Death is Coming (or is here)

Ok, I have no place to be talking about the health of this forum, as I only joined it back in January, I believe, but I feel it needed to be put up and discussed. This forum is dying. The same four people are coming back everyday, and one of them is the creator. Hardly anyone is posting anymore, and all of the things that we would hope bring life back into the forum haven't. It is sad to see how far this has fallen. 

Any who, we need to find some way to get more people to be involved, whether it's coming back, or joining for the first time. There has to be some way of contributing to the Slenderman/Fear community. It would be a shame to see what was once a thriving site just disappear into nothingness, especially since it has this new paintjob (which, if I may say, is a massive improvement over the old black and red).

So, any ideas on how to save the site? What needs to happen for this to again have an engaged community?

What if it isn't the forum's fault? What if it's just the deterioration of the mythos's popularity?

I think it's also worth noting that none of the major series have updated lately, which could explain the lack of discussion. But yeah, I don't expect a whole lot of activity around here unless something particularly exciting happens for the mythos, which I don't anticipate any time soon.

People are still discussing Cthulhu, despite that story coming out decades ago. I seriously doubt Slender Man is going anywhere. We're just going through a lull.

Davros wrote:

People are still discussing Cthulhu, despite that story coming out decades ago. I seriously doubt Slender Man is going anywhere. We're just going through a lull.

How long will the "lull" last? I've been feeling like this lull has been around for years.

The issue is that the Cthulhu mythos is written/being written and expanded upon by professional authors and amateurs alike, whereas the Slender Man mythos is comparatively young and written and expanded upon almost exclusively by amateurs.

The internet has allowed cult followings to become much more exposed. Lovecraft and his many abominations may not have been known so wildly or even celebrated if it were not for the exposure granted by the internet, a place where information can be shown to anyone with a working computer and web connection.

Anyone can use the Slender Man mythos as a medium to writing an interesting story, be it conventional horror, cosmic horror, or whatever the hell you want. Therein lies a problem; by rules of the internet, anything and nothing is canon, fandoms are split or generalized, and as with all other internet memes, things will get repeated and done to death over and over again until the very mentioning of it is sickening. But is that the sole issue? Probably not, but Slender Man has had his five minutes of fame and just about everyone who isn't a dedicated fan is done scanning the treelines as they drive home at night, or realistically, sick of reading about an eldritch enigma whose shtick is nearly the same in every iteration of every contribution to the mythos.

He's just not interesting anymore. How do we fix that? Well, that itself is another can of worms. One of his main attributes is his abnormality, his unexplained-ness. Trying to explain what he is, how he came to be, what his purpose is, etc... usually these things do not have answers that fail to ruin his identity simultaneously, at least in my own opinion. So I've been waiting for someone else to perhaps tackle this issue with success, and that hasn't happened for a few years. I haven't been with the mythos for its whole life, but I have been there for most of it, and personally, I find that most of what could have been done, within reason, has been done already.

As a fan of both the Cthulhu Mythos and the Slenderman Mythos, I feel I should point out that the original run of Lovecraft and his disciples (the writings and such) were comparatively small in notoriety  and after Lovecraft's death the fiction was threatened with fading into obscurity,until August Derelith began publishing as many of his works and more decades after they had came out. Lovecraft has been around since the 1920's or earlier and has had a shaky road of popularity till around the 1980's (likely do to the success of the tabletop role playing game). It's a fairly common literary presence now a days (Lovecraftian horror and the like) due in part to that cult following and people who just really like the fiction and mythos and want to bring it into new mediums/time periods.

Back in the day it was just as much a communal mythos as the slenderman mythos is now. While a lot of the main venues are either on breaks, MIA or simply complete, I don't feel it's right to say the mythos is dead and buried. People are still writing about him and vlogs are still getting made as far as I can see. Mainstream interest might be waning but I like to think (personal opinion) that it's just because Slenderman had a major rise in popularity from the outside masses and now is settling down some. It's no different from a few years back when I couldn't go five steps with out seeing Cthulhu plushies and content. It's just a wave of interest and I feel, like any good horror fiction or entity like werewolves, vampires, zombies, eldritch horrors from beyond time and space, zombies again, Slenderman will still have a presence in fiction online if no where else. It is still an adolescent horror convention as of 6 years ago when Victor posted his first photo manipulation. Cthulhu has only been around since the beginning of the 20th Century (more or less 100 years). It's got sometime to catch up to older beasties like vampires and zombies.

But then I am a fanboy of Cthulhu and Slenderman fiction, so my opinion is heavily biased.

Albino Parakeet wrote:

He's just not interesting anymore. How do we fix that? Well, that itself is another can of worms. One of his main attributes is his abnormality, his unexplained-ness. Trying to explain what he is, how he came to be, what his purpose is, etc... usually these things do not have answers that fail to ruin his identity simultaneously, at least in my own opinion.

I think the problem there is that some series think that leaving the monster to the imagination means not giving the audience any clues that could possibly be used to confirm anything about the Slender Man. A series doesn't necessarily have to answer these questions explicitly, but it should at least provide substantial evidence as to how and why he is a threat. As is, a lot of series just have the Slender Man as a non-presence, standing there and looking pretty because that's all that the popular series had to do with the character, right? I think we also put too much of a stigma on explicitly answering questions about Slender Man's identity or purpose; the mythos' canon is allways up for audience interpretation, so there's really nothing wrong with presenting an unambiguous aspect of the Slender Man as long as you're not stupid about it.

I personally think that the reason the mythos is in a lull right now is because there's been a lack of anything particularly ambitious in terms of the ARG aspect. I feel like the immersive factor of Slender Man's stories has been what really sets him apart as a monster, and I think we've been moving too far away from that. If you ask me, the ideal way to make the mythos popular again would be to create a substantial interpretation of the Slender Man that recaptures the old feeling of the mythos via audience participation. It doesn't really matter whether or not a series acknowledges the existence of the Slender Man as a meme (Alternate Reality, remember?); what matters is that it creates the kind of immersion that we desperately need right now.

Peppercorn wrote:

Albino Parakeet wrote:

He's just not interesting anymore. How do we fix that? Well, that itself is another can of worms. One of his main attributes is his abnormality, his unexplained-ness. Trying to explain what he is, how he came to be, what his purpose is, etc... usually these things do not have answers that fail to ruin his identity simultaneously, at least in my own opinion.

I think the problem there is that some series think that leaving the monster to the imagination means not giving the audience any clues that could possibly be used to confirm anything about the Slender Man. A series doesn't necessarily have to answer these questions explicitly, but it should at least provide substantial evidence as to how and why he is a threat. As is, a lot of series just have the Slender Man as a non-presence, standing there and looking pretty because that's all that the popular series had to do with the character, right? I think we also put too much of a stigma on explicitly answering questions about Slender Man's identity or purpose; the mythos' canon is allways up for audience interpretation, so there's really nothing wrong with presenting an unambiguous aspect of the Slender Man as long as you're not stupid about it.

I personally think that the reason the mythos is in a lull right now is because there's been a lack of anything particularly ambitious in terms of the ARG aspect. I feel like the immersive factor of Slender Man's stories has been what really sets him apart as a monster, and I think we've been moving too far away from that. If you ask me, the ideal way to make the mythos popular again would be to create a substantial interpretation of the Slender Man that recaptures the old feeling of the mythos via audience participation. It doesn't really matter whether or not a series acknowledges the existence of the Slender Man as a meme (Alternate Reality, remember?); what matters is that it creates the kind of immersion that we desperately need right now.

Good point, but as a mostly archival reader/viewer of blogs/vlogs, I was never interested in the ARG aspect. Immersion was something that fascinated me during my fandom infancy (to the point where I actually had to stop and think if some of this was actually, factually real, which in retrospect was pretty silly, but it did add to my fascination), but it never sold the series to me. Fan interaction is neat, but it isn't something I find necessary to be invested in. At my core I care more about pacing, plot content, and acting more than I do the ARG aspects. I prefer to view the mythos as a collection of stories, not a collection of games.

That and I can't stand Fear v/blogs or anything else similar to those, which i seem to find more often than good ol' Slender Man v/blogs these days.

That's the thing though, to grow anything at all you need a community. The quickest way to create a community is Audience Interaction. What I find that most vlogs are doing wrong these days is that they are relying too much on their Audience Interaction and less on Storyline. When trying to attract new watchers you need a good storyline and an easily followed plot. I often find, when watching the newer content creators' vlogs, that they rely on people following them across multiple media platforms without explaining anything learned from that particular interaction on their Channels. It makes it very difficult for people who only follow them on YouTube to keep up and it also detracts new viewers from following their content.

What I really find is hurting the Mythos right now is what it is lacking: originality and quality content. If we take the big three out of the picture and disregard other older, quality works such as CaughtNotSleeping (yes, again I'm focusing on the newer content creators), we pretty much see the same story over and over again. Plot equals: Protagonist is stalked by Slenderman, there's a proxy involved who helps them occasionally, YouTube Channel is being used to upload hint videos from the Proxy, one character has repressed childhood memories of the Slenderman, one friend accidentally sends The Slenderman after their group of friends, [insert even more tropes and cliches here]. Whilst using some cliches and tropes are unavoidable, they should not be relied upon. Recently, it appears that all of the old and original ideas are being used on repeat and it is becoming quite tiresome.

In Victor Surge's own words 'It was amazing to see people create their own little part of Slender Man...' and '...I hope other groups create new concepts and make series of videos. Not necessarily a horror series or somehing about the paranormal, but productions using all sorts of subject matter and in multiple genres.'

The main point of these quotes being that Slenderman should be ever expanded on in each series, always different and never acting in the same way. It is unexplainable and unknown because it is so varied in every story. Each story should be different and new, but they are all tethered together by a single connecting thread: The Slenderman.

Anyway, those are my thoughts.

Sources:
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/slender-man
The Newer Vlogs I Have Been Following.
The relatively successful experience from employing radical and (as far as I know) never used before concepts in my own Vlog (which will still go unnamed).