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I'm still just creating more food waste

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0:34

and I can just toss the scraps in as

0:36

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0:38

it's really quiet when it runs, I often just let

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it run overnight and by the morning I've got some

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nutrient-rich dirt I can use for my plants. And

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even if I didn't need to use the dirt, using Elomi

0:48

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If you want to start making a positive environmental

0:58

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1:00

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1:30

For those who enjoy great stories and the

1:32

meaning behind them, which I'm pretty sure is you

1:34

considering you're listening to this podcast, I

1:36

think you'll really enjoy this show distributed by

1:38

Realm, Digital Folklore.

1:40

Digital Folklore is an immersive sound

1:42

design show that uses storytelling,

1:45

voice acting, interviews and scripted narrative

1:47

to analyze various expressions of internet

1:50

culture through the lens of academic folklore.

1:52

From the monsters to memes and everything

1:55

in between, the Digital Folklore podcast

1:57

is an accessible and entertaining way to learn about

2:00

folklore, concepts, and societal truths.

2:02

So to learn more about how our online expressions

2:05

and culture from scary stories to cat

2:07

memes are folklore, you can head over

2:09

to Digital Folklore, available

2:11

wherever you get your podcasts. But you don't have

2:13

to go anywhere just yet. We have an episode for

2:16

you to listen to right now. So just sit back

2:18

and enjoy.

2:22

On June 8th, 2009, a

2:25

new kind of internet monster was born.

2:28

This monster's name was Slender

2:31

Man. And to this day, academics

2:33

and internet culture experts mentioned

2:36

Slender Man as one of the most important

2:38

figures of modern folklore.

2:40

There are a lot of good reasons for that, and

2:42

we'll touch on some of them today. From the concepts

2:45

of Ostension and Monster Theory to

2:47

why we as a society love

2:50

scary stories, and how Slender

2:52

Man and another digital monster

2:55

by the name of Momo found themselves

2:57

at the center of moral panics. Today's

3:00

episode touches on the topics of violence,

3:02

self-harm, and mental health. Listener

3:04

discretion is advised. Hi, I'm

3:06

Perry Carpenter. And I'm Mason Amadeus.

3:09

And this is

3:10

the Digital Folklore Podcast.

3:14

The fairy tale flies. The

3:17

legend walks, knocks

3:20

at your door. The

3:22

one can draw freely out of the

3:24

fullness of poetry. The other

3:27

has almost the authority

3:29

of history. Jacob Grimm,

3:32

Teutonic Mythology, 1844. Welcome,

3:36

you've

3:38

got it. I

3:42

just want to talk about manifestations really quickly.

3:44

Manifestation. I just manifested a million

3:47

likes. Find out what you want to manifest in your life. How

3:49

to manifest a car. How I instantly manifest

3:51

certain outcomes. Manifested practically my whole

3:53

life.

3:54

Three words not to use when you're manifesting. Manifest

3:56

the right way. How to manifest anything in 24 hours.

3:59

I literally manifested. Manifest something overnight. Manifest

4:01

anything in four minutes. This might sound crazy, but

4:04

you need gaslight yourself into getting what you want. Manifestation.

4:10

Making something real. Causing

4:12

something to come into being

4:14

purely through the power of thinking

4:16

about it. Repeatedly and

4:19

often.

4:20

Influencers from Oprah to some

4:22

guy that you just saw in a backwards

4:24

hat talking about it on TikTok.

4:26

Evangelize the power of manifesting

4:29

the things that you want. Focus

4:32

enough of your thoughts on something and

4:34

it becomes real. There's

4:38

a concept in folklore. It's

4:41

called Ostension. And

4:43

it describes something very

4:45

much like this. How

4:48

the stories we tell push

4:50

into

4:50

the real world. It's

4:53

like the idea of manifestation.

4:56

It is a building of a bridge between

4:58

our imaginations and

5:00

the physical world. But

5:03

what about when manifestation

5:06

actually happens? What

5:09

about when we bring things into existence

5:12

that we never really wanted

5:14

to exist? And something

5:17

horrible manages to cross

5:19

the bridge.

5:20

And

5:25

we had to go to the woods to do this. Well,

5:28

yeah. The woods, the

5:31

forest, they're central

5:33

to so many folkloric tales

5:36

and concepts. So I figured

5:38

it would be good to go straight to the

5:40

source. In a way, what we're

5:43

doing right now is a kind

5:45

of Ostension. Because

5:48

what Ostension really is, is just

5:50

taking action in the physical world

5:53

because of something that started out as folklore

5:55

or legend. And

5:57

here we are walking through the woods.

5:59

the woods because the woods

6:02

represent folklore. You

6:05

are the one who kept insisting we

6:07

put immersive in the show description.

6:10

Oh, cool. Yeah, it's my fault. Yeah, it's

6:12

your fault. But hey, you know, at

6:14

least as we look around, it's not

6:16

a bad night. Yeah, it was an even better day,

6:19

Perry. We could have been here before it got dark, man. Immersion.

6:24

Mosquitoes. I'm,

6:27

I'm serious though. The woods

6:29

represent in so many

6:32

ways the unknown. It's

6:34

there. They're scary places where

6:36

predators could be lurking, unseen

6:39

in the shadows. I mean, I don't

6:41

think I need to give a lot of examples

6:44

off the top of your head. You could probably name

6:46

a dozen fairy tales or scary

6:48

stories that involve the woods. Yeah, but

6:50

that's like a very literal interpretation

6:53

of the fear. That's like,

6:55

got it. Sorry. The description

6:58

feels very surface level.

6:59

Most of the time when we tell stories,

7:02

whether or not we consciously realize it, we

7:05

use places like this in metaphorical

7:07

ways to represent other things like

7:09

Chelsea from American hysteria said when

7:11

we talked to them about this.

7:13

It's a metaphor for

7:15

like the chaos. I think that we want

7:17

to repress and repress and

7:19

repress and repress, which includes

7:22

our societal others. So I

7:24

think the woods just is like

7:27

the Jungian shadow in a way

7:29

where you don't know what's going to happen in there.

7:32

You shouldn't go in there. Internet

7:34

is the new woods and Slender Man

7:36

is that boogie man in the woods.

7:39

June 8th, 2009. A

7:43

single post on Something

7:45

Awful, a comedy website with

7:47

a thriving forum community, would

7:50

directly plant the seed. Having

7:52

paranormal images has been a hobby of mine

7:55

for quite some time. Occasionally

7:57

I've stumbled upon odd websites that

7:59

show

7:59

showcase strange photos, and

8:02

I've always wondered if I can get one of my shots

8:05

on a book, a documentary, or a website

8:08

just by casually leaking it out

8:10

onto the internet. User georgyrejigig

8:12

put out a call, a very direct

8:15

request, for people on the forums

8:17

to invent new paranormal

8:20

photographs. Before I export

8:22

the file, I like to open my levels

8:24

and slide my black and white inward

8:27

to lose the true white or the true

8:29

black.

8:29

I think it makes it look a little bit more

8:32

legit, you know what I mean? Two days

8:34

pass. Many people contribute

8:37

their grainy photoshops and spooky

8:39

captions to the thread. Then

8:42

on June 10th. We didn't want to go.

8:44

We didn't want to kill them. But

8:47

it's persistent silence and outstretched

8:49

arms horrified and comforted us at

8:51

the same time. In 1983,

8:54

photographer Unknown presumed dead.

8:56

A user by the name of Victor

8:59

Serge uploaded a blurry

9:01

photograph, a group of teenagers

9:03

walking outdoors, behind

9:05

them, barely visible in the contrast.

9:09

An unnaturally tall, distorted,

9:12

white-faced figure. And

9:15

another. One of two recovered photographs

9:17

from the Sterling City Library blaze.

9:20

Notable for being taken the day which 14 children

9:23

vanished,

9:23

and for what is referred to as the Slender

9:26

Man, deformities cited as

9:28

film defects by officials.

9:30

Fire at library occurred one week later.

9:33

Actual photograph confiscated as evidence.

9:36

This second photo bore an official-looking

9:38

seal reading, City of Sterling

9:41

Libraries, Local Studies Collection.

9:44

In the foreground of the photo, children

9:47

playing on a slide and lurking

9:49

in the background, the

9:52

same distorted, lanky,

9:54

blank-faced figure behind

9:57

another group of children.

9:59

1986 photographer Mary Thomas

10:02

missing since June 13th Victor

10:08

Surges posts almost immediately

10:10

took over the entire thread other

10:13

users began contributing to the lore

10:15

of the Slender Man posting images

10:18

firsthand encounters and

10:21

Speculating on the origin and the powers

10:23

of the Slender Man While the original

10:26

intent of the post was indeed to create

10:28

fake paranormal

10:29

images with the hope of spreading

10:32

them online Nobody present

10:34

that day could have predicted just

10:37

how far this one would

10:39

go Stories

10:42

YouTube series movies

10:44

YouTube series turned into a movie

10:47

video games artwork Slender

10:49

Man transcended all forms of

10:52

media and continues to this

10:54

day just this year in 2022 a

10:58

remake of the original

10:59

Slender Man video game was released

11:03

Why Slender Man? What about

11:05

this specific character so thoroughly?

11:08

enraptured our collective minds

11:11

and what is the tipping point at

11:14

which something like the Slender

11:16

Man evolves from

11:18

a momentary Fascination to

11:20

being embedded in the fabric

11:23

of modern folklore

11:31

There was something about 2009 even

11:34

if you had every single element the same

11:36

Except for the timing and you tried to do it now I

11:39

don't know if it would really work

11:40

that is dr. Vivian a CMOS

11:43

She has a PhD in anthropology of

11:45

religion with a focus on digital storytelling

11:47

and internet mythology

11:49

The original post by I'm gonna use

11:51

his username which is Victor surge Allowed

11:53

for a lot of fill-in-the-blanks, which is always

11:56

what the best kind of those paranormal e

11:58

photos do but

11:59

the posts that followed it were also

12:02

so good. There was somebody that edited

12:04

a German woodcut to look

12:07

like the Slender Man. It's not just

12:09

Victor Serge, but everyone's creativity that

12:11

really fed into it. What makes the

12:13

mythos is the alterations in

12:16

the agency of the storytellers.

12:17

It would turn out that those

12:20

gaps in the story are a large

12:22

part of what made Slender Man spread

12:25

so widely.

12:25

There's room for you to kind of

12:28

fill in some gaps, right? It starts as this

12:30

image, and then there's the opportunity to

12:32

really build the world of Slender Man

12:34

and decide what you think it should be.

12:36

That's Amory Seavardson.

12:38

She's one of the hosts of the Endless Thread podcast

12:41

from WBUR.

12:42

Victor Serge just created the image.

12:45

Then you have the Marble Hornets internet series

12:47

that imposes all of these other Slender

12:49

Man characteristics. Then you have these

12:51

girls in Waukesha, Wisconsin, who say

12:53

that this Slender Man figure is summoning

12:55

them to do his bidding. So it

12:57

really is the mimetic nature of it to

13:00

me that

13:00

was the most interesting. I felt similarly

13:03

to Amory, but maybe in a less

13:05

articulate way. And that's Ben Brock Johnson,

13:08

the other host of Endless Thread. What's weird

13:10

about that story to me is that

13:12

in some ways, it's not as compelling

13:15

to me as a scary story

13:17

because it's so confused.

13:21

It's not one story. It's like a story

13:23

with six different heads on it, and it just

13:25

really took off and could never really die.

13:28

Something about that was both interesting

13:30

to me,

13:30

but also made it less scary in a way

13:32

because it almost, it got so silly.

13:37

I mean, he's right though. Like I remember when Slender

13:40

Man was catching on. I did play the video

13:42

game, Slender the Eight Pages when that came

13:44

out in 2012. And I remember seeing all

13:46

these art and posts and memes about

13:48

him, but it was so all over the

13:50

place and obviously not real that it never

13:52

felt compellingly scary. Yeah,

13:55

I mean, at the time it was coming out,

13:57

I remember thinking it was just...

13:59

Just this lame thing my kids were

14:02

talking about. I never heard

14:04

anything about Marble Hornets or anything

14:06

like that. Yeah, I know. I would have thought Marble

14:08

Hornets was something you'd buy on Etsy. Right.

14:12

But I think it's worth talking about Marble

14:14

Hornets for just a minute though, because

14:17

it was easily one of the biggest Slender Man lore

14:19

building machines of its time. There's

14:21

absolutely no way that we could cover it all though.

14:23

It was like 130 something episodes long. In

14:26

a nutshell, it was this YouTube series that

14:28

ran from June of 2009 to June of 2014. And

14:33

there's all this lore that sprung up around

14:35

it. That's where we get this idea of

14:38

static encompassing any kind of audio

14:40

when he's around. People starting to cough

14:43

from Slender sickness and

14:45

those other little bits that have

14:47

really solidified themselves in the way that people

14:49

think about what is considered

14:51

established lore for Slender Man. And the

14:53

whole Marble Hornets thing still leaned

14:55

more into the spookiness of Slender Man.

14:58

To Ben's point from earlier, there were also

14:59

things like the Trender Man, which was

15:02

basically like a hipster Slender Man with a scarf.

15:04

There was also the Splender Man who was

15:06

this sparkly, grinning, top hat-wearing,

15:09

rainbow-emitting parody of Slender

15:11

Man. He was also in My Little Pony. There was

15:13

a Slender Man in My Little Pony. Oh right.

15:16

Yep. Yep. Anyway, some of

15:18

the more absurd evolutions of the Slender

15:20

Man do make him less scary.

15:23

But it's that very nature of having those

15:25

holes in the plot, those spaces in which anyone

15:27

can freely invent new facets of the lore

15:29

that has kind of given Slender Man

15:32

immortality. One of the hallmarks of folklore

15:34

is that there is no authoritative

15:37

version, no centralized, defined

15:39

canon. You know, I think my favorite piece of

15:41

the Slender Man lore is a bit that directly

15:43

addresses that changing nature. It's

15:46

called the T- Ooh. Hold on. I brought

15:48

a flashlight for this exact reason.

15:51

Oh my god. Okay. It's

15:53

called the Tulpa

15:55

Theory.

15:57

How do you keep the fear

15:59

of a- monster that you're actively creating.

16:02

They threw out this idea of a tulpa, which is

16:04

from theosophy, which is a kind

16:06

of new religious movement. The way that theosophy

16:09

took tulpas was that it was a thought

16:12

form that you could physically bring into

16:14

being through the power of your thought. Somebody

16:18

with extreme intellectual

16:21

religious knowledge knew about

16:23

this thing in 2009 on these forums and said,

16:27

well, have you ever heard of a tulpa? And

16:29

throws out this idea and everyone latches

16:32

onto it, oh, this is great, because basically the idea

16:34

is now I can keep feeding the

16:36

story and the fear now

16:38

is that I'm feeding the tulpa.

16:41

The introduction of the tulpa idea

16:43

was brilliant. The tulpa theory

16:45

is essentially giving this metaphorical

16:49

body, not to the slender man

16:51

himself, but to all of the attention

16:53

and creative energy surrounding him.

16:56

If the slender man is really a tulpa that

16:59

subsists and grows off of the attention

17:01

that it is given, then the mere

17:03

act of discussion is a contribution

17:06

to the monster. It's like a metaphor

17:09

for folkloric process at large.

17:11

It's like the concept of ostension

17:14

given a body to inhabit. The

17:16

energy that we spend discussing it,

17:19

even right now, goes

17:21

straight into making it more powerful.

17:24

Why do we gather around and tell each

17:26

other scary stories? Why

17:29

would an internet community put so much effort

17:31

into trying to keep something scary?

17:34

And why would we, as human beings trying

17:37

to survive,

17:38

want to maintain the horror?

17:40

Why do we engage with these kinds of stories at

17:43

all? I

17:46

guess I kind of like to be scared

17:49

in a way that I know I'm not in danger.

17:51

That new voice on the podcast is Quincy

17:53

Walters. Quincy is a podcast producer

17:56

at WBUR and he produced the Endless

17:58

Thread episode about Slender Man.

17:59

And oh yeah, Quincy is an avid

18:02

fan of horror and scary stories.

18:04

By listening to a horror podcast, it's

18:07

really easy to get into that, where

18:10

Ben will make fun of me for saying that

18:12

I listen to these while I'm

18:14

in bed, hoping

18:17

that they feed enough material

18:19

for a nightmare, which they usually don't.

18:22

I feel like I don't.

18:25

I'm impressed. I don't want to

18:27

make fun of you. It's incredible that you

18:29

have the guts to do this. Meanwhile,

18:32

I'm over here taking CBD gum. He's trying

18:34

to like, keep the nightmares

18:36

at bay. I mean, it is

18:39

kind of like, you know, thrilling to wake

18:41

up in the middle of the night and you hear

18:43

somebody say, you know, and

18:45

he creeps through the house and

18:48

nobody is aware. Oh my God. And soon

18:50

your blood runs cold. You know, I feel

18:52

like, you know, that's kind of. This

18:54

is why Quincy is so much fun to work with. I

18:57

know. You

18:59

know, even as a kid, like I'm realizing

19:01

that I enjoyed watching

19:03

Goosebumps and Are You Afraid

19:05

of the Dark and even graduated to Tales

19:07

from the Crypt before maybe I should

19:10

have. This is making me realize like, I don't like

19:12

scary movies, but I love scary

19:14

stories. I'm a real like worst

19:16

case scenario thinker. I like to at least

19:18

acknowledge that bad things do happen

19:21

and can happen in the world.

19:23

To me, a good scary story is kind of

19:25

a way to tip your hat at

19:27

all of the actual evil and bad

19:29

stuff that happens without allowing yourself

19:32

to get lost in it

19:34

or become so obsessed with it that it

19:36

starts to take a toll on you.

19:39

Neil Gaiman put it well, saying that scary

19:42

stories and nightmares let us confront

19:45

our deepest fears and problems

19:47

in safe ways with the purpose

19:49

and goal of overcoming them. At

19:52

the risk of fueling the tulpa further,

19:54

I think it's worth taking a deeper look at

19:56

what Slender Man specifically is. One

19:59

of the other

19:59

interesting things we learned from Dr. Vivian

20:02

Essimos was the concept of

20:04

monster theory. Jeffrey

20:07

Cohen was one of the very first people

20:09

to, I think, coin the idea of monster theory,

20:12

which is the kind of main primary

20:14

ways that you can understand analytically

20:17

what a monster is. And a lot of them can

20:19

kind of fade between each other as far

20:21

as the different definitions or theses

20:23

go. But the one in particular that

20:26

I am always drawn to is the monster that is a

20:29

harbinger of categorical crisis. Basically,

20:33

monsters as hybrids. There's

20:35

a thought in anthropology that

20:37

we categorize our world

20:40

as we start to interact with it, and these categories

20:42

are very social or culturally based.

20:45

And what the monster does is it says, actually,

20:47

your cultural categories are broken. And that's

20:50

really fascinating for me because that really gets

20:52

into the heart of what a society or a culture

20:55

sees as important or sees as

20:58

necessary for protection. A good example

21:00

of this is just the vampire breaking the

21:02

categories between living and dead. The

21:04

storytelling mechanic of the Slender

21:06

Man, pretending it as if

21:09

real, you're playing with that break

21:11

of basically the category between reality

21:14

and fiction.

21:15

So we have Slender Man transgressing

21:17

our categories of reality and fiction.

21:20

And to play in that particular space invites

21:23

questions around belief. Not

21:25

necessarily

21:26

does anyone actually believe

21:29

in Slender Man, but questions

21:31

around how we perform belief and

21:33

how we interact with fiction that

21:36

is presented as if real.

21:38

In our discussion with Vivian, I posed a question

21:41

about suspension of disbelief and

21:43

her response fundamentally changed the

21:45

way I think. I

21:46

honestly don't like the idea

21:48

of suspension of disbelief because I don't

21:50

think that's how we work. I think we

21:53

start with a willingness to believe we start

21:55

full in.

21:55

And she's absolutely right. We're

21:58

all on some level willing to engage

22:00

wanting to be pulled in. We can kind of talk

22:02

about belief as being this ultimate end-all

22:05

be-all of, well, this person believed or this person doesn't

22:07

believe. That's not really important. What's important

22:09

is the story and the way that people find

22:11

import in a story.

22:13

It does not matter how much

22:15

we believe in the truth of a monster

22:18

or a scary story. The point isn't

22:20

to become a true believer or a servant

22:23

of that fictional thing, because when that

22:25

happens, it rarely leads

22:27

to good outcomes. If you're familiar with

22:29

the story of Slender Man, you're probably thinking

22:32

that we've skipped a pretty big facet of this story.

22:34

12-year-old Morgan Geyser and Anissa

22:37

Weier are accused of attempted murder

22:39

of their 12-year-old friend when police say

22:41

they lured her into the woods and stabbed

22:43

her 19 times. According

22:45

to court documents, the two plotted to kill

22:47

their friend to please Slender Man,

22:50

a demon-like fictional character on the horror

22:53

site Creepypasta. The

22:55

unfortunate and tragic aspects of Ostensian

22:57

from Waukesha, Wisconsin in 2014.

23:00

And honestly, we struggled

23:03

a lot with how to discuss this part of the

23:05

story, because

23:07

it's complicated. It's

23:10

tragic, and those events

23:13

have caused immense pain that

23:15

is still felt today. In 2014,

23:20

two little girls in Waukesha, Wisconsin

23:22

stabbed their friend 19 times, ostensibly

23:26

to honor Slender Man.

23:28

This is Kathleen Hale. She's

23:30

the author of a new book about the Slender Man stabbings

23:32

in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Slender Man,

23:35

online obsession, mental illness, and

23:37

the violent crime of two Midwestern girls.

23:40

The book provides a more empathetic look

23:42

into everything that led up to that horrific event,

23:44

and places it into a context that provides

23:47

some nuance that often gets lost in the

23:49

way we've heard the story through the media.

23:51

It's the first full account of the

23:53

crime, and it dispels a lot of

23:55

myths surrounding the case,

23:57

because I spent so much time talking to more. Morgan,

24:01

the book is really told through

24:03

the lens of her experience with

24:06

early onset childhood schizophrenia,

24:08

which is the rarest

24:09

form of schizophrenia. If we take a step

24:11

back and learn about Morgan before the stabbings,

24:14

we can see a much clearer picture of how

24:16

the involvement of Slenderman was nothing

24:19

more than an unfortunate coincidence.

24:21

Morgan had

24:23

been having hallucinations of some

24:25

kind or another, auditory or visual, since

24:27

the age of three. A lot

24:29

of times when you hear people talk about schizophrenia,

24:31

they're talking about command hallucinations.

24:34

You know, the stereotype is like Satan is screaming

24:36

in your head to go do something bad and

24:38

that is not the kind of form that

24:40

her schizophrenia took. All of her

24:43

hallucinations were very friendly. They were supportive

24:46

of positive behavior. But when she was about

24:48

five, she had this hallucination

24:51

that sort of anecdotally is common,

24:53

which is that she would look in the mirror

24:55

and she would see standing behind her this

24:57

very tall, gangly figure. This

25:00

was seven years before she found

25:02

Slenderman. The hallucination only appeared

25:04

to her in the mirror for a short amount of time and

25:07

then it was gone. But she remembered it forever

25:09

and it was very scary. Years later,

25:12

when she was 11, Anissa Weier,

25:14

Morgan's neighbor, introduced her to

25:16

creepypasta.com. Morgan quickly

25:18

found Slenderman and she said, oh my

25:21

God, that's the thing that

25:23

was standing behind me when I was five.

25:25

It wasn't as if she went online

25:28

suddenly at the age of 11, 12 and was

25:32

hypnotized by, you know, the

25:34

internet into doing this. It just so

25:36

happened that this figure

25:38

reminded her of something that she had seen earlier

25:41

in her life because of the mental illness that she

25:43

did have.

25:43

And aside from there being obvious

25:45

warning signs that were either dismissed or

25:47

went unnoticed, it's not as though Morgan

25:49

would have had many places to turn for

25:51

help. Unfortunately, our largest

25:54

mental health care system has become our prison

25:56

system. So a lot of people don't

25:58

receive the mental health care.

25:59

that they needed from the beginning until they

26:02

commit a crime out of fear, confusion,

26:04

paranoia, delusion. You know, Morgan

26:06

Geyser, she was diagnosed post arrest

26:09

and she did not receive medication for 19 months

26:12

because of a number of things, because of how the adult

26:14

judicial system is set up and they were charged

26:17

as adults. They were not charged as children even

26:19

though Morgan had just turned 12. And

26:21

so during that entire time she was in a state of

26:23

psychosis, the conditions of

26:25

the jail where she was awaiting trial, those

26:28

exacerbated

26:29

her psychosis and she lost

26:32

the ability to read and do basic

26:34

math. And I was just shocked by

26:36

the fact that no one cared

26:38

and it was not being talked about

26:41

when the case was being talked about. It is

26:43

so desperately hard for us to

26:45

face and address these massive systemic

26:48

issues that we have.

26:49

It's a lot easier for us to create a boogeyman

26:51

that provides an easy solution. Slenderman

26:54

is the least scary thing about this

26:56

case. We have a really, really

26:59

long history of

27:01

blaming child on child violence on

27:04

whatever the new media is at the time. So

27:06

with Columbine, the new media was

27:08

violent video games, but it goes back

27:10

and back and back. I mean, even Leopold and Loeb, which

27:12

was 1924, that was called the

27:15

crime of the century at the time. It was these two

27:18

teenage boys who killed a 12-year-old boy,

27:20

that was blamed on detective novels,

27:23

which weren't new. So it's like, we'll do whatever

27:25

we can, we will bend over backwards to

27:28

avoid talking about mental illness.

27:31

As we're about to learn, moral panics

27:33

are almost always a way to hide

27:36

our true problems behind a scapegoat.

27:39

Just in case you're not familiar with the specifics

27:41

of the term moral panic, it's

27:44

defined as a widespread feeling

27:46

of fear, often an irrational

27:48

one, that some evil person or

27:51

thing threatens the values, interests,

27:53

or well-being of a community. It's

27:55

when media or mass opinion

27:58

forms a boogeyman.

28:04

That's bit.ly

28:07

forward slash mpx2a.

28:14

It's a sleight of hand and it's convenient

28:16

for a lot of different types of people.

28:18

That's the voice of Chelsea Weber Smith, the

28:21

host of the American Hysteria podcast,

28:23

which dives deep into conspiracy theories,

28:25

urban legends, and moral panics.

28:28

I have learned

28:30

are often symbolic

28:33

representations of fears

28:35

that we have. And they also act

28:37

as a sleight of hand so that we

28:39

can be distracted by a more interesting

28:42

problem and not have to address structural

28:45

issues.

28:46

There's always been an issue with things

28:48

that harm children and yet

28:51

that harm in the 80s and 90s

28:53

was presented as a

28:56

roving stranger in a van offering

28:58

candy and kidnapping children, which almost

29:01

never happened. But what there was

29:03

a lot of are issues of children being

29:06

harmed in their own homes and communities,

29:08

which is very hard to

29:11

address. It's very hard to talk about.

29:13

It's very hard to have any

29:15

idea how to solve.

29:16

And so if we

29:18

have this sensational villain

29:20

and sensational issue, we can

29:22

externalize the problem.

29:25

And then we'll use that

29:27

rare story as proof that

29:30

this is some kind of widespread issue and

29:32

then ignore what I consider to be

29:34

boring issues, boring

29:36

and difficult. Simple is arrest

29:39

that man in the van. And what's

29:41

not simple is we have generational

29:44

trauma.

29:45

Moral panics as misdirection,

29:47

sleight of hand, a way to boil

29:50

down a deep societal issue

29:52

into a reduced form that is mostly

29:54

devoid of substance,

29:56

yet captures all of our attention.

29:58

In a way, there are some dark parallels

30:01

to how we engage in scary storytelling.

30:04

If we're inclined to explore scary topics

30:06

through fiction, if we're engaging with these

30:09

larger than life monsters as a way

30:11

to acknowledge the evils of the world that doesn't

30:13

involve actual danger, then a moral

30:15

panic is something like the shadow version

30:18

of that, a way that we try and feel

30:20

like we're coping with larger societal

30:22

issues without addressing them.

30:24

It's the dark quasi-ostention

30:27

of a monster into the real world. And

30:29

it's at this point that we should introduce you

30:31

to Momo.

30:34

You probably remember her. If

30:36

not by name, you'd recognize the

30:38

picture, an image of a scarily

30:41

distorted woman's face, large

30:43

bulging black-pupiled eyes

30:45

fixed forwards over a shallow,

30:48

upturned nose, and an impossibly

30:50

long V-shaped smile

30:53

cutting almost literally ear

30:56

to ear. Most commonly,

30:58

the photo was cropped in to focus on

31:00

the face, but larger images

31:03

reveal that Momo's

31:04

body is propped up

31:07

on two creepy, scaly

31:10

bird legs. This was the avatar

31:13

of Momo, a being said to exist

31:15

on the popular text chat platform WhatsApp.

31:18

The legend goes that if you were to message

31:20

specific numbers tied to Momo,

31:23

she would reply back and attempt to

31:25

coerce you into performing acts of violence,

31:27

self-harm, and the interaction would ultimately

31:30

culminate in being instructed to take

31:32

your own life.

31:35

Something

31:35

like Momo, you have this creature

31:40

that is drawing children

31:43

into this mental health crisis,

31:46

where it's like, oh, this monster

31:48

is convincing our children that

31:50

they need to commit suicide,

31:53

right? When we have a very real

31:55

issue with suicide

31:58

in young people, it's a really... great

32:00

sensational boogeyman to say, oh,

32:03

the problem is that there are these bizarre

32:06

individuals out there, whether they be

32:08

supernatural or just some creepy,

32:10

like, Saw villain encouraging

32:13

children to go down this path when it very

32:15

well could be parents themselves who

32:18

are not addressing mental health issues

32:20

or who may even be causing

32:22

them.

32:23

It's important to note that no law

32:25

enforcement agency has confirmed that anyone

32:27

was harmed as a direct result of

32:29

the Momo hoax.

32:31

In our research for this episode, we tried

32:33

to investigate that claim and we were

32:35

unable to find any news stories or

32:38

reports of actual harm directly

32:40

linked to Momo as well.

32:42

The story surfaced in July 2018, but

32:45

hit a peak and gained worldwide attention

32:47

in February 2019 after it

32:49

was reported that images of Momo were

32:51

being spliced into children's programming

32:54

on YouTube.

32:54

This terrifying face is circulating

32:57

the web interrupting kids' videos on YouTube.

33:00

Warnings about the so-called Momo challenge.

33:02

She's called Momo. She's got bug

33:04

eyes, long stringy hair, and spooky

33:07

chicken legs. YouTube videos marketed

33:09

to children that feature instructions on how

33:11

to commit suicide. For more, I'm joined by

33:13

Dr. Dina Kulik. Nice to see you, doctor. Nice

33:16

to see you, too. Doctor, what more do we know

33:18

about these videos out there? Yeah, so

33:20

there's not so much known yet. What

33:22

we know is that there are videos

33:24

that are circulating.

33:25

Something interesting here that

33:27

relates back to a lack of substance and

33:30

moral panics is that despite many

33:32

hours of our best efforts to dig up conclusive

33:34

evidence of this actually happening, we

33:36

were unable to find any evidence of

33:38

videos where that occurred. We were,

33:40

however, able to find archived

33:43

posts and discussions of people doing

33:45

the same thing. They were searching for evidence

33:48

during the time that all of this was going

33:50

on. But with the exception of the

33:53

single video referenced in the article

33:55

that started

33:55

the panic, it doesn't seem

33:57

that anyone could locate instant...

34:00

of Momo being spliced into children's

34:02

videos. There's a term that Chelsea

34:04

brought to our attention, which came from

34:07

Winnie the Pooh, actually.

34:08

Do you remember The Woosles? I've

34:11

never seen one personally, but Chelsea

34:13

might have when they were researching their episode

34:16

on snuff films.

34:17

The Woosle Effect

34:19

is something that comes from Winnie

34:22

the Pooh and that's the story

34:24

in which Pooh and Piglet are

34:26

walking through a snowy forest

34:29

and they're looking for this magical creature

34:31

called a woosle. They see footprints

34:33

in the snow, so they start following

34:36

those footprints and soon they start

34:38

seeing more footprints in the snow and they're

34:40

like, oh, there's even more woosles that we're

34:42

looking for. They just keep going and

34:44

going and trying to catch up with these creatures.

34:47

Eventually they have Christopher Robin

34:50

come in. The omnipresent God

34:52

that he is lets them know that

34:55

they have actually been following their own footprints.

34:57

So they've been going in circles

35:00

thinking that they're following something

35:02

real when it's actually fictional and

35:04

they're adding their own evidence

35:06

to it, quote unquote, as they go. That

35:10

story is used to explain

35:12

how one piece of evidence, something

35:16

that's

35:17

untrue or misinterpreted or a story

35:20

that's told incorrectly or misunderstood

35:22

in some way serves as a piece of

35:25

foundational evidence. And even

35:27

in academia, an academic's going to say

35:29

something like, it's widely understood

35:31

that X, Y and Z. And we

35:33

use snuff films as an example, it's widely

35:35

understood that there's this underground industry

35:38

producing murder films, but

35:40

that's all based on a single line

35:43

written in a book about

35:45

Charles Manson way back

35:47

in the early 70s. So it just

35:49

takes on a life of its own from there. The

35:52

woosle effect. We definitely see

35:54

some form of it happening here.

35:56

That single video with Momo spliced into

35:59

it was enough for us to do it.

35:59

journalists to spin up a panic.

36:02

And of course, after the reports brought

36:04

Momo to worldwide attention, people

36:06

began to splice the picture into videos, and

36:09

YouTube began pulling any Momo content

36:11

from their site in March of 2019. For

36:13

something so allegedly widespread,

36:16

there is surprisingly little evidence

36:18

that can be traced to any actual

36:21

Momo activity. But that

36:23

doesn't exactly matter if you're the kind of person

36:25

whose every move is closely watched

36:27

by the media. Kim Kardashian, a

36:30

mom of three little ones, is posting a

36:32

warning on Instagram.

36:33

Kim Kardashian, because she took to Instagram

36:35

to beg YouTube to stop the Momo

36:37

challenge. Mother of three, Kim Kardashian

36:39

West, took to Instagram, tagging YouTube

36:42

for help.

36:42

Kim Kardashian posted an Instagram

36:45

story, tagging YouTube and saying, please

36:48

help. I don't know if it would have happened without Kim

36:50

Kardashian, because she, in an instant,

36:53

showed millions of people this creepy

36:55

chicken suicide enchantress.

36:58

Not only are we doing an episode on

37:01

Slender Man and Momo in 2022, but now we're

37:03

also talking about

37:06

the Kardashians. If I can take

37:08

a step back, there is a very interesting

37:11

tangential facet to Momo that I don't think

37:13

is often discussed. And

37:15

that is what the image of Momo actually

37:18

is. So

37:20

the thing that started Momo, what the

37:23

picture is actually of, is a sculpture

37:25

created by Japanese artist, Kasuke

37:28

Aso. I did consult with my friend

37:30

Ben, who speaks Japanese, to try and help

37:32

me with these pronunciations. I apologize

37:34

if I don't get them exactly right. But the sculpture

37:37

of Momo was made in 2016

37:39

and shown at an art show in Tokyo.

37:42

What she is a sculpture of is

37:44

a piece of Japanese folklore. The

37:47

actual name for the sculpture is Mother Bird,

37:49

and she is an obume, which is a type

37:52

of yokai. Yokai are

37:54

spirits or entities whose behavior

37:56

can range from malevolent to mischievous

37:58

to friendly, so-

37:59

Sort of analogous to fae or

38:02

fairies in the more western mythology in

38:04

some ways. And the obama is said

38:06

specifically to represent the reincarnated

38:08

soul of a woman who died during childbirth.

38:11

She is most commonly depicted as the spirit of a

38:13

woman who looks completely normal, carrying

38:16

a baby. But she will try and give

38:18

any passerby her child, and

38:20

then disappear. And if you take the

38:22

baby, it then transforms into

38:25

either a bundle of leaves in some stories,

38:27

or an impossibly heavy boulder, and

38:29

gets heavier and heavier and heavier until

38:32

you can't hold it anymore, or it pins

38:34

you down to the ground. It was a Japanese

38:36

folkloric concept, or figure. And

38:39

then it makes its way into internet

38:42

culture, and then takes on another folkloric

38:45

mechanism with that, which is this idea

38:47

of moral panic and different

38:50

forms of ostention. And so it's almost

38:52

full circle in a lot of ways.

38:55

Unlike Slender Man, Momo

38:57

had this reverse build

39:00

effect in terms of her lore. It

39:02

was mostly after the moral panic elevated

39:04

her to the public eye that people

39:07

online began inventing and creating

39:09

new facets of who she might be.

39:11

It could have took a life of its own just because

39:13

of the misunderstanding of the people seeing

39:16

the story. I think Momo is a much

39:18

more interesting facet of that, actually.

39:20

There was also a fairly

39:22

significant pushback against the darkness.

39:25

And what I mean by that is that people

39:27

started to make these positive

39:30

and lighthearted and friendly

39:32

Momo memes. It was all about

39:35

trying to take the scary image and

39:37

reclaim it

39:38

for wholesome and healthy themes. Memes

39:41

would be made with Momo's face, reading, make

39:43

sure you drink enough water today, and things

39:45

like that. People developed different character

39:48

traits and background stories for the figure, again

39:50

with no central canon. And

39:52

again, like the moral panic spawned around

39:54

Slender Man, the real discussion

39:57

being avoided in the moral panic around

39:59

Momo.

40:00

is one of mental health issues and

40:02

access to mental health care. But

40:04

both of the panics in themselves focus

40:07

on the unknowns of the internet as

40:09

being the monster that we should fear.

40:11

Momo was a kind of different

40:13

one in the sense that it was a fear

40:15

of parents losing control

40:18

of children and that idea of the

40:21

internet is a monster.

40:22

Again, that's Dr. Vivian Asimos.

40:24

And it's this amorphous scary and Momo

40:27

is a figure that we can point to. But it's an

40:29

example. And really, the internet

40:32

is a monster. Where Slenderman

40:34

was a monster of the

40:37

internet. He was kind of the harbinger

40:39

of what's to come. He's lurking

40:41

in the forests and then eventually

40:44

someone went, you know what? The whole forest

40:46

is terrible.

40:47

But

40:49

are these online digitally spawned

40:51

and spread stories really any different

40:53

than the kinds of tales we've always told throughout

40:56

human history?

40:57

What makes digital folklore

41:00

unique? The form that it takes

41:02

is quite different. And I think that's something that's

41:04

going to be shifting, but it's going to be shifting based

41:06

on the form. So like the way that you would tell a story on Instagram,

41:09

for example, is going to be really different than the way you tell a story

41:11

on Reddit. Each one of those things

41:13

is going to have its own more narrative

41:16

level form that on its surface

41:18

is going to look really different. But you could probably

41:20

tell the same structure of the same

41:23

story in each of those places.

41:25

And Chelsea Weber Smith had similar thoughts.

41:27

Back when we had, you know, the

41:29

original way to tell urban legends was you

41:31

heard it from a friend of a friend. My

41:34

theory is the ways that urban legends spread

41:36

is you call your cousin because, you know, it's like,

41:38

oh, why do they pop up everywhere at once? Is it,

41:40

you know, some psychological thing manifesting

41:43

on it? It's like, yeah, and it's also probably Timmy

41:45

Collin, his cousin.

41:46

And then in the 90s, you had facts

41:48

lore, which I love so much, which is all

41:51

the chain letters. But now it's like the

41:54

biggest difference is

41:56

how quickly it spreads

41:58

and how many people.

41:59

It spreads too. The

42:02

rapidity with which we can spread and

42:04

develop stories has increased tremendously.

42:07

The platforms we use to create them are new

42:09

and can shape them in unique ways, and

42:11

the culture of whatever part of the internet they're

42:13

born on can vary. But really, they're

42:16

nothing more than accelerated urban

42:18

legends.

42:23

When you study horror

42:26

and scary stories as a genre, it

42:29

becomes clear that the reason society creates

42:32

and consumes these tales is to

42:34

hold up a mirror to our deepest

42:36

fears and biggest problems. But

42:38

to do so in safe ways,

42:41

so that we can overcome those fears and

42:44

to begin solving those problems.

42:46

But sometimes we miss that step of overcoming,

42:49

and we focus on the monstrous distraction

42:52

we've created. And sometimes that looks

42:54

like ostension when the face of the monster

42:56

appears on a real unfortunate act.

42:59

There's an article written by Andrew

43:01

Peck from the Journal of American Folklore,

43:04

and the main body of that article was

43:06

written in 2014, back before the events of Waukesha, Wisconsin.

43:12

And the journal article was published in 2015, after

43:14

the stabbings. The

43:18

article is titled Tall,

43:20

Dark, and Lothesome, the Emergence

43:23

of a Legend Cycle in the Digital Age.

43:26

In this article, Peck describes how

43:28

he predicted ostension, how

43:30

early on in the development of Slender Man,

43:33

he had been published as saying, I think

43:36

Slender Man is going to spill over

43:38

into the real world. Just

43:40

a few months after he submitted his draft

43:42

article, he found out that indeed,

43:45

Slender Man did spill over

43:48

into the real world in tragic

43:50

ways. After

43:52

the stabbings, he had been contacted over

43:55

and over by journalists. At

43:57

the same time, he was also hearing

43:59

a A lot of the moral panic spinning up

44:02

around Slenderman, and so he

44:04

concludes this 2015 article

44:06

by saying,

44:07

I spent most of June explaining to

44:10

reporters and media personalities that

44:12

concerns over the Slenderman were

44:15

largely overblown, akin

44:17

to scrutinizing children's

44:19

mirror use for fear of

44:21

Bloody Mary, and distracting

44:24

from many more real dangers

44:26

young people may face online.

44:33

Thank you to Ann Marie Ben and Quincy of the Endless

44:35

Thread Podcast for joining us and helping

44:37

us figure out how to cover today's topics. You

44:40

can look forward to a companion episode coming

44:42

out soon, featuring more of our discussion

44:44

with them. Thank you as well to Chelsea Weber

44:46

Smith of the American Hysteria Podcast

44:49

for lending us their time, expertise, and

44:51

insight into what the stories we tell really

44:53

mean and how they change or don't

44:55

change over time. I will forever

44:58

think of Momo as a creepy chicken suicide

45:00

enchantress, so thank you as well for

45:02

that. And a huge thank you to Dr.

45:05

Vivian Essimos for lending your deep

45:07

knowledge and insight to us. Vivian

45:09

also hosts a podcast called the Religion

45:12

and Popular Culture Podcast, publishes

45:14

a blog called Incidental Mythology, and

45:16

is the author of several books on digital

45:19

monsters, as well as a forthcoming book

45:21

on cosplay. Also a big thanks to Kathleen

45:23

Hale, her new book Slenderman Online

45:26

Obsession, Mental Illness and the Violent Crime

45:28

of Two Midwestern Girls is available now, there's

45:30

a link in the show notes, and we'll have a companion

45:32

episode coming

45:32

out featuring more of our discussion with her. Check

45:35

out the show notes for links and more information about

45:37

all our guests. Digital

45:39

Folklore is a production of 8th Layer

45:42

Media. If you haven't yet, please consider

45:44

following the show, telling a friend, and leaving

45:46

a review. And one more thing, right now,

45:49

text whatever friend is at the top of your

45:51

contacts list and tell them to immediately

45:54

subscribe to the Digital Folklore Podcast.

45:56

If you've got a lead on a piece of digital lore

45:58

that you'd like us to stick under

45:59

a microscope, let us know. Send us an

46:02

email. Hello at eighthlayermedia.com.

46:05

Thanks for listening.

46:10

Leviathan was created as

46:12

a sanctuary.

46:13

No, it's too much. A

46:16

monument to hope. Hurry.

46:19

Run. We have to

46:24

run. And the last

46:26

refuge of escape. We have

46:28

to leave now. We've got magma

46:31

coming in. I

46:34

am a Valkyrie. Damn

46:38

it. I murder gods.

46:41

And I will bring the raging infernos

46:44

of hell to meet me under all

46:47

of the water in the sea. No.

46:55

Leviathan was built to represent

46:58

hope. It will still be

47:00

our salvation. Discover

47:02

the Leviathan Chronicles and listen

47:04

to all three seasons of the award-winning Immortal

47:07

Saga, available at leviathanchronicles.com

47:10

or wherever you get your podcasts. Immortality

47:14

or freedom, which would you choose?