The Creepypasta Fandom

[Emperor Julian]

I read a lot of creepypasta, it's very hard to do right. Genrally The best ones tend to be the ones which create a low key sense of disquiet or flirt with plausability. As though the reality we know is a pleasent veneer hiding something terrifying, that we're all in terrible danger as something moves against us just outside of perception.
The fandom is naturally infested with idiots and children because it's the internet. So they promote total dog shit because they have zero taste. My biggest frustration is for every good story I have to grind through absolute mediocrity for hours.

 

[Dom Cruise]

I think Year Zero was probably the original Creepypasta, let alone how it was the original ARG. I see a ton of Year Zero influence in the older Creepypastas. I'm not even a big Nine Inch Nails fan either, but Trent Reznor invented the most ingenious marketing campaign ever and both ARGs and Creepypasta are its exceptional bastard children.

Nope, creepypasta predates Year Zero, while I'm sure Year Zero was an influence on later ones and was ahead of it's time, it's not the exact origin of creepypasta.

I first become aware of creepypasta by reading an archive of it from 4chan on Wikichan circa early 2007, before Year Zero was released.

 

[Crichax]

"The Strange Case of Edmonson, Kentucky" is godly, though. No supernatural BS, and a real sense of tension make this my personal favorite pasta.

Spoiler: Aside from...

Aside from the bizarre detail about the Edmonson inhabitants' singing being able to penetrate 100 cubic feet of rock (or some similar measure).

 

[Meowthkip]

"The Strange Case of Edmonson, Kentucky" is godly, though. No supernatural BS, and a real sense of tension make this my personal favorite pasta.

Spoiler: Aside from...

Aside from the bizarre detail about the Edmonson inhabitants' singing being able to penetrate 100 cubic feet of rock (or some similar measure).

I had not heard of this one. Will def give it a read.

 

[yasscat]

"The Strange Case of Edmonson, Kentucky" is godly, though. No supernatural BS, and a real sense of tension make this my personal favorite pasta.

Spoiler: Aside from...

Aside from the bizarre detail about the Edmonson inhabitants' singing being able to penetrate 100 cubic feet of rock (or some similar measure).

I love that genre, the ghost-town type.

 

[AnOminous]

My biggest frustration is for every good story I have to grind through absolute mediocrity for hours.

And then a skeleton pops out.

 

[A Logging Company]

I read a lot of creepypasta, it's very hard to do right. Genrally The best ones tend to be the ones which create a low key sense of disquiet or flirt with plausability. As though the reality we know is a pleasent veneer hiding something terrible, that we're all in terrible danger as something moves against us just outside of perception.
The fandom is naturally infested with idiots and children because it's the internet. So they promote total dog shit because they have zero taste. My biggest frustration is for every good story I have to grind through absolute mediocrity for hours.

I can speak to the need for even a hint of plausibility. There was this one corny creepypasta that freaked me on only because it was set in the very neighborhood I was living in at the time, so I could picture stuff happening right around me. If it had been set in the same city but a different part of town, it would have not gotten to me.

 

[Vampirella]

I first become aware of creepypasta by reading an archive of it from 4chan on Wikichan circa early 2007, before Year Zero was released.

If I remember right creepypastas started on /b/ and was the reason /x/ got made you could post creepypastas there. I think it was back in 05 or 06, can't remember.

And then a skeleton pops out.

BUT WHO WAS PHONE?!

 

[Cool kitties club]

Here’s some of my favorite crappypastas:
Sesame Street behind the beak
Killer Luna
The truth behind teletubbies

 

[SU 390]

I'm surprised these people don't have a thread given how exceptional they can be, especially Murphy.

We already know the saga with Murphy, but what warrants Junior, MissShadowLovely, Creeps and Rainbow to have their own thread? IMO, they seem more like the normal(to an extent) ones.

Creepypasta is kind of like one of the best and worst things to ever happen to the internet. A bunch of people wrote horror stories that otherwise would have never gotten into the field, and some of the best fiction in recent history has been published on the internet.

Three problems arose. 1. Since the stories could be reposted anonymously, you had a bunch of stolen work showing up all over the place and nobody knows what the fuck belongs to whoever. 2. Edgelording. 3. Actual lunatics who suffered some kind of psychotic break and started thinking this shit was real, like those two girls who stabbed the shit out of a friend to summon slenderman.

I recall having to explain that fucking madness to older people since I had used the term maybe once in conversation and then they started wondering if I was part of some cult when some toddler got shredded in the woods.

Like most popular things they tend to attract the wrong crowd. I hardly read Creepypastas nowadays since No Sleep is much better. I agree with the anominity being a problem because anyone can say that they wrote such and such story without proof.

 

[UQ 770]

Nope, creepypasta predates Year Zero, while I'm sure Year Zero was an influence on later ones and was ahead of it's time, it's not the exact origin of creepypasta.

I first become aware of creepypasta by reading an archive of it from 4chan on Wikichan circa early 2007, before Year Zero was released.

I was referring to ARGs primarily, which were definitely a very early influence on Creepypasta. Even so, Year Zero entered preproduction in 2006. ilovebees for Halo 2 is probably the progenitor of both, but Year Zero really brought it into that theme of disconnected horror instead of just a techno intrigue plot.

I refuse to count House of Leaves in here since that was overwhelmingly a copy of older works by Robert W Chambers and HP Lovecraft. They're so old Stephen King copied them in the 1980s. It had an early imitator in The Dionaea House in 2004 right around the same time as ilovebees but I'm still going to stop short and just name it a work of contemporary fiction. Literary spergs commence the fight as you see fit, but there's where my hat lands in the ring.

 

[Dom Cruise]

I was referring to ARGs primarily, which were definitely a very early influence on Creepypasta. Even so, Year Zero entered preproduction in 2006. ilovebees for Halo 2 is probably the progenitor of both, but Year Zero really brought it into that theme of disconnected horror instead of just a techno intrigue plot.

I refuse to count House of Leaves in here since that was overwhelmingly a copy of older works by Robert W Chambers and HP Lovecraft. They're so old Stephen King copied them in the 1980s. It had an early imitator in The Dionaea House in 2004 right around the same time as ilovebees but I'm still going to stop short and just name it a work of contemporary fiction. Literary spergs commence the fight as you see fit, but there's where my hat lands in the ring.

As a matter of fact the first ARG was for the Spielberg movie AI.

And I don't think you can deny House of Leaves is a big influence on the genre, even if it was also drawing from earlier sources.

 

[UQ 770]

And I don't think you can deny House of Leaves is a big influence on the genre, even if it was also drawing from earlier sources.

House of Leaves had a big influence on the horror genre, but I consider it just a bit too early and too far removed to be an influence on Creepypasta. Otherwise you may as well sweep any short horror fiction into the category. Which actually happened, I recall there was a period on major Creepypasta sites where like every tenth story was a reposted public domain story. This was initially done to show people "Hey, short horror fiction isn't a new thing" but seemed to mutate into a slice of the content for awhile.

These days Creepypasta is kind of dead since now most of the time it is attributed to an author, or hosted on a website where they have to legally say "THIS IS FICTION DONT STAB PEOPLE TO SUMMON SLENDERMAN AND GET US SUED K PLZ THX". Gone are the days of places like /x/, Creepypasta.net or KingofWolves where you could get a bunch of weird shit out of context. Its possibly for the best as that lent itself to a lot of stolen content but at the same time I miss clicking on some random site and getting a story that really bothered me and kept me up at night.

 

[Dom Cruise]

House of Leaves had a big influence on the horror genre, but I consider it just a bit too early and too far removed to be an influence on Creepypasta. Otherwise you may as well sweep any short horror fiction into the category. Which actually happened, I recall there was a period on major Creepypasta sites where like every tenth story was a reposted public domain story. This was initially done to show people "Hey, short horror fiction isn't a new thing" but seemed to mutate into a slice of the content for awhile.

These days Creepypasta is kind of dead since now most of the time it is attributed to an author, or hosted on a website where they have to legally say "THIS IS FICTION DONT STAB PEOPLE TO SUMMON SLENDERMAN AND GET US SUED K PLZ THX". Gone are the days of places like /x/, Creepypasta.net or KingofWolves where you could get a bunch of weird shit out of context. Its possibly for the best as that lent itself to a lot of stolen content but at the same time I miss clicking on some random site and getting a story that really bothered me and kept me up at night.

I remember a lot of discussion online about House of Leaves in 2007/2008, around the time when creepypasta was really taking off, trust me, it was a big influence.

The really crazy thing is sometimes those old school 4chan creepypastas would actually turn out to be true, I first heard about the Denver International Airport and it's strange murals that way, I Googled it thinking it was made up and you better it scared the shit out of me when I learned they were real.

 

[Niggernerd]

I actually sleep to creepypastas ngl.
(any that don't have the cringe iconic characters like Jeff the killer) or vidya ones.

This is the only one that actually made me feel uncomfortable at night. (don't remember if this was the reader I listened to)

 

[UQ 770]

I remember a lot of discussion online about House of Leaves in 2007/2008, around the time when creepypasta was really taking off, trust me, it was a big influence.

Maybe. I dunno. It seemed to be different by the time I got into it, but by then it was during the heyday of early Creepypasta sites. I'm willing to cede that it was a progenitor but I'm not quite sure I want to accept it as part of the genre. I might have to read through it again.

The really crazy thing is sometimes those old school 4chan creepypastas would actually turn out to be true, I first heard about the Denver International Airport and it's strange murals that way, I Googled it thinking it was made up and you better it scared the shit out of me when I learned they were real.

I think a bunch of them started out as true, and then people started writing their own in a way that it could be true. That ambiguity was the best part, where your rational mind would tell you that its obviously a story written on the internet, but its presented so well it could be real. Stuff like Ted's Caving Page (barring the fake endings plagarists wrote for it) and even good old Saul Slendamen thrived on that ambiguity. Though I think Slenderman was the breaking point, where people knew it was fake but kept the ruse up to scare the shit out of younger kids using the internet. By the end of it, I wasn't surprised that Marble Hornets was breaking character and openingly advertising their DVD and Twitter on their site, probably just to remind people that hey, its just an internet thing. Calm down.

Even if someone wanted to maintain that ambiguity these days, internet detectives would get involved and hunt everything down straight to the bone, like with Mother Horse Eyes. If someone posts something mysterious online, you can bet a hundred people will be instantly tearing the web pages and coding apart to determine precisely where it came from and they'll get straight through all seven of your proxies.

I actually sleep to creepypastas ngl.
(any that don't have the cringe iconic characters like Jeff the killer) or vidya ones.

No offense, but that's kind of what I'm talking about. Back in the day, a Creepypasta was supposed to keep you up at night, wondering if that horrible thing you read about was based on anything real, even an urban legend. Now its just short horror fiction like any other.

 

[Niggernerd]

Maybe. I dunno. It seemed to be different by the time I got into it, but by then it was during the heyday of early Creepypasta sites. I'm willing to cede that it was a progenitor but I'm not quite sure I want to accept it as part of the genre. I might have to read through it again.



I think a bunch of them started out as true, and then people started writing their own in a way that it could be true. That ambiguity was the best part, where your rational mind would tell you that its obviously a story written on the internet, but its presented so well it could be real. Stuff like Ted's Caving Page (not barring the fake endings plagarists wrote for it) and even good old Saul Slendamen thrived on that ambiguity. Though I think Slenderman was the breaking point, where people knew it was fake but kept the ruse up to scare the shit out of younger kids using the internet. By the end of it, I wasn't surprised that Marble Hornets was breaking character and openingly advertising their DVD and Twitter on their site, probably just to remind people that hey, its just an internet thing. Calm down.

Even if someone wanted to maintain that ambiguity these days, internet detectives would get involved and hunt everything down straight to the bone, like with Mother Horse Eyes. If someone posts something mysterious online, you can bet a hundred people will be instantly tearing the web pages and coding apart to determine precisely where it came from and they'll get straight through all seven of your proxies.



No offense, but that's kind of what I'm talking about. Back in the day, a Creepypasta was supposed to keep you up at night, wondering if that horrible thing you read about was based on anything real, even an urban legend. Now its just short horror fiction like any other.

I get what you mean. I only read if I know I'm going to be off the following day.
I prefer long stories over shorts.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Though I think Slenderman was the breaking point, where people knew it was fake but kept the ruse up to scare the shit out of younger kids using the internet.

Which would be hilarious if it didn't end in tragedy.

 

[Vampirella]

Stuff like Ted's Caving Page

Now that's a classic. It was just believable enough to creep you out, the web page looked so normal. Now so much stuff seems to rip off the killer tape from the ring. I guess that's what passes as spooky now a days.

Question, I have some a bit of drama on a ARG reviewer known a Night Mind backed up. The last bit of drama he got into was he did a review of House of Leaves and shoe horned his own ARG in to it. He's also gotten in to a slap fight with Slime Beast, and a few other. I guess this would be the best threat to post it in?

 

[AnOminous]

I miss the skinwalker greens that used to be posted on /x/ and sometimes /b/ usually portrayed as just another anon with a personal story. Some of those were actually legitimately creepy.