How to Make (and Possibly Un-Make) a Digital Monster

Jeffrey A. Tolbert (author)

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Title	How to Make (and Possibly Un-Make) a Digital Monster
Contributor	Jeffrey A. Tolbert (author)
DOI	https://doi.org/10.53288/0361.1.11
Landing page	https://punctumbooks.com/titles/living-with-monsters-ethnographic-fiction-about-real-monsters/
License	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
Copyright	Jeffrey A. Tolbert
Publisher	punctum books
Published on	2023-05-11
Long abstract	Digital monsters are not present in the “real” – in this case, non-digital – world in the same way as other supernatural creatures. These monsters are “born digital”; that is, they are created with digital tools within digital contexts (e.g., photo and video editors, websites), and are encountered in the genre of expressive culture now known as “Creepypasta,” transmedial, Internet-based narratives about scary, usually supernatural, things. The most famous digital monster is Slender Man, who, despite his fictional status, was cited as the inspiration for real-world acts of violence, most notably the attempted murder of a young girl in Wisconsin in 2014. Traceable to a single creator, but passing through a long, collaborative process of telling and retelling across various Internet fora and media, Slender Man embodies the emergent qualities of much Internet culture. The story of Mr. Top Hat presented here, framed as a series of blog posts by a fictional anthropologist and reader responses to them, attempts to represent the type of collaborative dynamic that produced and continually reproduces Slender Man. Like Slender Man, “Mr. Top Hat” is surrounded by ambiguity. Are aspects of his story real, despite the evidence of his fictional status? The anthropologist, Dr. Richard Morgan, starts off as a researcher of the social processes that give rise to Creepypasta, but quickly finds that there is more at stake than the creation of a story.
Page range	pp. 175–200
Print length	26 pages
Language	English (Original)
Keywords	digital monsters creepypasta collaborative ethnography digital folklore emergence

Contributors

Jeffrey A. Tolbert

(author)

Pennsylvania State University

Jeffrey A. Tolbert is professor of American Studies and Folklore at Penn State Harrisburg. His research focuses on vernacular belief and the supernatural, popular, and traditional cultures, and digital ethnography. He is particularly interested in understanding how contemporary people integrate supernatural belief and experience into their daily, technologically mediated lives. He is co-editor (with Michael Dylan Foster) of The Folkloresque: Reframing Folklore in a Popular Culture World (Utah State University Press, 2016). His current monograph project is an exploration of the role of folklore and the folkloresque in the horror genre.