When a meme actually becomes an urban legend, it goes to show what an impact social media can have in the physical world. That is exactly what happened in 2009, when a creepypasta story became so big that eventually, a couple years later, two teenage girls brutally attacked a friend in the woods of Wisconsin.
So who or what is the Slender Man? He’s described as a “tall, thin figure wearing a black suit and a white face” and became a widely spread story on websites like 4chan, places where nothing good ever happens. In 2014, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier stabbed their friend Payton Leutner 19 times in order to become “proxies” of the Slender Man. They left her for dead in the woods and were found wandering 6 miles from the crime scene, looking for Slender Man’s mansion.
With today’s culture being fascinated by true crime stories, it’s not surprising that HBO is releasing a documentary about the attempted murder. Following in the footsteps of The Jinx and Making a Murderer, the documentary tells the story of the creation of the Slender Man and leads to the trial of the two teenage girls. Oscar nominated director, Irene Taylor Brodsky, says the documentary “does not revolve around guilt or innocence, but instead the court’s deliberation whether the girls should be tried as adults or children”.
