The Slender Man Cult. Girl Stabbed By two 12 Year Old

originally posted by: TheToastmanCometh
a reply to: WhiteAlice

the rake
id be more afraid of the Rake

I actually enjoy creepypastas...an alternatives to horror films as I get too worked up

But the parents should have been watching their activity

And here I thought The Onion was more accurate. Could you imagine though, a gang of kids quoting articles from The Onion?

Do you remember the many debates over the last election, someone started an Onion-type rumor about Romney making tampons illegal if he were to be elected, and Twitter blew up over this with young women who actually believed it and were tweeting their disapproval with Romney because of it?

It just goes to prove that there are stupid kids out there. Not all are, but when you have a twenty-year old who won't vote for Romney because he will make tampons illegal, imagine then the stupidity filtering down to younger kids. It didn't shock me that someone would create such a ridiculous thing, but that young people actually believed and voted for Obama because Obama would make sure tampons would be available.

And these young people are the future of our world. Obama won because of tampons, imagine that. While that sounds silly, to these young women that is exactly how he won.

The key is to raise intelligent kids. Teach them right from wrong and in this case reality from fantasy! It seems these parents were not paying attention...most likely ever. It's a prime example of why getting involved and staying involved is very important! Sure, it's okay for kids to read stuff like this and even make their own art. However make certain your kid knows it's fantasy fun and NOT reality.
More important: make sure your kid has the mental ability intact!

They are 12 years old! You want to execute them? They are stupid and need parenting but you are a monster. a reply to: UnBreakable

originally posted by: Staroth
The key is to raise intelligent kids. Teach them right from wrong and in this case reality from fantasy! It seems these parents were not paying attention...most likely ever. It's a prime example of why getting involved and staying involved is very important! Sure, it's okay for kids to read stuff like this and even make their own art. However make certain your kid knows it's fantasy fun and NOT reality.
More important: make sure your kid has the mental ability intact!

Well said!
This time it's Slender Man & the internet to be blamed for the reason/motivation for this.
When neither is to be blamed.
The above I quoted, said it best.
In the 80's it was thought that teenagers were going to kill everyone due to Heavy Metal or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
Or worship the devil or what have you.

I don't recall that becoming common place in society.
It was a overreaction by many and failed parenting by a few.

It's not up to anyone who provides internet content to worry about who is going to view it or how they might respond.
Its up to the parents of these children to raise them right and teach them reality and the rights and wrongs in life.

Just my 2 cents
~Cheers~

originally posted by: WhiteAlice
I honestly don't think it was solely Creepypasta at work in these girls' actions. I think it was a combination of things on the internet that convinced these girls that Slender Man was real and maybe a large dose of stupidity coupled with a dash of mental illness.

A lot of people believe in things that are not real, in fact I think almost everyone does. Heck, I probably believe in something that isn't real. And this is even more true for twelve year old kids. Personally, I don't think we can blame the Slender Man mythos for this. Yes, It may have caused the stabbing, but a million other mainstream pop culture things could have fitted the same mold. Stupidity is certainly a part of it. Human stupidity is to blame for a lot of suffering. But it's hard to combat. And these girls may well be mentally ill, in fact I think they are more than a dash mentally ill.

I will even entertain the thought that they are just evil, as another commentator on this thread said. But what is point of calling twelve year old girls evil? I don't think they were predestined to commit this act, that's just a ridiculous (this is aimed at a previous poster, not WhiteAlice).

My point is that these girls must have had a lot of problems in their life prior to this. I suspect they may have been bullied, they may have had problems in their family, or both. They did a terrible thing, and more importantly, a very misguided thing. I don't know what their motivations where, but reading a story about Slender Man is not a motivation. I don't know, I don't have any answers.

Today is the first I"m hearing of this 'slender man'. My 18 year old daughter has never heard of him either. I'm just now catching up on what this is supposed to be. Reading up today .... it's strange ...

originally posted by: strongfp
This case has a myriad of instances, processes, emotions, etc. to take into account, and simply locking them up and throwing away the key isn't the way to go. Punishment for sure is in order, but not for 65 some off years they were charged with. A good example is child soldiers, or kids who grew up knowing one thing, and that was to kill, is there no hope for them?
These kids just fed off one another's fairy tales, and the internet. The parents, their teachers, family, what ever are part of the bigger picture from what I see.

I agree with most of what you said in your post, but I don't think these girls can be compared to child soldiers.

I'm not an expert on the subject, but I think child soldiers are orphans, victims of trafficing or just extremely impoverished. They come from disintegrating societies, their very social structure is atomized. They have nearly nothing of the things we take for granted. They are forced to live like animals and armed groups take them into their fold.

These children who read about Slender Man and stab are different, kind of. They are certainly a part of western culture, they read about all kinds of # on the internet. They probably have a a very troubled upbringing, just like child soldiers, but in a different way. They don't have anyone actively trying to brainwash them or make them kill. They are decently provided for physically (it seems, let's not forget that we don't really know that much about their circumstances yet). Also, they are most likely thought that it is wrong to kill, at some point in their earlier lives. Even this is not certain in the case of child soldiers.

I guess my point is that this case is much weirder and more complicated than the case of any child soldiers.

a reply to: Subnatural

Absolutely agree. Really, what we should be doing as a society to help ourselves in the face of the onslaught of contradictory and falsified information, whether in good spirit (ARG) or bad intent (propaganda), that can be found in heaps on the internet is that every child within the US must be taught critical thinking skills. At the end of the day, the best defense that we can have truly is having a public--and our children--that is capable of discerning between fact and fiction even in the face of great photoshop and ARGing.

Whether that would've prevented what these girls have done is questionable though because, as you said, odds are there is some mental illness going on. However, it might of. If they were mentally ill, then Slender Man became the object of their psychosis. If the myth of the unicorn had been that object, it would've probably turned out a whole heck of a lot different.

originally posted by: kosmicjack
a reply to: UnmitigatedDisaster

How do they even know about it?

I'm sorry, but my 11 year old damn sure will not be on any website, ATS included, discussing Slenderman or similar topics, without direct adult supervision.

I do let my kid read some of the fact based forum threads - after I read them first. Anything else. No.

I think you are right to do this.

Not because your child will turn into a murderer from reading creepy stuff, but simply because it will make him think about things he doesn't need to think about just yet. Personally I believe a lot of people are overprotecting their children in many ways, but when I say this I mean they are being overly protected from real-life things. Like confrontations with other people or doing stuff alone, for themselves.

What I do think kids should be protected from are scary movies and the like. Not because the kids are unable to deal with these things but simply because THERE IS NO NEED for them to deal with them, at least not at a very early age.

Having said that, I still do not blame Slender Man for the stabbing. I don't think removing Slender Man would have prevented this, on the grand scale of things.

But yes, supervise your kids!

Just as a point of reference (And I'm sure this is far from an exhaustive list):

10 Teen Girl "Thrill Killers."

This has happened before without violent video games or the Slender Man.

It's difficult to make a judgement at this time from this vantage point.

One possibility is it might just be that some young people are predisposed to this behavior given the right combination of circumstances and that parental or cultural influence have little to do with it.

a reply to: WhiteAlice

Yes, I think the sickness of our age is too much information. There are so many narratives and stories coming at us from every direction, Slenderman Man is just one in a million. Or maybe one in a thousand to be fair, there is a limit to how many stories we can even get. In the old days, you would just listen to a storyteller who happened to come to your village. Even if you were an aristocrat, in the center of power and culture, you had a limited scope of what was going on in the world, compared to us. Every town had it's own guy who told stories and stuff. Now there are a few guys who tell all our stories. We are not adapted to knowing of everything, everywhere.

But now, everything interesting is instantly available. And everything sickening as well. The only thing holding it back is social decorum. And I think this effects us in ways we can't even imagine. But I'm getting off topic here, kind of.

The point is that in the old days society had control of these stories, to a greater degree. The stories described reality... now we are saying the stories create reality. Well, I guess both are true. But I don't think this one Slender Man-story has that much relevance. In medieval times, people believed in demons. Did it make them kill people? Not without some other reason, I think. They had to have some other reason to hate or be insane, even in ancient times.

Still, now every teen is connected with every other teen and these stories spread like wildfire. And then someone is stabbed and the media catches on to this and suddenly everyone talks about it. It's hard to say for certain that creepypasta had nothing to do with it. But I think it is obvious that other things had much more to do with it, like bullying, sexualisation of violence, insanity etc. etc.


But easy answers sell. And creepypasta is the easy answer, simply because the media can link to a creepypasta site. They cannot link to the human mind. They cannot link to the education system of a nation. They cannot link to the gosh-darned mind and heart of a twelve year old child.

a reply to: Subnatural

Coming from a culture that had their children crying at night afraid of La Llorona or El Cucuy, I am not so sure I agree with you. It sounds like a lot of "in the old days" viewed through rose glasses.

ETA: Matter of fact, "slenderman" sounds like another version of El Cucuy, or "the boogeyman"

Taking something that is beautiful or useful and making it into something awful is a uniquely human trait.
There is nothing in existence that humans cannot take and pervade to their own desire.
There will always be people who will obsess over the most unusual nouns and ideas to excess.

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan
a reply to: Subnatural

Coming from a culture that had their children crying at night afraid of La Llorona or El Cucuy, I am not so sure I agree with you. It sounds like a lot of "in the old days" viewed through rose glasses.

ETA: Matter of fact, "slenderman" sounds like another version of El Cucuy, or "the boogeyman"

You should teach your children hope and power, even if it is false, no matter what their culture is. Every trope is subjective. The problem is that some families do this more easily than others. Some are raised to be citizen, others are raised to be citizen-slaves, most in fact. These are class differences. I can not change them, perhaps you can?

Blaming content has always been the easy thing to do when horrible things happen. We are so afraid to recognize mental illness as a wide spread issue, that we ignore the dangers it poses while looking for scapegoats elsewhere. Take any objectionable content and see the volume of people who subject themselves to said content. And it's surprising that such despicable acts such as the one these girls committed are not more widespread if it were indeed the fault of content.

I grew up watching horror films as a young kid with my dad. I grew up with Mortal Kombat. I grew up listening to Metallica. I grew up reading Stephen King. Never have I confused any of it for reality. And I tend to believe that I am not so different in that sense than many others. So if so many can be subjected to such content with no adverse results then what factors do those who do have in common? My guess (which is all I can provide with no expertise) would be mental illness. We could also add parenting but even with questionable and/or bad parenting I have a hard time believing that a 12 year old wouldn't have had some experience that tells them luring another person into the woods to stab them 19 times is heinous behavior.

I have looked into a 7 year old boy's eyes and seen nothing human in them. I will never forget it. Ever. I don't believe that the animals he abused and killed, the fires he set, or the nail he shoved repeatedly into my son's leg on the playground was a result of the Internet or playing video games.

People need to place "blame" on something, because the idea that those girls could kill another girl (a friend no less) in cold blood is damn frightening. We don't understand it, so we explain it away.

originally posted by: ThirdEyeChakra
More control over outside influences needs to be taken as with most child murderers they were obsessed by violent forms of entertainment

Did you maybe think they were obsessed with violent forms of entertainment as a way to cope with how they felt on the inside? Eventually, entertainment isn't enough and these kids go crazy. It isn't the entertainment that causes killers. Would-be killers seem to use it as an outlet more than anything.

Don't blame entertainment, please; because it just shows how little thought you put into this.

Stupid kids believing stupid internet fairy tales.. really SLENDERMAN? All of the videos are absolute trash, even worse than the ghost hunter garbage u see on cable tv. No one is up in arms about knife attacks when they are far more brutal and violent than guns.. Hypothetically, Can any of you honestly say if u were held captive forced to choose between being shot in the leg, arm or any place of your choosing vs being stabbed with a butcher knife in the same place you would choose being stabbed? hell no. oh hellll no. just thinking about being stabbed makes me cringe, getting shot while terrible in itself would seem like a blessing in contrast.

violence needs to stop, all together. parents need to parent especially if your children are wired to the internet 24/7 through their phone/tablet/macbooks you insist on buying them. Buy a book! Play a game! Be involved with your children and maybe just maybe we'll see a decline in moral decay

Firstly, I CANNOT stand this effing new bull#!!! - The inability to middle-click distuuuuuuuuuurbs me!

off my chest, carrying on...

I think a huge issue is the amount of kids that don't have their parents to raise them properly, because they either work to much (which may or may not be their fault) or treat their kids like a part of their plan, not part of their family.

We want equality in the work-place etc (that stuff) then Mother AND Father should get maternity leave (those kinds of things...

The bottom line is, I think we need to spend more time just being around our kids, especially when they are young and you are all they want or need. Play with your kids, yo