The Fall of Creepypasta

Sorry this one took so long. I have been working on this one since November but some things have been getting in the way of finishing it. In fact at one point I had to have someone transcribe some of it for me because I was unable to physically type it myself.

I have been a fan of Creepypasta since 2012 and anyone who has been around since its golden age will agree with me when I say it is not what it used to be. "What has changed?" you might ask. Almost everything.

In the old days Creepypastas were anonymously posted short stories which could often be read in under ten minutes and, despite their short length, were mostly very memorable. They were the internet's equivalent of a campfire story, except most of the time, instead of "a friend of a friend", the story teller was the one who experienced the horrifying thing they were telling us about. Their crude writing (which often including a few spelling errors here and there) and anonymous posting strangely gave them a realistic feel. Sometimes they had a photo or video to accompany them which helped its readers immerse themselves into the world that the story took place in. These stories were so good that they immediately circulated all over the internet and were translated into different languages. People made Spinpastas, fan art, and fan videos which were sometimes just as good as the thing they were inspired by.

We rarely see any of this anymore. For one thing, anonymous posting went out the window long ago. In the old days authors had good stories to tell, and they wanted to tell them. Writing a good Creepypasta was an art that took time and practice which often paid off. The authors clearly loved their works which they put so much effort into that they didn't care rather or not they were credited, they just wanted to share their stories. Most stories that are written now have the author's name or screen name attached to it, often times in a vain hope to gain popularity and/or recognition. Ironically, the term Creepypasta came from the phrase "Copypasta", meaning something that can be freely copied throughout the internet. The lack of anonymity is one of the many things that destroy any shred of believability. I do want to say though that I can understand why they would want to be credited, which every artist deserves, but it just doesn't fit well with CP.

Not only do some attention seekers think they are going to become famous by writing a Creepypasta, but there is also a ton of half-hearted narrators who think that simply by reading Creepypastas they will become as popular as the more prolific, famous narrators who actually do a good job.

As I have said most Creepypastas were a perfectly short length. Of course, not all of them were short. BEN, Ted the Caver, and the original Slender Man forum were quite long, though they had a lot going on in them which kept their readers interested. Creepypastas now come in a varying length. The poorly written ones are extremely short due to their minimum amount of detail, while the longer ones have more world building and detail on marginal stuff that doesn't advance the plot in any way. While world building is a great way to help your reader get into the story they are reading about, it is often unnecessary filler and tell us about things that have nothing to do with the story. The older ones took place in the real world so we didn't need to be explained how things work. The classic Creepypastas, for the most part, are anchored in the real world. Another big change is that there are a lot of ones that take place in alternate universes, the future, or other fantasy inspired timelines and places which takes away the "Is it true?" urban legend feel.

It is hard to be original since everything has already been done before, especially if you narrow it down to one genre. Because of this the sauce on the metaphorical creepy pasta ran dry almost right away, so authors had to borrow from other stories. There is nothing wrong with borrowing from your source of inspiration, but the problem is that some authors borrow way too much and end up making blatant rip-offs. This becomes hilarious when the authors put a disclaimer at the top of a page claiming that it is not a rip-off. It wasn't a rip-off, you wouldn't have to tell us that it wasn't. It gets even funnier when they add said disclaimers and proceed to be a rip-off as early as the first paragraph.

Either due to lack of originality and/or creativity, or the fact that none of the newer ones are actually memorable, there hasn't been a viral Creepypasta in almost ten years. The older ones still stand strong with their meme statuses while the newer ones usually just get a "great story!" comment before disappearing into the shadows of the popular stories. I think it is safe to say that at this point every Creepypasta that is going to reach popularity has already been written.

There are quite a few styles of stories that are still universally allowed on almost every Creepypasta site. For some reason ritual pastas are accepted everywhere even though they are never creepy at all, and are little else than rip-offs of the Holders series. As someone with a passion for literature, I find it hard to be afraid of poetry. Poetry can be a beautiful reflection of a person's most intimate thoughts and feelings, yet for some reason people think that a few horror related things that rhyme cobbled together is scary. Not only were "creepy" clowns, dolls, children, and other innocent things never scary, but also their tropes were worn out long before the internet, and by that extension Creepypasta, ever existed. Honestly, I see all these things as a cheap way for inexperienced authors to write a story without having to put any effort into them. Even worse, none of them ever offer anything new; it's the same crap over and over again.

I think Jeff the Killer played the biggest hand in dismantling this once great internet literature genre. Somehow a mediocre story about a bullied kid who becomes a deformed serial killer gained popularity and every edgelord teenager who read it had to make their own version of it, often inserting themselves into the story. Not only are these stories poorly written (awful spelling, weak plots), but they are also offensive. Since these stories are always lacking in actual horror content authors insensitively throw in abuse, mental illness, abandonment, bullying, rape, and sometimes incest in a cheap effort to shock and scare the reader. These stories are also cartoonish. Characters can be shot, stabbed, set on fire, and drowned and somehow live, but are killed by something as light as a slap across the face. To make things worse there are probably more Jeff OCs floating around than any other subgenre of Creepypasta combined.

On a related note, these low-effort authors have also made mockeries of the classic Creepypasta characters. In some of these stories Jeff the Killer, who was already not at all threatening, is turned into a diehard romantic who falls in love with the main character. Slender Man is turned into a doting father (be it biological or through adoption) to the main character, BEN is now an eyeless version of Link with bloody sockets instead of an Elegy of Emptiness statue, the younger male characters are turned into fun loving rascals who play video games, and Smile.dog is turned into a family pet. These characters make up a happy family who have fun running around killing people for the shits and giggles of it without ever receiving their comeuppance.

Unfortunately a lot of fan art, often times in an anime-esque style, reflects this "Creepypasta family" bullcrap. I can't help but wonder if there are people out there who see these crappy Jeff OCs and happy family pictures and think that is what Creepypasta is. If there are, I feel sorry for them. They will be so turned away by crap that they will never get to experience the real versions of these stories, most of which are masterpieces (just not the Jeff ones).

If all that wasn't enough, this fandom seems to have attracted more toxic people than both the Brony and Twilight fandoms combined. For one thing, some authors are so egoistic that they will have temper tantrums over the slightest bit of criticism. I'm sure if one of them wrote a story in which a person drowned a fish in water, then was asked how that is possible, they would respond with an all-caps temper tantrum riddled with poor spelling, swear words, and threats. If you think they take constructive criticism badly, you should see how they react when their shitpastas are deleted. The Creepypasta Wiki's Deletion Appeal pages are littered with people having meltdowns because their garbage was disposed of, and as you can imagine, they are filled with the aforementioned poorly spelled all-caps tantrums. Creepypasta has strayed from its /x/ roots and has become more like /b/.

Some authors are so high on their horse that some of them will get angry if any little thing is changed about their story, be it fixing a typo or adding an image or video. On less groomed CP sites, you can find a few pages where the authors demand that no one edits their page, not even to fix a mistake, and if they do spot any errors they are to tell the author who can fix it themselves. On these less groomed CP sites you can also find variations of "MY OC! DO NOT STEAL!" which include, but are not limited to, writing fan sequels, making fan art, filming fan videos, and even narrating. Obviously these people are so high on the smell of their own farts (which they think smell good) that they don't realize that most Creepypastas raised to popularity due to the things fans created. Most of the time these creations are so shitty that literally nobody would want to make fan art of them in the first place.

The sensational Slender Man stabbing got media attention, so unsuspecting Karens got the idea that the fandom was some kind of murder cult who sacrifices children to their wicked pagan god Slender Man. To make matters worse, this story will probably never die. To this day the Creepypasta Wiki occasionally gets people who just heard about it, heralding it as if it were something that just happened yesterday. tl;dr because I don't want to sound accusing, but there were other scandals that rocked the Creepypasta fandom: the stuff Snuffbomb and J.C. the Hyena are accused of, the Creepyleaks scandal, and that sixteen year old girl who hung herself because she wanted to be with BEN. So because of all this people probably think we're all a bunch of weirdos, even though like every other fandom there is more stable people than weirdos who happen to be louder than their saner counterparts.

So because of negative media attention, unmemorable stories, and toxic people, this fandom has taken a major turn south and passers-by probably see it as another toxic group that should be avoided at all costs.

Even though I miss the days of finding something new, I'm glad all the good Creepypastas have already been done so we can enjoy them and have a complete archive. Instead of being bummed out by what is, I'm going to be glad because of what was, which can still be enjoyed. The newer Creepypastas will no doubt go forgotten and fade into obscurity, but at least the good old classics will be around forever.