxicmemes/

~~~

An example:

Patterns in the Static

Have fun. ;-) – The only explanation added to the Patterns document

At precisely 01:18:00 hours on November 23rd, 2093, an anonymous poster to the CyberMysticism memenet uploaded a file with a size of 2,800,051,338 bytes titled “Patterns in the Static.”The file was heavily encrypted, and as none of the memenet regulars had a quantum computer with which it could be decoded, few paid this file any attention . . . at first. After some time, however, rumors began to spread about people who managed to decrypt it, and what they found. No member admitted to having read the unencrypted file himself, but there were numerous reports from a “friend of a friend” who gained the key from a “mysterious source” and was able to read it. Accounts varied wildly about its contents – top-secret CIA files, designs for a machine to extract energy from the vacuum, communications with aliens, or magic spells that bind and command infomorphs as the shamans of the past were said to command spirits. Soon, variants of the file started to turn up,both encrypted and unencrypted. Most of these were rap-idly identified as forgeries.

The general public became aware of the “Patterns in the Static” file in 2099, when Peter Budenhaus’ critically acclaimed slinky of the same name was released. Since then, several wealthy individuals have announced plans to buy time on a quantum computer to decrypt the file, and they hope to announce the results soon.

[... the rest of the urban legend, where Budenhaus reveals that he had created the hoax, and then someone else in the network accuses that claim of being a hoax]

~~~

Okay, perhaps that's less of a creepypasta than a prediction of Qanon and similar internet conspiracy subcultures. (The entry after "Patterns in the Static" is "Rigged Elections.") But they're all forms of modern occultism, after all.