Creepypasta Feels Compelled To State That Its Stories Are Fiction & It's Not A Satanic Cult; Thanks Everyone...

from the we're-a-tech-blog,-not-a-crazy-satanic-cult dept

I won't say I told you so, but...you know what, screw it, I told you so. I told you the horror story out of Waukesha, Wisconsin, where two girls attacked a friend, nearly killing her, invoking the name of Slender Man, the creation of one user on internet site Creepypasta, would result in yet another moral panic iteration. Truth be told, it wasn't a difficult prediction to make and I certainly wasn't going out on a limb. This kind of thing is sadly as predictable as the weather in San Diego, but not nearly as pleasant. Already the focus is being cast exactly where it shouldn't, even by police officials.

"This should be a wake-up call for all parents," Russell P. Jack, Waukesha's police chief, said in a statement Monday. "Parents are strongly encouraged to restrict and monitor their children's Internet usage."

That's an absolute joke. Not that I disagree with the Chief's statement, it just has no relevance to this particular case and it casts everyone's eye towards a scary internet when the obvious truth is that there may not be a more clear example of disturbed children than this one. That results in gems of sentiment such as this tweet.

@diannaw1976 - @OfficialCPWikia take this sight down your breeding killers

The internet, specifically Creepypasta, were essentially bystanders to these disturbed young girls. Something was going to set them off and Creepypasta just happened to be the ones this time. Meanwhile, this very loose and stupid talk about taking Creepypasta down entirely has caused the site to put forward this post, including this section of the statement.

ALL WORKS PRESENTED ON THIS WIKI AND OTHER SITES (INCLUDING SLENDERMAN, JEFF THE KILLER, BEN, SONIC.EXE, ETC) ARE FICTIONAL STORIES AND CHARACTERS

There's also this:

We are a literature site, not a crazy satanic cult.

Congratulations, general public and major media outlets, you've brought the rest of us to a place where a website that tells ghost stories has to put out a disclaimer that their stories of the supernatural are fictional. The very fact that this has to be written is the latest indictment on a scapegoat-seeking public that is far more interested in feeling better by blaming an innocent third-party than actually tackling the problem with which they're presented or the reality in which they must endure. Instead of simply confronting real evil, or real mental illness, or real murder and real crime, let's all just heap our outrage onto a website, because the internet is scary and calling for censorship without thinking it through is just so tantalizingly easy.

So way to go, all of you blaming a website for the very real attempted-murder of a child committed by two children. By attacking a site dedicated to ghost tales, you're the horror story now.

Filed Under: creepypasta, fiction, moral panics, murder, slender man, slenderman