:INFO
The Slender Man
In June 2009 a user named Victor Surge posted two black and white photographs to the Something Awful forums. Each showed a tall, impossibly thin figure in a dark suit, faceless, watching children from the edge of a wood. Within days other users were building on the story. Within years it had become something harder to explain.


:IMAGE

:JOURNEY
The spread
2 Origin
3 Fandom
4 Mainstream
5 Violence
4 Film
3 Legacy

:QUOTE [quotetype:plain, subtitle:Victor Surge]
We didn't want to go, we didn't want to kill them, but its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at once.


:INFO
From fiction to faith
Victor Surge has said repeatedly that the Slender Man was a creative exercise, not a warning. The Something Awful community treated it as collaborative fiction from the start. What no one predicted was that some young readers, already struggling, would not make that distinction.


:NOTE.half
The stabbing victim survived. One attacker was found not guilty by reason of mental disease. The other was sentenced to 40 years as an adult.
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:NOTE.half
Surge has expressed regret about the harm connected to the character, while maintaining that the original creation was clearly fictional.


:POLL
Can a purely fictional creation become genuinely dangerous?
Yes, belief makes it real enough
No, the fiction itself is blameless
The line was always blurred online
Keep it open

:LINK
https://www.google.com/search?q=Slender+Man+origin+Something+Awful+2009
Read more about the case