Slender Man: the cause of a brutal stabbing of 12 year old girl

This horrible tragedy of a young girl that was stabbed 19 times stems from an obsession with Slender Man.  

 

Who’s Slender Man?

Slender Man originates with a “paranormal pictures” photoshop condense held in 2009. A user named Victor Surge is credited with creating it, posting black and white images with creepy captions that shows a tall, faceless creature that is stalks children and young adults. For horror and paranormal movie fans, Slender Man is just part of the suspense and he is true entertainment.  But for others, it has become an obsession, acting out and soon believing that Slender Man is a real creature.  He is no longer just a fictional “boogey man” but instead is a true amalgam. Since its creation, fans have created YouTube videos, fiction stories, and all sorts of art. It is all over the Internet now. 

Two young girls who were fascinated with Slender Man, lured another girl into the woods one night for a game of creepy hide and seek.  When they got her there, they held her down and stabbed her, leaving her for dead. Even though she was wounded in several serious areas, she survived and is now recovering. When the police caught the two girls that committed the violent crime, they said they did it as a sacrifice to Slender Man.  They believed if they killed this girl, they could become his proxies. If they didn’t kill, then they believed he would come and kill their families. (1) 

 

Children and young adults that are addicted to technology, horror movies, and video games have a twisted sense of reality. They are usually disturbed individuals that are struggling to find their place in this world and because technology does not discriminate, they have found acceptance there.  Individuals suffering with this sort of addiction may have started innocently, enjoying games or horror movies as a way to entertain themselves, but soon, they are wrapped into a warped and sick way of thinking.  This is where we see children starting to act out the things they are seeing on the screen. 

 

Violent media has STRONG EFFECTS on our children! Allowing your children to fill their minds with unnecessary violence will damage them.  It will steal their innocence and change the way their brain should be wired. Shut down your Internet, telephone, and televisions regularly. Encourage your children to engage in activities that help develop their whole being! Without that, our children will become a generation of vidiots. 

 

Ries, Brian. “The Fictional Online Creature That Drove 2 Young Girls to Stab Their Friend.” Mashable. Published online June 3, 2014. Accessed online June 16, 2014.  http://mashable.com/2014/06/03/slender-man-meme-history/