A Love Letter to Internet Horror
Recently I watched Kane Pixel’s new series which he’s been cooking up on YouTube called People Still Live Here, an in-progress web series which, alongside some short, abstract videos contains a couple of playthroughs of a game that doesn't actually exist in real life. This game is… bizarre. The first playthrough starts by letting you in on the fact that the game is based on the documented experiences of a man named Clifton Saywell, before transitioning to a world composed of wonderfully low-poly early 2000’s style graphics. Eventually the player is tasked with finding a few items before sunset comes around, as a mysterious entity known as the shepherd will chase after you if you don’t leave before the sun goes down. Between the uncanny endless green hills that are reminiscent of the windows XP Bliss wallpaper, the constant wind howling with no background music, and the weird characters that you meet, this series so far has done a wonderful job of making me feel this general sense of discomfort. Usual horror hallmarks like intense gore or jump scares seem to be completely absent, the series feels less like a horror movie and more like slowly walking through a strange dream. And I have to say, videos like this are probably some of my favorites on YouTube. There’s truly nothing like sitting down with a warm cup of tea and a snack in your nice, cozy room as you watch videos that give you a lingering sense of dread. Or artistic inspiration. Ideally both.
For some reason I’ve always had this fascination with horror, especially the scary stuff you can find on the internet. When I was 12 years old you could probably find me glued to my screen whenever I was watching some Creepypasta video on YouTube, whether that was someone narrating a story they found on the Creepypasta website or playing fan-made horror versions of popular games. These .EXE games as they were called usually featured the same horror elements: jump scares, characters looking distorted or bloody in some way, creepy music, and usually they were centered around popular children's media. Making cursed versions of games or children’s media was a trope that got overused into oblivion after a certain point, but I like to think that for many people copying those tropes was kind of a first step into storytelling or game design that was necessary for them to just get started in these hobbies, so I really can’t judge them too much.
I think that for younger me one of the most impactful stories to come out of this era of internet horror was Marble Hornets, an old and incredibly influential web series based on Slenderman lore. When I was younger the Marble Hornets lore and universe was what really got me invested in the Creepypasta fandom. I got enough into it that I'd draw some of my own Slenderman mythos inspired characters, because when you’re in middle school and have been given unrestricted access to the internet way too early that’s kind of just what you do.
Of course, eventually I grew out of my Creepypasta phase, since aside from Marble Hornets the writing for a lot of these stories just didn't really do it for me anymore. And in many ways the fandom demystified a lot of these Creepypasta characters. I will admit when I was a kid I found Jeff the Killer pretty scary when I first saw that original image, but that fear basically vanished the moment that I saw the copious amounts of anime style fanart of this guy. But despite my current lack of interest in these characters and stories, I can still acknowledge that there was a time when I did genuinely enjoy them, and I recognize the value in that. And of course the Creepypasta website did have some gems. Flawed gems, but I think any of us would have a hard time finding a piece of writing that is absolutely perfect.
I didn’t actually find out about some of the really interesting stories that Creepypasta and r/nosleep had to offer until much more recently, when I saw channels like CreepCast covering stories such as Penpal or Left Right Game. By this point I had been re-immersed in the world of internet horror due to web series like Local58 and Gemini Home Entertainment, both of which in my opinion had fascinating ideas and executed well on those ideas. The thing is, these weren’t movie studios with massive budgets trying to pull in as much profit as possible, these were simply people with interesting concepts that were thankfully able to find a medium that could be used to express that creativity without needing a massive budget. If you really want to make an analog horror, you can actually have your poor camera quality and lack of actors or high-end VFX work to your advantage by making the viewer use their mind to fill in the gaps. I've also noticed some creators that will make something that gets so much attention in this online horror space that they are then able to go on to publish physical books or work in the film industry, but of course these kinds of future career ambitions aren't necessary for anyone who wants to just post something for the fun of it.
Watching a horror movie, regardless of whether it’s a masterpiece or hilariously bad, can be a lot of fun! But at least for me, most movies don’t stick with me in the same way that certain horror web series do. This is probably partially due to the fact that movies don't feel quite as real or authentic, you can watch most modern day horror movies and just tell by the lighting and overall production quality that what you’re seeing is a movie. But when I’m watching a series like Local 58, even though I know it’s not real, it’s much easier to suspend my disbelief and have part of my brain be convinced that this could have actually been a real TV channel. Why I want my brain to be temporarily convinced that some terrifying calamity is happening, I'm not exactly sure, all I know is that if I see or hear about a cool horror series I'm eventually going to sit my ass down and watch it.