Thursday, December 20, 2012
Friday, December 7, 2012
Pay No Attention to the Post Behind the Curtain
I did not create the post from yesterday. Which now means someone has hacked the account and posted gibberish. Awesome. Because the weird was slowing down and for some reason we can't have that.
If people would give me a heads-up the second they see it post, I would be grateful. I dunno, get data somehow, maybe have Ian see where it's coming from.
Meanwhile, need to figure out why it keeps reposting every time I try to delete it.
If people would give me a heads-up the second they see it post, I would be grateful. I dunno, get data somehow, maybe have Ian see where it's coming from.
Meanwhile, need to figure out why it keeps reposting every time I try to delete it.
Thursday, December 6, 2012
herewegodowntherabbitholetherabbitholetherabbithole
i dont know what it is but it moves quietly like no feet on carpet or wood and even the cats make noise its an impossible thing it cant be real the eyes are missing all things have eyes even mountains have eyes even houses have eyes and they watch sometimes they judge sometimes they leave everything on its own but this is different this watches but it doesnt tell you what it wants at all just stays distant staring from the corner how can i make it go away i want to just make it go away
it has been there the entire time i just never saw it until now but now i know i felt it staring but no eyes it was staring the whole time i felt it on my skin like the wind except no wind no noise no sound no intention please ive done nothing just walk away from it all
oh god the hole the same rabbit hole we are all falling down the same rabbit hole in the dark may be the only safe place left but what is there may be so much worse
it has been there the entire time i just never saw it until now but now i know i felt it staring but no eyes it was staring the whole time i felt it on my skin like the wind except no wind no noise no sound no intention please ive done nothing just walk away from it all
oh god the hole the same rabbit hole we are all falling down the same rabbit hole in the dark may be the only safe place left but what is there may be so much worse
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
UGH. Stupid noises started up again last night. They got worse when it rained.
I kept thinking it was from the attic, but after I listened closer last night, some of it sounds like its in the walls.
So yeah, gotta be a rat problem. And I have to figure out how to tell Mr. Talbrie he needs an exterminator when no methods of communication are out there.
Just in case for some strange reason he stops by here HEY MR. TALBRIE. YOU HAVE RATS.
There. All bases covered.
I kept thinking it was from the attic, but after I listened closer last night, some of it sounds like its in the walls.
So yeah, gotta be a rat problem. And I have to figure out how to tell Mr. Talbrie he needs an exterminator when no methods of communication are out there.
Just in case for some strange reason he stops by here HEY MR. TALBRIE. YOU HAVE RATS.
There. All bases covered.
Monday, December 3, 2012
What the book said
I actually got this a few days ago, but time always flies.
Strangeness, I took pictures but my phone was almost dead so I plugged it in and for some reason it crashed. When I got it to finally come back on, all of the photos, plus everything from the past week were wiped. Luckily I don't take a bazillion photos like some people or I'd be really upset. (This place is like a black hole for technology for some reason.) But I did write it down (all in a big jumble so no spaces or anything) and when I got home I ran it through one of the Caesar Shift cypher decoders suggested by Ian.
Drumroll, please. The result:
Strangeness, I took pictures but my phone was almost dead so I plugged it in and for some reason it crashed. When I got it to finally come back on, all of the photos, plus everything from the past week were wiped. Luckily I don't take a bazillion photos like some people or I'd be really upset. (This place is like a black hole for technology for some reason.) But I did write it down (all in a big jumble so no spaces or anything) and when I got home I ran it through one of the Caesar Shift cypher decoders suggested by Ian.
Drumroll, please. The result:
donotreadthis. nomindcansaveyou. nothoughtcanreleaseyou. youaretrapped. emptinessistheonlyescape.
And I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it's gibberish. I mean, the first thing it says is DON'T read this.
My curiousity is satisfied, I'm done and I'm not going any further with this crap. Except I keep saying that. I guess it bugs me because none of this makes sense and I would like it to. I study people, but here's this thing I just don't get. Probably because you need to be a psychologist. Whatever.
Coming up next on the blog, more inane updates about my paper. Oh, and I was wrong, I guess the Slender series aren't taking a dive so I'm going to go back and catch up on what was missed. There's this whole morbid curiosity bit to it at this point. When will the final train wreck happen.... Or maybe one of them ends happily. I'd like to see it happen. It seems like something that strikes so deep a chord with people needs to have hope around the edges.
Monday, November 26, 2012
Late update is late
So.... Thanksgiving happened! Yeah! But I'm not going to write about that because mine was boring and the rest of the world wrote about it. I'll just leave that to the internet to talk about.
Ian finally got back to me and said that I was missing some letters or something with the Caesar shift cipher because he got a few phrases out of it, but the rest made no sense. I asked if he meant if it meant like crazy no-sense because you'd sort of think that's what you'd see, but he said it wasn't actual words, just letters. So I'm going to see about going back to the police station to get pictures of it or something and see if I can't translate it myself. Now that I know there's online things that'll do that for you, I'm kinda curious about what it says. He said the phrase "no mind" came up and I can't imagine a context where that makes sense, so now I'm curious.
The book, btw, is The Prophet by Khalil Gibran, obviously really really modified. The only part not subject to weirdness was the part on houses. Here's the entry for anybody still following along with Jessie's Weird Little Game of Life:
Build of your imaginings a bower in the wilderness ere you build a house within the city walls.
For even as you have home-comings in your twilight, so has the wanderer in you, the ever distant and alone.
Your house is your larger body.
It grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the night; and it is not dreamless. Does not your house dream? And dreaming, leave the city for grove or hilltop?
Would that I could gather your houses into my hand, and like a sower scatter them in forest and meadow.
Would the valleys were your streets, and the green paths your alleys, that you might seek one another through vineyards, and come with the fragrance of the earth in your garments.
But these things are not yet to be.
In their fear your forefathers gathered you too near together. And that fear shall endure a little longer. A little longer shall your city walls separate your hearths from your fields.
And tell me, people of Orphalese, what have you in these houses? And what is it you guard with fastened doors?
Have you peace, the quiet urge that reveals your power?
Have you remembrances, the glimmering arches that span the summits of the mind?
Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountain?
Tell me, have you these in your houses?
Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and becomes a host, and then a master?
Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires.
Though its hands are silken, its heart is of iron.
It lulls you to sleep only to stand by your bed and jeer at the dignity of the flesh.
It makes mock of your sound senses, and lays them in thistledown like fragile vessels.
Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.
But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped nor tamed.
Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast.
It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that guards the eye.
You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors, nor bend your heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor fear to breathe lest walls should crack and fall down.
You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living.
And though of magnificence and splendor, your house shall not hold your secret nor shelter your longing.
For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night.
The part that was specifically not marked talked about something sneaking in and becoming your master.
So.... yeah. Still don't know what to make of it, but that's creepy as fuck.
I also realized that the reason I recognized some of the artwork. There's a copy of The Prophet downstairs in the bookcase, except it's a nice copy with a hardcover and not all of those pictures of the people in it. Little bit of synchronicity for you there.
Still no sign of hoodie. I think maybe the Summer of Weird starring him is finally over.
Ian finally got back to me and said that I was missing some letters or something with the Caesar shift cipher because he got a few phrases out of it, but the rest made no sense. I asked if he meant if it meant like crazy no-sense because you'd sort of think that's what you'd see, but he said it wasn't actual words, just letters. So I'm going to see about going back to the police station to get pictures of it or something and see if I can't translate it myself. Now that I know there's online things that'll do that for you, I'm kinda curious about what it says. He said the phrase "no mind" came up and I can't imagine a context where that makes sense, so now I'm curious.
The book, btw, is The Prophet by Khalil Gibran, obviously really really modified. The only part not subject to weirdness was the part on houses. Here's the entry for anybody still following along with Jessie's Weird Little Game of Life:
Then a mason came forth and said, “Speak to us of Houses.”
And he answered and said:Build of your imaginings a bower in the wilderness ere you build a house within the city walls.
For even as you have home-comings in your twilight, so has the wanderer in you, the ever distant and alone.
Your house is your larger body.
It grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the night; and it is not dreamless. Does not your house dream? And dreaming, leave the city for grove or hilltop?
Would that I could gather your houses into my hand, and like a sower scatter them in forest and meadow.
Would the valleys were your streets, and the green paths your alleys, that you might seek one another through vineyards, and come with the fragrance of the earth in your garments.
But these things are not yet to be.
In their fear your forefathers gathered you too near together. And that fear shall endure a little longer. A little longer shall your city walls separate your hearths from your fields.
And tell me, people of Orphalese, what have you in these houses? And what is it you guard with fastened doors?
Have you peace, the quiet urge that reveals your power?
Have you remembrances, the glimmering arches that span the summits of the mind?
Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountain?
Tell me, have you these in your houses?
Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and becomes a host, and then a master?
Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires.
Though its hands are silken, its heart is of iron.
It lulls you to sleep only to stand by your bed and jeer at the dignity of the flesh.
It makes mock of your sound senses, and lays them in thistledown like fragile vessels.
Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.
But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped nor tamed.
Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast.
It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that guards the eye.
You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors, nor bend your heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor fear to breathe lest walls should crack and fall down.
You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living.
And though of magnificence and splendor, your house shall not hold your secret nor shelter your longing.
For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night.
The part that was specifically not marked talked about something sneaking in and becoming your master.
So.... yeah. Still don't know what to make of it, but that's creepy as fuck.
I also realized that the reason I recognized some of the artwork. There's a copy of The Prophet downstairs in the bookcase, except it's a nice copy with a hardcover and not all of those pictures of the people in it. Little bit of synchronicity for you there.
Still no sign of hoodie. I think maybe the Summer of Weird starring him is finally over.
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Break on Thru to the Other Side...
I took it. I took the money and I'm here and this is probably retarded beyond words but it's over and I committed. I deposited the check, which Mr. Talbrie said he would be watching for as a sign I'd accepted the extension. So that's it, I can't back out.
Except I could. But I won't because I promised and I'm that girl that always keeps her word and lets you copy her homework when you forgot yours.
The truth is that I'm in real dire straits money-wise. I was down to my last $10 and was trying to see if I had anything to pawn so I could afford gas for the car. Now I can afford gas and actual food besides ramen. And I guess even better, it let me relax to focus on my schoolwork again.
I updated the police about the letter, so they're not thinking it's a missing person's deal any,ore. They think it's weird as fuck, but nothing illegal is happening so they're just letting the whole thing drop. They still keep an eye out for hoodie-guy, although the patrol car only comes around once a day anymore.
Still no sign of hoodie-boy. That needs to stay that way.
My academic advisor is starting to come around to a few of my ideas on my paper. I have to tweak it so it covers the rise and death of a few more memes, but I already have years of data on Nyancat and the Derp thing. (Was just tracking that for my own amusement) so it's not so big a deal.
I don't want to jinx it, but it looks like things may be starting to look up!
I guess a last little hommage to the original intent of this whole thing.... Looks like all of the original blogs and a few of the second wave are starting to wrap things up. Jeff is dead from Everyman Hybrid, there's some Livestream thing tonight for Tribe Twelve that people think won't end well, and Marble Hornets looks like it's gearing up to finally end it all. Kinda funny how these things happen, and how things rise and fall together. Like ideas. Like my idea to purely write a Slenderman phenomenon paper. It's falling away as the main driving vlogs/blogs are as well. Is it weird I find that poetic?
The house is back to creaking, but I think it's just the heat since that's on. Everything you were scared of always looks so much lamer in the light of day, doesn't it?? Anyway, I can live with noises.
Except I could. But I won't because I promised and I'm that girl that always keeps her word and lets you copy her homework when you forgot yours.
The truth is that I'm in real dire straits money-wise. I was down to my last $10 and was trying to see if I had anything to pawn so I could afford gas for the car. Now I can afford gas and actual food besides ramen. And I guess even better, it let me relax to focus on my schoolwork again.
I updated the police about the letter, so they're not thinking it's a missing person's deal any,ore. They think it's weird as fuck, but nothing illegal is happening so they're just letting the whole thing drop. They still keep an eye out for hoodie-guy, although the patrol car only comes around once a day anymore.
Still no sign of hoodie-boy. That needs to stay that way.
My academic advisor is starting to come around to a few of my ideas on my paper. I have to tweak it so it covers the rise and death of a few more memes, but I already have years of data on Nyancat and the Derp thing. (Was just tracking that for my own amusement) so it's not so big a deal.
I don't want to jinx it, but it looks like things may be starting to look up!
I guess a last little hommage to the original intent of this whole thing.... Looks like all of the original blogs and a few of the second wave are starting to wrap things up. Jeff is dead from Everyman Hybrid, there's some Livestream thing tonight for Tribe Twelve that people think won't end well, and Marble Hornets looks like it's gearing up to finally end it all. Kinda funny how these things happen, and how things rise and fall together. Like ideas. Like my idea to purely write a Slenderman phenomenon paper. It's falling away as the main driving vlogs/blogs are as well. Is it weird I find that poetic?
The house is back to creaking, but I think it's just the heat since that's on. Everything you were scared of always looks so much lamer in the light of day, doesn't it?? Anyway, I can live with noises.
Friday, November 9, 2012
My Inner Debate is Epic, Yo...
No more of hoodie guy. I am hoping that he has decided to leave strange scribbled-up presents on other people's doorsteps and go about his business.
I need to tell you about TODAY'S strangeness. I'm stressing that because every day there's a little something special here.
I arrived home after another fruitless attempt to redeem myself with my academic advisor to find a courier standing on the sidewalk looking confused. He looked even more confused when I pulled in to the driveway. Maybe a long day or something, who knows.
I asked him if he was lost and he just held out a package to me. "Ten Hundred Holloway?" he asked.
"Well, I say One Thousand, but since next door is Nine Hundred..."
And the guy was still holding it out to me and I realized he wanted me to take it. I'm a little weird about packages right now so I tried to read the label first. Weirdly, it had my name on it.
So I'm thinking fabulous, another book right as I'm relaxing.
But the guy's standing there with this funny look on his face holding the package out to me, and I can tell he's not going to let it go until I take it.
So I take it. And then I see that it's from Mr. Talbrie. And I give the biggest sigh of relief ever because the guy looks at me with a raised eyebrow, then wishes me a good day and jumps in his truck and hauls out of there.
I am now totally convinced that people are just utterly fucking insane in this part of the world, and he was a part of that.
The package, it turns out, was a letter from Mr. Talbrie explaining what the hell was going on. He was "sourcing a job" up north and was actually living in a furnished apartment somewhere with his family. They were trying to sell the house and everything in it, and for the time being he wants me to stick around and watch it.
And I was about ready to drop the letter in the street and finish taking my stuff out of the guest bedroom when I saw the check that was included. Payment for sticking around until everything was liquidated and making sure nothing was vandalized and the pets were cared for, the letter explained.
Written on that check was a number bigger than just about any other number I'd ever seen.
So I'm sitting here in the living room with the dog asleep on my toes with my brain going crazy. On one hand, I'm worried hoodie-guy will come back around. On the other hand, I have nowhere to go and I've been putting my belongings back in a storage unit where it was all dumped after I left student housing early this spring. And that's not to mention the weird sounds or the fact that people around here generally act like freaks about this place.
I'm not sure what to do, guys. It's a lot of money. A LOT of money. And the Talbries seem to need the help. I would really hate to suddenly just jet and leave them with nobody to watch after the critters, you know?
Tonight's going to be spent chewing on raw Pop Tarts and gummi bears and drinking the last of the flat Mt. Dew left in the kitchen. After that, maybe crank the TV and watch a movie until I pass out. When I wake up I'll make the decision.
As a side note, I noticed some of the comments I made on another blog have disappeared, and I apologize if I was being waaay too friendly and stuff. I don't know you guys, and I didn't mean to get all up in your thing. I hope you'll forgive me, Tom and crew. I was just wanting to help but you guys obviously got your own thing going on, so I'll keep to my thing. Good luck with that idiot dressing up as Himself.
G'night internet.
I need to tell you about TODAY'S strangeness. I'm stressing that because every day there's a little something special here.
I arrived home after another fruitless attempt to redeem myself with my academic advisor to find a courier standing on the sidewalk looking confused. He looked even more confused when I pulled in to the driveway. Maybe a long day or something, who knows.
I asked him if he was lost and he just held out a package to me. "Ten Hundred Holloway?" he asked.
"Well, I say One Thousand, but since next door is Nine Hundred..."
And the guy was still holding it out to me and I realized he wanted me to take it. I'm a little weird about packages right now so I tried to read the label first. Weirdly, it had my name on it.
So I'm thinking fabulous, another book right as I'm relaxing.
But the guy's standing there with this funny look on his face holding the package out to me, and I can tell he's not going to let it go until I take it.
So I take it. And then I see that it's from Mr. Talbrie. And I give the biggest sigh of relief ever because the guy looks at me with a raised eyebrow, then wishes me a good day and jumps in his truck and hauls out of there.
I am now totally convinced that people are just utterly fucking insane in this part of the world, and he was a part of that.
The package, it turns out, was a letter from Mr. Talbrie explaining what the hell was going on. He was "sourcing a job" up north and was actually living in a furnished apartment somewhere with his family. They were trying to sell the house and everything in it, and for the time being he wants me to stick around and watch it.
And I was about ready to drop the letter in the street and finish taking my stuff out of the guest bedroom when I saw the check that was included. Payment for sticking around until everything was liquidated and making sure nothing was vandalized and the pets were cared for, the letter explained.
Written on that check was a number bigger than just about any other number I'd ever seen.
So I'm sitting here in the living room with the dog asleep on my toes with my brain going crazy. On one hand, I'm worried hoodie-guy will come back around. On the other hand, I have nowhere to go and I've been putting my belongings back in a storage unit where it was all dumped after I left student housing early this spring. And that's not to mention the weird sounds or the fact that people around here generally act like freaks about this place.
I'm not sure what to do, guys. It's a lot of money. A LOT of money. And the Talbries seem to need the help. I would really hate to suddenly just jet and leave them with nobody to watch after the critters, you know?
Tonight's going to be spent chewing on raw Pop Tarts and gummi bears and drinking the last of the flat Mt. Dew left in the kitchen. After that, maybe crank the TV and watch a movie until I pass out. When I wake up I'll make the decision.
As a side note, I noticed some of the comments I made on another blog have disappeared, and I apologize if I was being waaay too friendly and stuff. I don't know you guys, and I didn't mean to get all up in your thing. I hope you'll forgive me, Tom and crew. I was just wanting to help but you guys obviously got your own thing going on, so I'll keep to my thing. Good luck with that idiot dressing up as Himself.
G'night internet.
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Wherein All The Things Come Crashing Down
The house survived the hurricane, and everybody inside is well. Dog and cats seemed mostly unconcerned while the lights flickered around us. Me, I was curled up with a blankie and candles ready to survive on water and gummi bears for a few days, if necessary.
Halloween snuck up on me. I turned around and suddenly there were decorations in yards and I had to run and buy the leftover crappy candy from the Acme grocery store a few miles away, and the little candy-grubbing bastards made faces as I handed it out. Fine. Whatever. It's not my place, you're lucky you go anything.
It's amazing how living in this place for a few months has made me just really hate teenagers as a species.
You will note that it is November 4th. I don't remember if I posted it or not, as every single blog post between the 10th and now got eaten (I'm sitting in a Starbucks posting this, hoping this makes it through) but I never got an extension request from Mr. Talbrie. It was with great relief that the 15th, then the 16th, 17th and onward slid by without a single email asking me to stay longer. I wanted out of here, and it was going to be a huge relief to hand the keys over and leave.
Except Mr. Talbrie didn't show up on the 31st.
Honestly, I went and grabbed the candy so he would have something to hand out and not be blind-sided by hundreds of costumed kiddos looking for glucose and fructose. No good deed...
I thought maybe I misunderstood so I waited, packing the last of my things. I hung out and read a book all day November 1st, being careful not to dirty any more dishes, that the dishwasher was run and emptied. God, I must've checked the trash cans 5 times to make sure I hadn't left garbage in them. I even dusted, even though he'd asked me to leave things alone. I just didn't want him to come home tired with his family to a house that needed to be cleaned. I remember what a drag it was as a kid to have to put away your suitcase and stuff after a trip to the Shore, I can't imagine what a whole house is like.
Except... no Mr. Talbrie. No Mrs. Talbrie. No kids. Nothing.
I started calling at that point, leaving a voicemail, asking if everything was okay. No response.
Same for November 2nd. Same for yesterday.
I have called him easily a dozen times now, to the point that his voicemail is now telling me it's full and cant take any more messages. I took to emailing him, but there's been no response. I even tried texting, but got a message back that his phone doesn't support texts (?! really? in this day and age?!?).
So it's November 4th, and I've been sitting here in this huge house by myself, dog and two cats crashed out on the floor around me, and no idea what to do next.
I called the police a little bit ago to tell them about what was going on and maybe get an idea of what to do next. I'm sure they're getting tired of hearing from me. The conversation in my head goes something like this:
*cop on phone covers mouthpiece* "Hey guys! Guys! It's that crazy chick that gets weirded out by everything down on Holloway!"
*other cop* "Oh god, her again? What now? She seeing aliens or ghosts or something?"
*cop on phone* "Naw, the owner of the house just disappeared. You know, normal stuff..."
Ugh.
But they took me seriously, especially what with weird packages showing up and stalkery guys wandering the back yard. They came to the conclusion, as I did, that maybe we needed to be worried about the Talbries and someone who had it out for them. So they're trying to get in touch with them too, now.
God, in the middle of all of this, I'd almost forgotten. Blue hoodie guy hasn't been around the past few weeks. Just up and disappeared. I am wondering if he didn't realize the Talbries aren't here and moved to find them.... but wow is that dark and wow do I not want to think I'm in the home of a murdered family. Wow. Yeah. No, not going to dwell on that.
So I'm sitting here sipping at a coffee I can't really afford so I can steal the wifi and update this. It looks like I'll need to leave in order to do that for now, because stuff can come IN on the net connection at the house, but things don't leave. It's like a weird dead zone for electronics. Except for that back corner there.
Before I end this, I should mention... Ian took a look at the jumbled letters and said that it might be something called a "Caesar shift cypher" and that he would look in to it and get back to me. He's got a lot going on, so messing with word puzzles isn't a priority. I don't blame him. And I'm sure the police figured it out already. Though not telling me about it makes me wonder if it's something really bad or not.
I have turned in to the jumpiest fraidy-cat since moving in to that house, honestly.
I think if I don't get news by tomorrow I'll try to figure out how to leave. I don't want to leave the animals there without somebody to feed them, so that's the main sticking point. I don't know what to do about all of this. I've never run in to anything like it before. I just know I don't want to house-sit anymore. I want to get on with my life.
Halloween snuck up on me. I turned around and suddenly there were decorations in yards and I had to run and buy the leftover crappy candy from the Acme grocery store a few miles away, and the little candy-grubbing bastards made faces as I handed it out. Fine. Whatever. It's not my place, you're lucky you go anything.
It's amazing how living in this place for a few months has made me just really hate teenagers as a species.
You will note that it is November 4th. I don't remember if I posted it or not, as every single blog post between the 10th and now got eaten (I'm sitting in a Starbucks posting this, hoping this makes it through) but I never got an extension request from Mr. Talbrie. It was with great relief that the 15th, then the 16th, 17th and onward slid by without a single email asking me to stay longer. I wanted out of here, and it was going to be a huge relief to hand the keys over and leave.
Except Mr. Talbrie didn't show up on the 31st.
Honestly, I went and grabbed the candy so he would have something to hand out and not be blind-sided by hundreds of costumed kiddos looking for glucose and fructose. No good deed...
I thought maybe I misunderstood so I waited, packing the last of my things. I hung out and read a book all day November 1st, being careful not to dirty any more dishes, that the dishwasher was run and emptied. God, I must've checked the trash cans 5 times to make sure I hadn't left garbage in them. I even dusted, even though he'd asked me to leave things alone. I just didn't want him to come home tired with his family to a house that needed to be cleaned. I remember what a drag it was as a kid to have to put away your suitcase and stuff after a trip to the Shore, I can't imagine what a whole house is like.
Except... no Mr. Talbrie. No Mrs. Talbrie. No kids. Nothing.
I started calling at that point, leaving a voicemail, asking if everything was okay. No response.
Same for November 2nd. Same for yesterday.
I have called him easily a dozen times now, to the point that his voicemail is now telling me it's full and cant take any more messages. I took to emailing him, but there's been no response. I even tried texting, but got a message back that his phone doesn't support texts (?! really? in this day and age?!?).
So it's November 4th, and I've been sitting here in this huge house by myself, dog and two cats crashed out on the floor around me, and no idea what to do next.
I called the police a little bit ago to tell them about what was going on and maybe get an idea of what to do next. I'm sure they're getting tired of hearing from me. The conversation in my head goes something like this:
*cop on phone covers mouthpiece* "Hey guys! Guys! It's that crazy chick that gets weirded out by everything down on Holloway!"
*other cop* "Oh god, her again? What now? She seeing aliens or ghosts or something?"
*cop on phone* "Naw, the owner of the house just disappeared. You know, normal stuff..."
Ugh.
But they took me seriously, especially what with weird packages showing up and stalkery guys wandering the back yard. They came to the conclusion, as I did, that maybe we needed to be worried about the Talbries and someone who had it out for them. So they're trying to get in touch with them too, now.
God, in the middle of all of this, I'd almost forgotten. Blue hoodie guy hasn't been around the past few weeks. Just up and disappeared. I am wondering if he didn't realize the Talbries aren't here and moved to find them.... but wow is that dark and wow do I not want to think I'm in the home of a murdered family. Wow. Yeah. No, not going to dwell on that.
So I'm sitting here sipping at a coffee I can't really afford so I can steal the wifi and update this. It looks like I'll need to leave in order to do that for now, because stuff can come IN on the net connection at the house, but things don't leave. It's like a weird dead zone for electronics. Except for that back corner there.
Before I end this, I should mention... Ian took a look at the jumbled letters and said that it might be something called a "Caesar shift cypher" and that he would look in to it and get back to me. He's got a lot going on, so messing with word puzzles isn't a priority. I don't blame him. And I'm sure the police figured it out already. Though not telling me about it makes me wonder if it's something really bad or not.
I have turned in to the jumpiest fraidy-cat since moving in to that house, honestly.
I think if I don't get news by tomorrow I'll try to figure out how to leave. I don't want to leave the animals there without somebody to feed them, so that's the main sticking point. I don't know what to do about all of this. I've never run in to anything like it before. I just know I don't want to house-sit anymore. I want to get on with my life.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Transcribing
Talked with the police, and they were polite and accommodating to my concerns when I showed them the package and told them what had been happening.
They agreed it was really freaky and asked to keep the book to take pictures of it so they'll have it for a bit. I asked to have it back when they were done. It seems like my tendency to try and gloss things over needs a constant reminder that this time I shouldn't just write it off.
They also agreed to send a patrol car around the block twice a day until I'm out of there at the end of the month, and advised me to call immediately if I spotted the guy again.
I feel a little better about things now.
I managed to write the letters down this morning before handing over the book. Here they are for everybody's edification. They're complete nonsense, i couldn't even really make an anagram from them:
H S R S X V I E H X L M W . R S G M ( here it's sloppy and both an R and an E might be circled)
H G E R W E Z I C S Y . R S X L S Y K L X G E R V I P I E W I C S Y .
C S Y E V I X V E T T H . X M R I W W M W X L I S R (there's a P and period both circled so maybe both?)
C I W G E T I .
Following that, the word "house" is circled five times in the middle of text that wasn't totally crossed off.
When I get the book back I'll post actual pictures of everything. Maybe it makes sense in context to somebody out there.
They agreed it was really freaky and asked to keep the book to take pictures of it so they'll have it for a bit. I asked to have it back when they were done. It seems like my tendency to try and gloss things over needs a constant reminder that this time I shouldn't just write it off.
They also agreed to send a patrol car around the block twice a day until I'm out of there at the end of the month, and advised me to call immediately if I spotted the guy again.
I feel a little better about things now.
I managed to write the letters down this morning before handing over the book. Here they are for everybody's edification. They're complete nonsense, i couldn't even really make an anagram from them:
H S R S X V I E H X L M W . R S G M ( here it's sloppy and both an R and an E might be circled)
H G E R W E Z I C S Y . R S X L S Y K L X G E R V I P I E W I C S Y .
C S Y E V I X V E T T H . X M R I W W M W X L I S R (there's a P and period both circled so maybe both?)
C I W G E T I .
Following that, the word "house" is circled five times in the middle of text that wasn't totally crossed off.
When I get the book back I'll post actual pictures of everything. Maybe it makes sense in context to somebody out there.
Something bugging me.
I can't shake the feeling that I've seen some of those pictures before elsewhere. Some of the words, too, are tickling my mind. Think I need to do some investigation.
Was going to transcribe everything that was circled, but I'm exhausted so I'm just going to crash. Even though my mind is racing I have a feeling for once I will probably pass out as soon as I crawl in to bed. I promise I'll do more in the morning and maybe take some photos so people can help me figure out what this stuff is about before I go to the police station.
Sweet dreams, internet.
Was going to transcribe everything that was circled, but I'm exhausted so I'm just going to crash. Even though my mind is racing I have a feeling for once I will probably pass out as soon as I crawl in to bed. I promise I'll do more in the morning and maybe take some photos so people can help me figure out what this stuff is about before I go to the police station.
Sweet dreams, internet.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
The Package Opened.
I'm sorry about that really abrupt blog entry. I know I scared you guys and I'm really sorry. I texted people back as fast as I could to let them know everything was cool. Except it might not be, so maybe keep your phones close at hand over the next few days.
Allow me to show you how I knew the package was meant for me.
I was only mildly worried before, but now seeing this, this seems like the work of a crazy person. It's scribbled on, and random letters and words are blocked out that don't seem to have any meaning.
And despite all of that, somebody REALLY wanted me to read this.
I'm going to show it to the police in the morning and get their take on it and let them know about our hoodied friend that's been around. Maybe see if they can't send a patrol car around the neighborhood a bit more frequently.
As of now I'm just waiting for the end of the month and praying there is no extension request. I'll have to turn Mr. Talbrie down at this point, I don't feel safe here anymore. Which leaves me in a lurch for house and income. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
I keep jumping every time I hear something creak now... my nerves are shot. I gotta go to bed.
I suppose the bright side to all of this is that, however they managed to steal my hoodie out from under my nose, they also managed to return it that same way. I can stop freezing in the evenings, anyway.
Allow me to show you how I knew the package was meant for me.
If that isn't blunt and to the point, I don't know what is. It's nothing special as far as I can tell. A McDonald's napkin with red sharpie on it. It still smelled like permanent marker when I found it in my hoodie's pocket.
I debated not doing what it demanded. I almost just threw it and the package away. But the problem with human beings is we are curious beasts and I let it get the better of me. I did open it.
Took a video for posterity, even.
I was only mildly worried before, but now seeing this, this seems like the work of a crazy person. It's scribbled on, and random letters and words are blocked out that don't seem to have any meaning.
And despite all of that, somebody REALLY wanted me to read this.
I'm going to show it to the police in the morning and get their take on it and let them know about our hoodied friend that's been around. Maybe see if they can't send a patrol car around the neighborhood a bit more frequently.
As of now I'm just waiting for the end of the month and praying there is no extension request. I'll have to turn Mr. Talbrie down at this point, I don't feel safe here anymore. Which leaves me in a lurch for house and income. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
I keep jumping every time I hear something creak now... my nerves are shot. I gotta go to bed.
I suppose the bright side to all of this is that, however they managed to steal my hoodie out from under my nose, they also managed to return it that same way. I can stop freezing in the evenings, anyway.
Friday, October 5, 2012
...
I now know that the package was meant for me.
I also know that I was right about being watched.
Will post more later and explain better, promise.
I also know that I was right about being watched.
Will post more later and explain better, promise.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Found something out there in the internet wilds...
...and I feel sorry for these poor guys, really I do.
The Mythos Project
Because instead of having an entire year to tear apart and analyze data, apparently they're doing it in a month.
Maybe I can help them. Maybe they can help me.... we shall see.
The blog is bookmarked and I will be going back to it to see how things pan out, and to watch their take on the mythos. In looking over the information, I realized I had been learning this stuff along with everything else... I could tell you He's a tall, slender guy lacking a face and yet dressed to the 9's... I could tell you how He operates, too, and where he cropped up first. It's funny what you learn on the side when you're chasing a subject.
I just found out the other blog posts that I thought I was posting never showed up. So something is definitely wrong with the internets at the house. I guess I'll be blogging from a cafe until Mr. Talbrie gets back.
If he ever does. Honestly I am expecting another extension request halfway through October at this point. With no job prospects on the horizon for right now, I guess I'll stick around for as long as he wants.
I miss my hoodie and my video camera. :(
The Mythos Project
Because instead of having an entire year to tear apart and analyze data, apparently they're doing it in a month.
Maybe I can help them. Maybe they can help me.... we shall see.
The blog is bookmarked and I will be going back to it to see how things pan out, and to watch their take on the mythos. In looking over the information, I realized I had been learning this stuff along with everything else... I could tell you He's a tall, slender guy lacking a face and yet dressed to the 9's... I could tell you how He operates, too, and where he cropped up first. It's funny what you learn on the side when you're chasing a subject.
I just found out the other blog posts that I thought I was posting never showed up. So something is definitely wrong with the internets at the house. I guess I'll be blogging from a cafe until Mr. Talbrie gets back.
If he ever does. Honestly I am expecting another extension request halfway through October at this point. With no job prospects on the horizon for right now, I guess I'll stick around for as long as he wants.
I miss my hoodie and my video camera. :(
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
The Auto-Immune Reaction
It was in revising my decision to only follow two new blogs because they did NOT follow the cookie cutter I'd seen so far that I came to an interesting observation about the entire Slenderverse.
That being - mainly that they really want to help each other out. Like, to an extreme end.
I had been focusing so much on the isolating nature of this entire tulpa that I completely missed the fact that we, as humans, found a way to overcome that. Being social creatures, we immediately decide to get social about this stuff.
If the tulpas ride our thoughts and information, then so can other constructs. Being that we were forged from the same tessellations in nature that spawned vectors for disease, for viruses and fungi and bacteria and even for population fluctuation, it makes sense that any phenomenon borne from us would be subject to those same laws. That is to say... once an idea gets around, people play with it. They help one another out with it. They form entire communities around a simple thought or concept. And this is why I love them dearly. Because we can forge entire relationships based solely on one small thing that is not anywhere else in the world except between us. This was something I came across when tracing the history of the otaku community a few years back.
So, okay, yeah, I'm babbling. But let me try to make a little more sense.
I started following BrokenHeartChronicle and ProjectNewWold because, like the others, they had JUST started. And because I was being sexist in my data gathering, slightly. I'm watching to see what patterns they follow in order to try and map the evolution of an idea.
And what was interesting was to see the jump in people that found the blogs and started offering up any information they had, even if it was conflicting information or stuff that wasn't necessarily helpful right that second. People were doing their best to throw as much info as was known about Him at these poor guys (and gals, it was the same with Willow Adder and Ashesfallbro). It was like they needed to help these poor people, and even though they didn't know exactly how to do it they were going to try.
Which I think reflects back on another property of mimetics... the data may be using us to reproduce, but in the end we control and change the data. We shift aspects, we change the delivery or the nuance of it. In the end we decide whether it has control over us or not, when we are able to step back and take note of how it occurs, this data transmission.
Or perhaps the data has figured out how to work best with our biology and knows how to ride our social nature far better than we could intimate.
But to start thinking down that line is to invite motive and awareness to the phenomenon, and I really don't think an idea can have an agenda except to stay fresh.
Have I referenced Pontypool yet in any of this? Pontypool is the perfect example of what I'm talking about.... the replication of something without motive, purely seeking to stay alive. It was an amazing horror movie. Behold, internet:
And despite what it says, it isn't a zombie movie. It's a virus movie. Think like The Crazies, or 28 Days Later.
The only difference, and the most striking and brilliant part of this, is where they advise people that what is deadly is not the people, but the communication. But it isn't deadly on purpose. (This will be possibly spoiler-y) It simply views the host as a vector to continue transmission, it can't equate it with someone who has hopes or dreams or a family.
Such is the way with all data transmission, though far less fatally and aggressively.
Such is the way with Him, supposedly.
I'm starting to think that Slenderman is the most brilliant personification of our own fears and understanding of the dangers of a transmitted idea. It is a reflection of how we feel about this time when all of our information is no longer our own, no longer private. He is the silent watcher, the great Unknown Thing in the background, the faceless group of people who see our blog posts and our tweets or skim over our credit card information on a daily basis. He is every person who could hurt us in the garage late at night that we don't see, or the security guard behind the camera there who might be asleep on the job.
Slenderman is effective because he is the gray space of what we know and don't know, and our fears of what is out there. Slenderman is every person who reads this entry that I don't personally know, or every person who watches a video on YouTube without liking or commentings. He's the untraceable in a world that is becoming far more traceable every second. He's what we want to return to, and what we fear falling total victim to.
We know how to counter oblivion and anonymity with community and with information. We know how to stop the ingress of unwanted attention and snooping... with community and with information. It is a natural and almost auto-immune reaction I am seeing here in these comments for people to surge forward and try to help someone out in this fashion. People being people. God, I want to hug them all for their need to help out. It's amazing.
I can't imagine what it would be like if any of this were really going on, but to see that kind of response would probably be amazingly heartening.
(As an aside, I think we can safely say HE isn't real. I would be dead by now, with as much as I've been staring at pictures and reading about Him.)
I should not write these so late at night, but the noises and insomnia have me again. Maybe I'll try to find Pontypool online and watch it. Damned good Canadian horror film.
That being - mainly that they really want to help each other out. Like, to an extreme end.
I had been focusing so much on the isolating nature of this entire tulpa that I completely missed the fact that we, as humans, found a way to overcome that. Being social creatures, we immediately decide to get social about this stuff.
If the tulpas ride our thoughts and information, then so can other constructs. Being that we were forged from the same tessellations in nature that spawned vectors for disease, for viruses and fungi and bacteria and even for population fluctuation, it makes sense that any phenomenon borne from us would be subject to those same laws. That is to say... once an idea gets around, people play with it. They help one another out with it. They form entire communities around a simple thought or concept. And this is why I love them dearly. Because we can forge entire relationships based solely on one small thing that is not anywhere else in the world except between us. This was something I came across when tracing the history of the otaku community a few years back.
So, okay, yeah, I'm babbling. But let me try to make a little more sense.
I started following BrokenHeartChronicle and ProjectNewWold because, like the others, they had JUST started. And because I was being sexist in my data gathering, slightly. I'm watching to see what patterns they follow in order to try and map the evolution of an idea.
And what was interesting was to see the jump in people that found the blogs and started offering up any information they had, even if it was conflicting information or stuff that wasn't necessarily helpful right that second. People were doing their best to throw as much info as was known about Him at these poor guys (and gals, it was the same with Willow Adder and Ashesfallbro). It was like they needed to help these poor people, and even though they didn't know exactly how to do it they were going to try.
Which I think reflects back on another property of mimetics... the data may be using us to reproduce, but in the end we control and change the data. We shift aspects, we change the delivery or the nuance of it. In the end we decide whether it has control over us or not, when we are able to step back and take note of how it occurs, this data transmission.
Or perhaps the data has figured out how to work best with our biology and knows how to ride our social nature far better than we could intimate.
But to start thinking down that line is to invite motive and awareness to the phenomenon, and I really don't think an idea can have an agenda except to stay fresh.
Have I referenced Pontypool yet in any of this? Pontypool is the perfect example of what I'm talking about.... the replication of something without motive, purely seeking to stay alive. It was an amazing horror movie. Behold, internet:
And despite what it says, it isn't a zombie movie. It's a virus movie. Think like The Crazies, or 28 Days Later.
The only difference, and the most striking and brilliant part of this, is where they advise people that what is deadly is not the people, but the communication. But it isn't deadly on purpose. (This will be possibly spoiler-y) It simply views the host as a vector to continue transmission, it can't equate it with someone who has hopes or dreams or a family.
Such is the way with all data transmission, though far less fatally and aggressively.
Such is the way with Him, supposedly.
I'm starting to think that Slenderman is the most brilliant personification of our own fears and understanding of the dangers of a transmitted idea. It is a reflection of how we feel about this time when all of our information is no longer our own, no longer private. He is the silent watcher, the great Unknown Thing in the background, the faceless group of people who see our blog posts and our tweets or skim over our credit card information on a daily basis. He is every person who could hurt us in the garage late at night that we don't see, or the security guard behind the camera there who might be asleep on the job.
Slenderman is effective because he is the gray space of what we know and don't know, and our fears of what is out there. Slenderman is every person who reads this entry that I don't personally know, or every person who watches a video on YouTube without liking or commentings. He's the untraceable in a world that is becoming far more traceable every second. He's what we want to return to, and what we fear falling total victim to.
We know how to counter oblivion and anonymity with community and with information. We know how to stop the ingress of unwanted attention and snooping... with community and with information. It is a natural and almost auto-immune reaction I am seeing here in these comments for people to surge forward and try to help someone out in this fashion. People being people. God, I want to hug them all for their need to help out. It's amazing.
I can't imagine what it would be like if any of this were really going on, but to see that kind of response would probably be amazingly heartening.
(As an aside, I think we can safely say HE isn't real. I would be dead by now, with as much as I've been staring at pictures and reading about Him.)
I should not write these so late at night, but the noises and insomnia have me again. Maybe I'll try to find Pontypool online and watch it. Damned good Canadian horror film.
Monday, September 10, 2012
For Your Monday
“We are caged by our cultural programming. Culture is a mass hallucination, and when you step outside the mass hallucination you see it for what it’s worth.”— Terence McKenna
I think things are getting back to normal.
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Enough already, Universe.
The week didn't really start out well, and now it's just ended weird.
Remember when I used to talk about boring observations on the general socio-economic diversity represented by the Slendervlogs? Do you? Cuz I do. I guess I've succumbed to the internet's siren call and this is my new "bitchin' spot".
So I never did find my hoodie, which pisses me off to no end. I loved that thing, it was a gift from a friend. And it's officially not there. I gutted that closet and all I found was waaaay too much stuff crammed up against the back of it, and a weird pile of damp leaves at the bottom.
The strange noises returned, and I swear to god they are now louder than before if that is possible. I'm thinking maybe there's a family of raccoons or something up in the attic, because there is so much that goes on there, even during the day.
And to top it all off, somebody dropped off a package with no name on it and no address yesterday. I couldn't ask them who it was for because nobody was there when I got to the door. Considering how hard they were knocking on the door you would think they would've stayed to make sure somebody got it since it was obvious they wanted someone's attention.
It is currently sitting on the kitchen table and I'm not touching it until somebody owns up to dropping it off. For all I know Mr. Talbrie has many enemies and it's a letter bomb or something.
This is it, if you want to be sure I'm talking about your little prank, guys:
Now if you'll excuse me, I am attempting to regroup and pick up where I left off. Schoolwork and job hunting need to take precedence.
Remember when I used to talk about boring observations on the general socio-economic diversity represented by the Slendervlogs? Do you? Cuz I do. I guess I've succumbed to the internet's siren call and this is my new "bitchin' spot".
So I never did find my hoodie, which pisses me off to no end. I loved that thing, it was a gift from a friend. And it's officially not there. I gutted that closet and all I found was waaaay too much stuff crammed up against the back of it, and a weird pile of damp leaves at the bottom.
The strange noises returned, and I swear to god they are now louder than before if that is possible. I'm thinking maybe there's a family of raccoons or something up in the attic, because there is so much that goes on there, even during the day.
And to top it all off, somebody dropped off a package with no name on it and no address yesterday. I couldn't ask them who it was for because nobody was there when I got to the door. Considering how hard they were knocking on the door you would think they would've stayed to make sure somebody got it since it was obvious they wanted someone's attention.
It is currently sitting on the kitchen table and I'm not touching it until somebody owns up to dropping it off. For all I know Mr. Talbrie has many enemies and it's a letter bomb or something.
This is it, if you want to be sure I'm talking about your little prank, guys:
Now if you'll excuse me, I am attempting to regroup and pick up where I left off. Schoolwork and job hunting need to take precedence.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Fuck this noise.
Alright, so... yeah.
My awesome friends and I were planning on kicking off the start of the final year of academic hell with an end-of-summer bash over Labor Day weekend at the Jersey Shore (location withheld to protect the innocent and the not-so-innocent). I have actually been looking forward to it for 2 months now because I could hide my laptop, glue a red solo cup to my hand and spend 3 days in complete oblivion with a few ten thousand of our closest friends. There was going to be dancing, and drunken singing, and probably at least one illegal beach bonfire where we got some underage kid drunk. It's what we do.
But then my alarm clock didn't go off. And when I said didn't go off, I mean it was stuck at 12:34 and it hasn't actually progressed past that time since I noticed it was that way. I was already late getting up, and later getting packed.
I had talked with a teenage gal in the neighborhood about coming to feed the animals and walk the dog twice a day for some pocket $$$, so I spent part of that time trying to phone her and see where the hell she was. She actually never showed up. She never answered her phone, either, it just kept redirecting to some weird busy signal/humming sound. Yay for T-Mobile phones!
And since I am retardedly responsible about things and I do what I say I will do, I couldn't leave until I had someone to come check on the animals. I tried to call my friends, and per usual the ultra-shitty phone reception was in full effect.
I got in my car, which had issues starting for some reason (too many days not driving, I'm guessing) and drove to our meeting spot... and they were gone. Granted I was, by my estimation, 45 minutes late, but I was still a little pissed off that they didn't wait for me. I call, FINALLY get through to somebody, and they tell me they actually left 5 hours ago???
I don't know how that's even possible since every clock I looked at told me I was only 45 minutes late. But when I checked a clock on the nearby bank, it said pretty boldly it was 2pm.
Clearly I'm going insane.
But wait, there's more.
I then tried to girl's phone again, and THAT finally went through. And then I got some weird story about how she tried to find the house but there was no house with that house number. I even had her read off what she'd written down, and it was the right place. She'd been up and down Holloway drive for half an hour trying to find the place, apparently. Then I asked if I could pick her up and take her there to show her, and she got really weird. She hung up a few moments later with some stupid excuse.
Stupid teenagers. I'm not supposed to want to falcon-punch somebody in the face because I study people and their interactions and be all understanding and shit. But right now, I want to falcon-punch all stupid teenagers in the face. Because they are stupid, and they ruined my weekend.
So I stayed home by myself and listened to the rain on the roof and tried not to cry because all of my friends were having fun without me while I was stuck cleaning hairballs off of rugs.
On the plus side of things, though, the rain has made it REALLY easy for me to sleep the past few days. No nightmares, no insomnia, and no weird noises. It was almost normal.
I was ready to forgive the world and be happy again, but then the Universe decided it would be amusing if my favorite hoodie just up and disappeared mysteriously. Now I am irritated again, AND I am freezing because the house is cold and I have no awesome hoodie to curl up in. I'm going to tear the closet apart again tomorrow, because it has to have fallen into or behind something. Stuff doesn't just do that.
It's started to rain again. So soothing. I need that right now.
My awesome friends and I were planning on kicking off the start of the final year of academic hell with an end-of-summer bash over Labor Day weekend at the Jersey Shore (location withheld to protect the innocent and the not-so-innocent). I have actually been looking forward to it for 2 months now because I could hide my laptop, glue a red solo cup to my hand and spend 3 days in complete oblivion with a few ten thousand of our closest friends. There was going to be dancing, and drunken singing, and probably at least one illegal beach bonfire where we got some underage kid drunk. It's what we do.
But then my alarm clock didn't go off. And when I said didn't go off, I mean it was stuck at 12:34 and it hasn't actually progressed past that time since I noticed it was that way. I was already late getting up, and later getting packed.
I had talked with a teenage gal in the neighborhood about coming to feed the animals and walk the dog twice a day for some pocket $$$, so I spent part of that time trying to phone her and see where the hell she was. She actually never showed up. She never answered her phone, either, it just kept redirecting to some weird busy signal/humming sound. Yay for T-Mobile phones!
And since I am retardedly responsible about things and I do what I say I will do, I couldn't leave until I had someone to come check on the animals. I tried to call my friends, and per usual the ultra-shitty phone reception was in full effect.
I got in my car, which had issues starting for some reason (too many days not driving, I'm guessing) and drove to our meeting spot... and they were gone. Granted I was, by my estimation, 45 minutes late, but I was still a little pissed off that they didn't wait for me. I call, FINALLY get through to somebody, and they tell me they actually left 5 hours ago???
I don't know how that's even possible since every clock I looked at told me I was only 45 minutes late. But when I checked a clock on the nearby bank, it said pretty boldly it was 2pm.
Clearly I'm going insane.
But wait, there's more.
I then tried to girl's phone again, and THAT finally went through. And then I got some weird story about how she tried to find the house but there was no house with that house number. I even had her read off what she'd written down, and it was the right place. She'd been up and down Holloway drive for half an hour trying to find the place, apparently. Then I asked if I could pick her up and take her there to show her, and she got really weird. She hung up a few moments later with some stupid excuse.
Stupid teenagers. I'm not supposed to want to falcon-punch somebody in the face because I study people and their interactions and be all understanding and shit. But right now, I want to falcon-punch all stupid teenagers in the face. Because they are stupid, and they ruined my weekend.
So I stayed home by myself and listened to the rain on the roof and tried not to cry because all of my friends were having fun without me while I was stuck cleaning hairballs off of rugs.
On the plus side of things, though, the rain has made it REALLY easy for me to sleep the past few days. No nightmares, no insomnia, and no weird noises. It was almost normal.
I was ready to forgive the world and be happy again, but then the Universe decided it would be amusing if my favorite hoodie just up and disappeared mysteriously. Now I am irritated again, AND I am freezing because the house is cold and I have no awesome hoodie to curl up in. I'm going to tear the closet apart again tomorrow, because it has to have fallen into or behind something. Stuff doesn't just do that.
It's started to rain again. So soothing. I need that right now.
Apparently I have a Twitter now.
After being badgered in to it by friends who say it'll help me understand the flow of memes better to be IN it instead of just OBSERVING it.
Whatever.
It's @Jessiebellespks. I can virtually guarantee you it'll be abandoned in 6 months.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've just had the worst fucking weekend in recent memory and I need to go fucking stew about it some more before I can write intelligently.
Whatever.
It's @Jessiebellespks. I can virtually guarantee you it'll be abandoned in 6 months.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've just had the worst fucking weekend in recent memory and I need to go fucking stew about it some more before I can write intelligently.
Friday, August 31, 2012
Fuck, Argh and WTFM8.
Okay, I am finally in a position where I'm calm enough (mostly) to write about my less than fantastic week.
I drove to campus Tuesday to track down my academic liaison and ask her what the deal was. I found her, and she started in on ME for not keeping in touch. When I told her I'd sent her something like 6 emails and she had never gotten back to me, she told me she hadn't received any of them.
Awesome.
Even better, it turns out that she actually sent me a response last Friday, and the response from the department was NOPE.
I still have yet to see that email with the whole explanation, btw.
Except it wasn't NOPE, what it actually was, better worded, is this; that mimetics are a questionable field to begin with and that they had allowed me to pursue this subset of the field because it initially looked as though I might actually be able to eek some sort of clinical data out of the memes I was going over broadly. As an overview of a LOT of society, it was great and they liked it. They were hesitant, but gave me a go.
When I decided to focus on the rise and fall of Slenderman, though, they thought it was too narrow a subset to draw from and withdrew all support, including grants.
When my liaison told me that, I made the argument that it had segued in to a larger population now because of that whole video game thing. She nodded and told me she'd read that and argued that on my behalf, and that is why I am now on academic probation and not kicked out of the program.
Subsequently, I discovered my name was not on the student list for the department anymore when I went to look something up later. They're effectively wiping me off the map.
So on one hand, I have mounds of data and I've been spending late nights cobbling together a theory for all of this and it is NOT going to waste. They will hear out my paper because metadata can be pulled from it on trends in data transmission via all the various social media sources and a few other things that don't necessarily strictly pertain to mimetics. But in the meantime, I'm going to be doing so without any funding at all from grants, which was part of how I was going to focus on this to get it knocked out by spring. I've got nothing for housing, food or gas at this point.
Thank god Mr. Talbrie asked me to extend my stay here. I can't even afford student housing on campus at this point and I'm going to have to bow out and try to find some small apartment to share somewhere. I've done it before, but I'm worried about loud roommates and distractions.
Not too surprisingly, in light of all of this, I had my first Slenderman nightmare last night. Honestly it's shocking I didn't have one before but I guess it took the stress to really push things over the edge. I wasn't in the woods, oddly. I was in someplace dark and echo-y. I knew he was there and he was close by. I kept running, but the dark didn't end. I never came to any walls or doorways. And he was always right there behind me, about to touch me.
In light of that I took a 2 day break and decided to unwind. I sat around in my PJs, dyed my hair bright pink (didn't turn out so well but I'm here by myself so there's no one to witness my failure)
and dug out some old videogames down in the basement to play for a bit.
Who still plays PS2 games on the original brick, btw? That's what was down there. Maybe they're nostalgia fans or something
At this point I'm determined to just go ahead and do the paper, and make the data fucking waterTIGHT so they have no excuse but to acknowledge I was taking this shit seriously.
And now I'm getting worked up again. So I should probably go do other things.
Like start looking for a paid internship or a job, since I'm going to need it.
.
.
.
fuck
I drove to campus Tuesday to track down my academic liaison and ask her what the deal was. I found her, and she started in on ME for not keeping in touch. When I told her I'd sent her something like 6 emails and she had never gotten back to me, she told me she hadn't received any of them.
Awesome.
Even better, it turns out that she actually sent me a response last Friday, and the response from the department was NOPE.
I still have yet to see that email with the whole explanation, btw.
Except it wasn't NOPE, what it actually was, better worded, is this; that mimetics are a questionable field to begin with and that they had allowed me to pursue this subset of the field because it initially looked as though I might actually be able to eek some sort of clinical data out of the memes I was going over broadly. As an overview of a LOT of society, it was great and they liked it. They were hesitant, but gave me a go.
When I decided to focus on the rise and fall of Slenderman, though, they thought it was too narrow a subset to draw from and withdrew all support, including grants.
When my liaison told me that, I made the argument that it had segued in to a larger population now because of that whole video game thing. She nodded and told me she'd read that and argued that on my behalf, and that is why I am now on academic probation and not kicked out of the program.
Subsequently, I discovered my name was not on the student list for the department anymore when I went to look something up later. They're effectively wiping me off the map.
So on one hand, I have mounds of data and I've been spending late nights cobbling together a theory for all of this and it is NOT going to waste. They will hear out my paper because metadata can be pulled from it on trends in data transmission via all the various social media sources and a few other things that don't necessarily strictly pertain to mimetics. But in the meantime, I'm going to be doing so without any funding at all from grants, which was part of how I was going to focus on this to get it knocked out by spring. I've got nothing for housing, food or gas at this point.
Thank god Mr. Talbrie asked me to extend my stay here. I can't even afford student housing on campus at this point and I'm going to have to bow out and try to find some small apartment to share somewhere. I've done it before, but I'm worried about loud roommates and distractions.
Not too surprisingly, in light of all of this, I had my first Slenderman nightmare last night. Honestly it's shocking I didn't have one before but I guess it took the stress to really push things over the edge. I wasn't in the woods, oddly. I was in someplace dark and echo-y. I knew he was there and he was close by. I kept running, but the dark didn't end. I never came to any walls or doorways. And he was always right there behind me, about to touch me.
In light of that I took a 2 day break and decided to unwind. I sat around in my PJs, dyed my hair bright pink (didn't turn out so well but I'm here by myself so there's no one to witness my failure)
and dug out some old videogames down in the basement to play for a bit.
Who still plays PS2 games on the original brick, btw? That's what was down there. Maybe they're nostalgia fans or something
At this point I'm determined to just go ahead and do the paper, and make the data fucking waterTIGHT so they have no excuse but to acknowledge I was taking this shit seriously.
And now I'm getting worked up again. So I should probably go do other things.
Like start looking for a paid internship or a job, since I'm going to need it.
.
.
.
fuck
Monday, August 27, 2012
Symptoms You're Being Stalked/HE is nearby
This is where things get interesting, because originally there was no decided means of showing that he was nearby. All original stories and clippings and photos just show that he was there, and the stories accompanying it mention very little in terms of evidence. So in this case this is truly something that was created by the people, a democratic unleashing of the overmind to put too grandiose a spin on things.
It is also fascinating to note that since the Something Awful forum posts, Slenderman went from simply being something that appeared to children and then disappeared with them to something that caused noticable symptoms, "haunted" adults, interference with electrical devices and photographs, and of course the seemingly beloved proxies.
In a moment of sarcastic wit I thought, "of course, that's just because children don't have video cameras so they're not represented properly" but really they are anecdotally and via pictures drawn or things written by them. Just different forms of media.
But here so far are the primary symptoms based on the written blogs and video blogs seen.
~loss of sleep
~nightmares
~bloody noses or coughing/vomitting blood (the vomitting sets in apparently as more exposure occurs)
~lost time/time jumps
~As an addition to lost time, also forgetting things that happened to you
~paranoia
~getting "the journals", where you begin to draw pictures or write down words. This devolves in to babble as exposure progresses.
~seeking solitude, although that's not really a symptom so much as a desire not to pass the infection to loved ones.
~filming yourself constantly to keep track of what is going on
Now, because I've been at this a while and that tends to breed sarcasm as a form of keeping it interesting for myself, I came up with a secondary list of stuff mostly based on the video blogs.
~the wearing of Chuckies or converse sneakers
~the presence of The House of Leaves somewhere in the series
~the presence of people from other series in your series -aka "the crossover"
~shaky cam
~being photobombed by Slenderman
~having a wooden artist's model in the background somewhere
~posting cryptic messages to twitter
~being forum jacked/twitter jacked/youtube jacked
~a push to return to normal followed by Everything Getting So Much Worse
~Slendy up close in your house (this is bad)
~being harassed by proxies and aides who use l33t5p34k to talk
~following on that, puzzles and codes replacing what might otherwise be straightforward discourse.
~decline of photographic skills
~Overuse of the f-bomb and swearing in general to describe a situation/loss of ability to form sentences (looking at you, Tribe Twelve)
~the overwhelming urge to walk in to a forest by yourself near sunset when you KNOW THAT THING IS OUT THERE.
~Somebody named Alex or Jessica/Jess/Jessie. (Ahem... *whistles innocently*) There is always an Alex.
I have only actually seen Slenderman touch an individual in one vlog, and that was MLAnderson0. So perhaps I should do a secondary list of behaviors that the group has decided on forhim, because seeing that actually surprised me. Surprise at an action usually means I am on to something.
I have amused myself enough. Time to go gather some more seriously boring data.
It is also fascinating to note that since the Something Awful forum posts, Slenderman went from simply being something that appeared to children and then disappeared with them to something that caused noticable symptoms, "haunted" adults, interference with electrical devices and photographs, and of course the seemingly beloved proxies.
In a moment of sarcastic wit I thought, "of course, that's just because children don't have video cameras so they're not represented properly" but really they are anecdotally and via pictures drawn or things written by them. Just different forms of media.
But here so far are the primary symptoms based on the written blogs and video blogs seen.
~loss of sleep
~nightmares
~bloody noses or coughing/vomitting blood (the vomitting sets in apparently as more exposure occurs)
~lost time/time jumps
~As an addition to lost time, also forgetting things that happened to you
~paranoia
~getting "the journals", where you begin to draw pictures or write down words. This devolves in to babble as exposure progresses.
~seeking solitude, although that's not really a symptom so much as a desire not to pass the infection to loved ones.
~filming yourself constantly to keep track of what is going on
Now, because I've been at this a while and that tends to breed sarcasm as a form of keeping it interesting for myself, I came up with a secondary list of stuff mostly based on the video blogs.
~the wearing of Chuckies or converse sneakers
~the presence of The House of Leaves somewhere in the series
~the presence of people from other series in your series -aka "the crossover"
~shaky cam
~being photobombed by Slenderman
~having a wooden artist's model in the background somewhere
~posting cryptic messages to twitter
~being forum jacked/twitter jacked/youtube jacked
~a push to return to normal followed by Everything Getting So Much Worse
~Slendy up close in your house (this is bad)
~being harassed by proxies and aides who use l33t5p34k to talk
~following on that, puzzles and codes replacing what might otherwise be straightforward discourse.
~decline of photographic skills
~Overuse of the f-bomb and swearing in general to describe a situation/loss of ability to form sentences (looking at you, Tribe Twelve)
~the overwhelming urge to walk in to a forest by yourself near sunset when you KNOW THAT THING IS OUT THERE.
~Somebody named Alex or Jessica/Jess/Jessie. (Ahem... *whistles innocently*) There is always an Alex.
I have only actually seen Slenderman touch an individual in one vlog, and that was MLAnderson0. So perhaps I should do a secondary list of behaviors that the group has decided on for
I have amused myself enough. Time to go gather some more seriously boring data.
Approaching the Event Horizon of Impossible
If that's a thing. I kind of hope it's a thing. I'd like to know there is a point at which SOMETHING is impossible no matter how many computers you throw at it, but wow do I already digress.
So what did you guys do all weekend?? Because I spent mine trying to gather and categorize all of the back history for the Slenderman fandom/universe/whatever in a misguided and ultimately futile attempt to document things before it whirled away in to oblivion. I think I missed the time frame. In fact, I dropped the entire idea at 2am after my google searches were reduced to nothing but angry spam about newcomers to the mythos.
Now that Slender is a thing (and people will probably hate me, but I actually really liked the simplicity of the game, got a chance to play it the other night and it seems to cover the basics of the character/horror of his attention really well.) there is the usual showdown that happens between two groups... the initial ones who discovered and nurtured the slowly growing universe/fandom - and the "johnny come lately" group, or people that just found out about it and swarmed in.
We're seeing now what I like to call The Hipster Affect, or the "I knew about it first" phenomenon.
Not a legit term, but descriptive enough that you get the gist. The original people who knew about it before Slender now have massive geek and street cred.
So I guess that means I have geek cred, because I knew about it back in 2009, although I didn't find out about it until late December. And as I mentioned in one of my videos, I totally dismissed it as another flash in the pan or Creepy Pasta wannabe. OH HOW WRONG I WAS.
In the end this will actually turn out to be a good thing, because I can also now include not just the idea of Slenderman as a meme, but the entire dynamics of two groups coming together and fighting over what exactly that meme IS. It should provide godawfully amazing stuff. I feel like now I shouldn't just be standing up and giving my speech, I need to interview some of the creators and ask about their investment in Slenderman being a specific way and why that information is so important to maintain. That is, after all, the heart of mimetics-that a thought is purely replicated. Right now that purity is being challenged. Is the backlash because of a need to preserve the data as originally received? Is it just a matter of being resistant to changing the information in the face of people who don't understand the original gist? You KNOW that I am secretly hoping it is the data itself fighting to keep pure in the transmission. After all, we had a solid idea of who and what he was for a looooong time, and now all of that is being challenged.
This is the stuff I live for, believe it or not. Not internet flame wars, but watching the fast and heavy transmission of data and ideas back and forth between groups and seeing what behaviors, speech, even words may change in reaction to it. It's just awesome. (Probably boring for the rest of you, though.)
SO... now that that is all done allow me to share my current library. A user by the name of deadjosey
on Tumblr was sweet enough to compile a MASSIVE and extensive list of Slenderman resources. I'm just going to list them here so people know where I'm drawing from:
First the list of all of the Slenderman video blogs (known to date). (It's missing Ashesfallbro and Willow Adder, as a side-note)
Secondly the list of of all of the known Slenderman written blogs. I've read through a few, but this list is damned scary. Sampling is going to be a bitch, but we already knew this.
I do feel I should extract the one that is considered the forerunner of most slenderblogs, Seeking the Truth, and link that here, because this may become a resource in the future for people the way I'm using it to organize my thoughts now. I was also told that a lot of people reference The Tutorial (aka Get Up High) as a place to start with the Slenderman mythos, so I will link that as well.
Thirdly, the link explaining the in-depth origins of Slenderman. Rejoice, this just saved me from boring you with a 6-page summary on the slow dissection of the Something Awful forum thread. If you're truly curious, you can spend a late night bouncing through this and scaring yourself. It's pretty fun if you aren't busy.
I had originally mentioned going over the signs and symptoms, and I will do that. In fact I'll do that later today now that I can take a break from organizing my thoughts.
In other news.... well, nothing on the sociology front. Still no word from my academic liaison. I may actually drive down to campus and see what's up and why she's dodging me.
Proof that my email IS working in spite of this, got an email from Mr. Talbrie asking if I would stick around until the end of September, apparently he doesn't feel entirely "clear-headed" yet. Personally I think he just doesn't like his job and he's milking the time off, but whatever.
I was supposed to move over to student apartments next week but was told there was a mix up in paperwork that will delay that for a little bit. Gotta love synchronicity. I emailed him back to say that was fine. As long as the money keeps showing up in the account, what do I care?
My only complaint these days really besides the kids running around behind the house and the noises at night... this place is just freaking COLD. Like all the windows open, no AC, 80 degrees outside, and I have to wear a hoodie to keep from shivering.
No more break-ins, thankfully. That freaked me out when I finally saw it on the video. There was nobody downstairs by the time I went back, and that downstairs has been triple-checked for being locked now.
Now to go make some coffee and finalize the idea of what "data" is transmitted in all of these things. Or, in other words, I'ma make a long list of similarities between blogs. You were warned, it's gonna be boring.
Aaaand now I'm just doing the written version of thinking out loud. Gonna put this to an end. Caffeine is my friend and I am out!
So what did you guys do all weekend?? Because I spent mine trying to gather and categorize all of the back history for the Slenderman fandom/universe/whatever in a misguided and ultimately futile attempt to document things before it whirled away in to oblivion. I think I missed the time frame. In fact, I dropped the entire idea at 2am after my google searches were reduced to nothing but angry spam about newcomers to the mythos.
Now that Slender is a thing (and people will probably hate me, but I actually really liked the simplicity of the game, got a chance to play it the other night and it seems to cover the basics of the character/horror of his attention really well.) there is the usual showdown that happens between two groups... the initial ones who discovered and nurtured the slowly growing universe/fandom - and the "johnny come lately" group, or people that just found out about it and swarmed in.
We're seeing now what I like to call The Hipster Affect, or the "I knew about it first" phenomenon.
Not a legit term, but descriptive enough that you get the gist. The original people who knew about it before Slender now have massive geek and street cred.
So I guess that means I have geek cred, because I knew about it back in 2009, although I didn't find out about it until late December. And as I mentioned in one of my videos, I totally dismissed it as another flash in the pan or Creepy Pasta wannabe. OH HOW WRONG I WAS.
In the end this will actually turn out to be a good thing, because I can also now include not just the idea of Slenderman as a meme, but the entire dynamics of two groups coming together and fighting over what exactly that meme IS. It should provide godawfully amazing stuff. I feel like now I shouldn't just be standing up and giving my speech, I need to interview some of the creators and ask about their investment in Slenderman being a specific way and why that information is so important to maintain. That is, after all, the heart of mimetics-that a thought is purely replicated. Right now that purity is being challenged. Is the backlash because of a need to preserve the data as originally received? Is it just a matter of being resistant to changing the information in the face of people who don't understand the original gist? You KNOW that I am secretly hoping it is the data itself fighting to keep pure in the transmission. After all, we had a solid idea of who and what he was for a looooong time, and now all of that is being challenged.
This is the stuff I live for, believe it or not. Not internet flame wars, but watching the fast and heavy transmission of data and ideas back and forth between groups and seeing what behaviors, speech, even words may change in reaction to it. It's just awesome. (Probably boring for the rest of you, though.)
SO... now that that is all done allow me to share my current library. A user by the name of deadjosey
on Tumblr was sweet enough to compile a MASSIVE and extensive list of Slenderman resources. I'm just going to list them here so people know where I'm drawing from:
First the list of all of the Slenderman video blogs (known to date). (It's missing Ashesfallbro and Willow Adder, as a side-note)
Secondly the list of of all of the known Slenderman written blogs. I've read through a few, but this list is damned scary. Sampling is going to be a bitch, but we already knew this.
I do feel I should extract the one that is considered the forerunner of most slenderblogs, Seeking the Truth, and link that here, because this may become a resource in the future for people the way I'm using it to organize my thoughts now. I was also told that a lot of people reference The Tutorial (aka Get Up High) as a place to start with the Slenderman mythos, so I will link that as well.
Thirdly, the link explaining the in-depth origins of Slenderman. Rejoice, this just saved me from boring you with a 6-page summary on the slow dissection of the Something Awful forum thread. If you're truly curious, you can spend a late night bouncing through this and scaring yourself. It's pretty fun if you aren't busy.
I had originally mentioned going over the signs and symptoms, and I will do that. In fact I'll do that later today now that I can take a break from organizing my thoughts.
In other news.... well, nothing on the sociology front. Still no word from my academic liaison. I may actually drive down to campus and see what's up and why she's dodging me.
Proof that my email IS working in spite of this, got an email from Mr. Talbrie asking if I would stick around until the end of September, apparently he doesn't feel entirely "clear-headed" yet. Personally I think he just doesn't like his job and he's milking the time off, but whatever.
I was supposed to move over to student apartments next week but was told there was a mix up in paperwork that will delay that for a little bit. Gotta love synchronicity. I emailed him back to say that was fine. As long as the money keeps showing up in the account, what do I care?
My only complaint these days really besides the kids running around behind the house and the noises at night... this place is just freaking COLD. Like all the windows open, no AC, 80 degrees outside, and I have to wear a hoodie to keep from shivering.
No more break-ins, thankfully. That freaked me out when I finally saw it on the video. There was nobody downstairs by the time I went back, and that downstairs has been triple-checked for being locked now.
Now to go make some coffee and finalize the idea of what "data" is transmitted in all of these things. Or, in other words, I'ma make a long list of similarities between blogs. You were warned, it's gonna be boring.
Aaaand now I'm just doing the written version of thinking out loud. Gonna put this to an end. Caffeine is my friend and I am out!
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Bad Timing
When I first decided to move my focus over to Slenderman as a sign and symptom of mimetic transmission in a society, it was with the idea that this was a small subset of people like otakus or ufo chaser, and that the growth would be somewhat predictable and exponential. I do a query on Youtube and Google every 3-5 days to check for anything new coming up in terms of blogs or videos to help keep track of this and pass it along to Ian, so he doesn't kill me for all of the info he's had to dig up for me.
(Ian if you read this, you are the fucking bomb. I mean it.)
Which is all well and good when you account for the uptick that comes when the 3 major blogs start their end-of-summer shenanigans again. You see other people refreshing their blogs or twitter or whatever, and new ones starting slowly in response. It's a documented effect in a population.
But what I had not counted on was the video game "Slender".
Behold Slender. It's actually a ridiculously simple but incredibly effective game:
(this guy takes the cake for lighthearted horror game playing.)
Because now the gamers have a hold of the germinating mythos, and my numbers and data exploded and omfg I do not even....
Don't get me wrong, I love gamers. I AM a gamer. I can't tell you how many hours of my life Minecraft has eaten alive and not called me back in the morning over. They are one of the cultural subgroups I'm actually proudest to identify with. It's just....
On one hand, this is AMAZING, because it means that I was right about the fact this would be a growing thing, and that this actually has a chance to become a fixed thing the way people joke about Bigfoot or the Mothman. It means that it goes beyond the small subset of people who started this, and who by now have drawn their friends in to it and they have drawn theirs in... I suspected we were not quite at the peak of the curve in attention to this, but we would be rapidly approaching it by the end of the year, with the true down-curve happening shortly after Marble Hornets finished their series. But now that it has entered the consciousness of a larger group, it's going to get even more exposure, and we are going to see this thing explode.
In fact, I noted the creation of 3 new Slendervlogs on YouTube in the last 2 weeks, and comments I found on related media from those creators cited Slender as the impetus for them to start up their own series.
Basically, Slender is the gateway drug by which you enter the Slenderverse now, and there is no escaping. Insert maniacal laugh.
Now... on the OTHER hand.... my data. My poor, poor, carefully crafted and extrapolated data with offshoots and cross correlations and.... it hurts my head just thinking about it beforehand. I am actually seriously debating if I should even attempt to go any further now that the mythos has exploded.
I did decide to make a definitely study of 2 vlogs I found while I was still doing my "memes in general" approach to things, one called ashesfallbro (click for linkage) and Willow Adder (same) that both seemed to be just starting up and did so prior to Slender being really introduced to the gaming community at large. I like them because A.) They are not on the east coast, or in the echo-boom of the central US. B.) Both are run by women and C.) I caught them on their second uploaded video so I can track the growth and integration of other data forms and numbers on them virtually from the start. It's data-mining gold. Also, I just love ashesfallbro because it started out when them wandering in to the forest hollering for Slenderman to prove he wasn't there. I've actually been waiting for backlash and someone to tell the story from the viewpoint of "he's not there and something else horrible happens instead", which is where they seem to be going. And as a friend of mine pointed out "they seem to be in 'response phase' right now," where an outsider/proxy is coming in to the story and posting response videos. I liked the terminology, so I'm keeping it. He won't mind.
Slight moment of amusement for myself... they were worried about a tulpa before when it was something of a hidden gem on the internet?? Slenderman's a full blown thing now. We can thank AgentParsec for nightmare stories around the campfire for the next generation. :)
But for now, I guess I need to be more stringent on what I'm using and how I'm tracking data because it may have literally just become impossible to do so on my own with the help of one tech guru. I'll have to ponder this over the next few days and see what my brain comes up with.
In other news, no word back yet from my academic liaison. Left her a voicemail yesterday, hoping she'll call me back soon.
(Ian if you read this, you are the fucking bomb. I mean it.)
Which is all well and good when you account for the uptick that comes when the 3 major blogs start their end-of-summer shenanigans again. You see other people refreshing their blogs or twitter or whatever, and new ones starting slowly in response. It's a documented effect in a population.
But what I had not counted on was the video game "Slender".
Behold Slender. It's actually a ridiculously simple but incredibly effective game:
(this guy takes the cake for lighthearted horror game playing.)
Because now the gamers have a hold of the germinating mythos, and my numbers and data exploded and omfg I do not even....
Don't get me wrong, I love gamers. I AM a gamer. I can't tell you how many hours of my life Minecraft has eaten alive and not called me back in the morning over. They are one of the cultural subgroups I'm actually proudest to identify with. It's just....
On one hand, this is AMAZING, because it means that I was right about the fact this would be a growing thing, and that this actually has a chance to become a fixed thing the way people joke about Bigfoot or the Mothman. It means that it goes beyond the small subset of people who started this, and who by now have drawn their friends in to it and they have drawn theirs in... I suspected we were not quite at the peak of the curve in attention to this, but we would be rapidly approaching it by the end of the year, with the true down-curve happening shortly after Marble Hornets finished their series. But now that it has entered the consciousness of a larger group, it's going to get even more exposure, and we are going to see this thing explode.
In fact, I noted the creation of 3 new Slendervlogs on YouTube in the last 2 weeks, and comments I found on related media from those creators cited Slender as the impetus for them to start up their own series.
Basically, Slender is the gateway drug by which you enter the Slenderverse now, and there is no escaping. Insert maniacal laugh.
Now... on the OTHER hand.... my data. My poor, poor, carefully crafted and extrapolated data with offshoots and cross correlations and.... it hurts my head just thinking about it beforehand. I am actually seriously debating if I should even attempt to go any further now that the mythos has exploded.
I did decide to make a definitely study of 2 vlogs I found while I was still doing my "memes in general" approach to things, one called ashesfallbro (click for linkage) and Willow Adder (same) that both seemed to be just starting up and did so prior to Slender being really introduced to the gaming community at large. I like them because A.) They are not on the east coast, or in the echo-boom of the central US. B.) Both are run by women and C.) I caught them on their second uploaded video so I can track the growth and integration of other data forms and numbers on them virtually from the start. It's data-mining gold. Also, I just love ashesfallbro because it started out when them wandering in to the forest hollering for Slenderman to prove he wasn't there. I've actually been waiting for backlash and someone to tell the story from the viewpoint of "he's not there and something else horrible happens instead", which is where they seem to be going. And as a friend of mine pointed out "they seem to be in 'response phase' right now," where an outsider/proxy is coming in to the story and posting response videos. I liked the terminology, so I'm keeping it. He won't mind.
Slight moment of amusement for myself... they were worried about a tulpa before when it was something of a hidden gem on the internet?? Slenderman's a full blown thing now. We can thank AgentParsec for nightmare stories around the campfire for the next generation. :)
But for now, I guess I need to be more stringent on what I'm using and how I'm tracking data because it may have literally just become impossible to do so on my own with the help of one tech guru. I'll have to ponder this over the next few days and see what my brain comes up with.
In other news, no word back yet from my academic liaison. Left her a voicemail yesterday, hoping she'll call me back soon.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Found this on Tumblr...
...and thought it was kind of amusing, so I'm sharing.
In other news, I more than passed my summer courses! HELLS YEAH! Got the course summaries via email today and the winning streak continues.
Still waiting on news from the academic liaison. It normally takes her a few days, so I'm not worried. If I don't hear by tomorrow I'll probably call her.
In other news, I more than passed my summer courses! HELLS YEAH! Got the course summaries via email today and the winning streak continues.
Still waiting on news from the academic liaison. It normally takes her a few days, so I'm not worried. If I don't hear by tomorrow I'll probably call her.
Monday, August 20, 2012
Fingers crossed!
Submitted my revised thesis summary late this morning, now I'm just waiting to hear back from my academic liaison on whether it's been accepted or not by the department! So excited! Please keep your fingers crossed for me!
Rough Analytics/Observations
Back to focusing on what's important, I have compiled the following (VERY ROUGH) observations.
Now, this is based on a general broad overview, and I haven't possibly seen every single Slenderman "vlog" yet, but this is what I've determined so far:
~The majority of the original video blogs were run by white males, middle class to upper middle class (as evidence by owning video cameras aside from cell phones, which are virtually ubiquitous everywhere these days, even among the lower class. The YouTube boom wouldn't have been possible without them) This is taken within the time frame of the first 6 months of the "phenomenon". There are females present in supporting roles, but they seem to disappear or die off.
~There is a slightly higher percentage of females in the written Slenderman blogs; and it is interesting to note that a lot of the original blogs seem to not have been active for the better part of a year and some change. Also, as noted in the "vlogs" (I will never get used to that word!), a LOT of the female characters have disappeared and are assumed dead. In fact, the only non-dead female blogger I can think of off the top of my head is Stephanie of Everyman Hybrid.
~There is a very high quotient of sharing and "crossover" among the blogs. This is interesting because a feature of Slenderman is to "infect" those that you are around so they become "haunted" as well. It does, by it's very nature, isolate you. I am unsure if it is simply a sense of community that causes them to share with one another between blogs like this, or if it is a conscious understanding that a character in that situation would need community. It would be far cooler if it were just a subconscious understanding and not the drive to be the social creatures we are, but I think it's a basic enough idea that when you're in trouble, you look for allies. Nothing subconscious about that. If you are infected, you go find other infected. Boom. Done. Loved ones stay safe.
~The initial Big Three as they are called originated in the eastern United States. Everyman Hybrid is in New Jersey, Tribe Twelve is in Florida somewhere, and Marble Hornets, godfather of the entire movement, is in the southeast somewhere. After that a few more appeared in the east as well. A secondary wave cropped up after that headed toward the Midwestern states of Indiana and Illinois, and there was an echo-boom of sorts in the UK. I cannot find an active UK blog at this time, but it's most likely just a matter of time before another crops up.
There is now an echo-echo-boom of vlogs popping up around New England, and I believe I saw one that is now defunct out of Oregon. West coast mostly fails to represent so far, however.
CompileTRUTH has been my greatest asset right now, in that he went so far as to summarize the blogs and "vlogs" in concise videos. I spent Thursday night living on his YouTube channel, linked here for proper citation and also props in general because he's really helped me out: CompileTRUTH on YouTube
Poor guy appears to be headed for some trouble currently, which is interesting. Rarely do you see these guys intentionally putting themselves in the role of bad guy.
Pardon everything in quotes, I'm still sussing out the terminology and keeping it separate in my head for now.
Also, please be aware that this is in no way a true cross-section from which citations can be made or data or meta-data can be drawn. I'm just pointing out stuff that was most obvious.
If you have any thoughts, leads, or information, all is welcome! Especially if I'm missing a really great slendervlog that discounts all of these observations.
Next up I'm going to do a rough compilation of "Slenderbehaviors" to quantify what has become agreed upon as signs, symptoms, etc. of this entire thing. I'm digging the hell out of this!
Thanks for reading!
Now, this is based on a general broad overview, and I haven't possibly seen every single Slenderman "vlog" yet, but this is what I've determined so far:
~The majority of the original video blogs were run by white males, middle class to upper middle class (as evidence by owning video cameras aside from cell phones, which are virtually ubiquitous everywhere these days, even among the lower class. The YouTube boom wouldn't have been possible without them) This is taken within the time frame of the first 6 months of the "phenomenon". There are females present in supporting roles, but they seem to disappear or die off.
~There is a slightly higher percentage of females in the written Slenderman blogs; and it is interesting to note that a lot of the original blogs seem to not have been active for the better part of a year and some change. Also, as noted in the "vlogs" (I will never get used to that word!), a LOT of the female characters have disappeared and are assumed dead. In fact, the only non-dead female blogger I can think of off the top of my head is Stephanie of Everyman Hybrid.
~There is a very high quotient of sharing and "crossover" among the blogs. This is interesting because a feature of Slenderman is to "infect" those that you are around so they become "haunted" as well. It does, by it's very nature, isolate you. I am unsure if it is simply a sense of community that causes them to share with one another between blogs like this, or if it is a conscious understanding that a character in that situation would need community. It would be far cooler if it were just a subconscious understanding and not the drive to be the social creatures we are, but I think it's a basic enough idea that when you're in trouble, you look for allies. Nothing subconscious about that. If you are infected, you go find other infected. Boom. Done. Loved ones stay safe.
~The initial Big Three as they are called originated in the eastern United States. Everyman Hybrid is in New Jersey, Tribe Twelve is in Florida somewhere, and Marble Hornets, godfather of the entire movement, is in the southeast somewhere. After that a few more appeared in the east as well. A secondary wave cropped up after that headed toward the Midwestern states of Indiana and Illinois, and there was an echo-boom of sorts in the UK. I cannot find an active UK blog at this time, but it's most likely just a matter of time before another crops up.
There is now an echo-echo-boom of vlogs popping up around New England, and I believe I saw one that is now defunct out of Oregon. West coast mostly fails to represent so far, however.
CompileTRUTH has been my greatest asset right now, in that he went so far as to summarize the blogs and "vlogs" in concise videos. I spent Thursday night living on his YouTube channel, linked here for proper citation and also props in general because he's really helped me out: CompileTRUTH on YouTube
Poor guy appears to be headed for some trouble currently, which is interesting. Rarely do you see these guys intentionally putting themselves in the role of bad guy.
Pardon everything in quotes, I'm still sussing out the terminology and keeping it separate in my head for now.
Also, please be aware that this is in no way a true cross-section from which citations can be made or data or meta-data can be drawn. I'm just pointing out stuff that was most obvious.
If you have any thoughts, leads, or information, all is welcome! Especially if I'm missing a really great slendervlog that discounts all of these observations.
Next up I'm going to do a rough compilation of "Slenderbehaviors" to quantify what has become agreed upon as signs, symptoms, etc. of this entire thing. I'm digging the hell out of this!
Thanks for reading!
Friday, August 17, 2012
Distracting Stuff
So this is supposed to be for all of the work I'm doing on this thesis and what I'm thinking about, but there's already been a distraction and I guess since it's been going through my head technically I've been thinking about it, and because it's disrupting my info gathering technically it's a part of the paper. Whatever. I'm going to talk about it. Because it's bugging me.
Mr. Talbrie hired me back in mid-June to watch this place while he, his wife and his kid went for an extended vacation to the beach. I found out about the "job" from a posting on Craigslist asking for a housesitter and I thought it would be the perfect way to make money while still getting a jump start on my thesis and dealing with summer courses. We did most of our correspondence via e-mail. I only talked to him once on the phone, and the only time I saw him he was standing out front waiting to hand off the housekey. I remember thinking he did not look at all excited for someone about to spend all summer at the shore, but figured maybe he was anxious because his family was waiting for him elsewhere and he wanted to get started on the drive. At least, that's what my brain decided when he handed it over to me, advised he would check in once in a while, and then jumped in his car and drove off by himself.
He's been emailing me to ask if everything is okay with the house and if I'm okay. He even checked once to see if the automatic deposits he set up were making it in to my account. But for the most part he's been incredibly hands-off.
He called me a few days ago saying he was checking up on things, but the whole phone call was just weird. Nothing in particular. When I asked how everybody was liking the beach, he said his wife and kids were enjoying the sand, and something about watching them play.
Then I heard a truck go by. Thought for a second maybe he went to a payphone up near the road to make the call, but in checking the number it's the cell phone number he gave me.
I guess it's not a big deal, what the hell did hearing a truck matter?
But then things got a little weird. Somehow we got around to housecleaning, and I told him it was getting very dusty, so I'd run around to every room and dusted, and I'd picked a bunch of stuff up to try and organize.
Let me see if I can transcribe what he said here...
T:"Did you go in the blue room?"
Me:"Yeah but only very briefly, just long enough to get the dust off of things, then I was right back out."
Then there's probably 5 seconds of dead silence.
T:"I asked you not to go in there. I specifically asked you not to go in there."
Me:"I'm really sorry, it's just the house is so dry, and I've been getting nosebleeds so I thought I would clean up really fast. I only dusted, I didn't touch anything else in there."
Then there's another 5 seconds of silence. And he sounds really tense after that.
T:"Please don't go in there again."
Me:"I won't. I promise. I'm sorry."
T:"And you picked up? Cleaned up and organized the things laying around?"
At this point I figured he's really angry, so I'm trying to downplay it.
Me:"Just small things, like putting books away, and picking things up off the floor. I put them on shelves nearby, so you'll be able to find them. I put the clock on the booksh..."
T:"Don't touch the clock. Don't...worry about the clock. Just leave it."
Me:"I'm really sorry Mr. Talbrie, I'm just trying to take care of this place since you're paying me to make sure it's okay."
T:"You decided to engage the environment."
Now..... the rest of this might be hazy in my memory, but I remember the way he worded that crystal clear. You decided to engage the environment. Because who says stuff like that??
Me:"Yeah, I guess I did."
Then I heard a very long, very drawn out sign on the other end. I'm wondering how OCD Mr. Talbrie really is and if I've caused him to go back on medication because I vacuumed.
T:"You don't need to do that. In fact, don't do that anymore. Leave everything as it is, it'll be for the best that way."
And I just agree at that point because I think I'm giving him a silent meltdown on the other side end of the phone. You're going to pay me to NOT clean your house? Sure, I can do that. No problem.
Then to try and get the call back in to positive territory, I ask him how he's enjoying everything. He tells me he's feeling more clearheaded than he has in a long time. And I made some smalltalk about how that was good for his mental health, and he actually chuckled at that so I think we were all good by the time we hung up.
But for some reason the call was sticking with me, and I realized what it was. He said wife and KIDS. Plural.
There is only one child's room. It is almost bare, and unless they've got both kids sleeping on that one narrow bed, that makes no sense. It's also the cleanest room I've ever seen for having 2 kids in it.
The other thing? I remembered when he met me in hindsight that he never specifically said anything about his family as well. He mentioned he had a toddler. No mention of a second child. And he only said his wife's name once. Helen. He has never referred to her again until today.
Maybe I'm reading in to this too much. Maybe he was distracted and it was a slip of the tongue. Maybe he's just a REALLY private, REALLY OCD guy.
I've spent too much time thinking about this already, so maybe I can let go of it and get back to work. I'm out of here in 2 more weeks so it doesn't really matter anyway.
Mr. Talbrie hired me back in mid-June to watch this place while he, his wife and his kid went for an extended vacation to the beach. I found out about the "job" from a posting on Craigslist asking for a housesitter and I thought it would be the perfect way to make money while still getting a jump start on my thesis and dealing with summer courses. We did most of our correspondence via e-mail. I only talked to him once on the phone, and the only time I saw him he was standing out front waiting to hand off the housekey. I remember thinking he did not look at all excited for someone about to spend all summer at the shore, but figured maybe he was anxious because his family was waiting for him elsewhere and he wanted to get started on the drive. At least, that's what my brain decided when he handed it over to me, advised he would check in once in a while, and then jumped in his car and drove off by himself.
He's been emailing me to ask if everything is okay with the house and if I'm okay. He even checked once to see if the automatic deposits he set up were making it in to my account. But for the most part he's been incredibly hands-off.
He called me a few days ago saying he was checking up on things, but the whole phone call was just weird. Nothing in particular. When I asked how everybody was liking the beach, he said his wife and kids were enjoying the sand, and something about watching them play.
Then I heard a truck go by. Thought for a second maybe he went to a payphone up near the road to make the call, but in checking the number it's the cell phone number he gave me.
I guess it's not a big deal, what the hell did hearing a truck matter?
But then things got a little weird. Somehow we got around to housecleaning, and I told him it was getting very dusty, so I'd run around to every room and dusted, and I'd picked a bunch of stuff up to try and organize.
Let me see if I can transcribe what he said here...
T:"Did you go in the blue room?"
Me:"Yeah but only very briefly, just long enough to get the dust off of things, then I was right back out."
Then there's probably 5 seconds of dead silence.
T:"I asked you not to go in there. I specifically asked you not to go in there."
Me:"I'm really sorry, it's just the house is so dry, and I've been getting nosebleeds so I thought I would clean up really fast. I only dusted, I didn't touch anything else in there."
Then there's another 5 seconds of silence. And he sounds really tense after that.
T:"Please don't go in there again."
Me:"I won't. I promise. I'm sorry."
T:"And you picked up? Cleaned up and organized the things laying around?"
At this point I figured he's really angry, so I'm trying to downplay it.
Me:"Just small things, like putting books away, and picking things up off the floor. I put them on shelves nearby, so you'll be able to find them. I put the clock on the booksh..."
T:"Don't touch the clock. Don't...worry about the clock. Just leave it."
Me:"I'm really sorry Mr. Talbrie, I'm just trying to take care of this place since you're paying me to make sure it's okay."
T:"You decided to engage the environment."
Now..... the rest of this might be hazy in my memory, but I remember the way he worded that crystal clear. You decided to engage the environment. Because who says stuff like that??
Me:"Yeah, I guess I did."
Then I heard a very long, very drawn out sign on the other end. I'm wondering how OCD Mr. Talbrie really is and if I've caused him to go back on medication because I vacuumed.
T:"You don't need to do that. In fact, don't do that anymore. Leave everything as it is, it'll be for the best that way."
And I just agree at that point because I think I'm giving him a silent meltdown on the other side end of the phone. You're going to pay me to NOT clean your house? Sure, I can do that. No problem.
Then to try and get the call back in to positive territory, I ask him how he's enjoying everything. He tells me he's feeling more clearheaded than he has in a long time. And I made some smalltalk about how that was good for his mental health, and he actually chuckled at that so I think we were all good by the time we hung up.
But for some reason the call was sticking with me, and I realized what it was. He said wife and KIDS. Plural.
There is only one child's room. It is almost bare, and unless they've got both kids sleeping on that one narrow bed, that makes no sense. It's also the cleanest room I've ever seen for having 2 kids in it.
The other thing? I remembered when he met me in hindsight that he never specifically said anything about his family as well. He mentioned he had a toddler. No mention of a second child. And he only said his wife's name once. Helen. He has never referred to her again until today.
Maybe I'm reading in to this too much. Maybe he was distracted and it was a slip of the tongue. Maybe he's just a REALLY private, REALLY OCD guy.
I've spent too much time thinking about this already, so maybe I can let go of it and get back to work. I'm out of here in 2 more weeks so it doesn't really matter anyway.
This Whole Meme Thing
I couldn't leave the last entry standing up there like that all alone! I know nobody's seen it because the internet is a vast and mysterious place and this blog is parked in the janitor's closet of it all.
So, yeah... memes. Or Mimemes, as it's actually technically called (which spell check is trying to advise me I have horribly destroyed the word "mimes" to type there). It is the idea that a thought is a thing. Or rather, even less anthropomorphically, that information strives to replicate itself using the minds and behaviors of living creatures. In this case, it also embraces the radical theory that ideas and information are the same as DNA, passed along from one living organism to another; the only difference is that it is transmitted via sound and sight and occasionally touch and smell instead of through the union of zygotes and all the fun and angst that surrounds that particular action.
When I initially stumbled on to the U Penn campus a few years back, I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. Honestly I figured I would go in to communications because I liked people and I liked picking apart how people learned and picked up information from ads, books, the news, whatever. I figured it would serve me really well in whatever job I managed to get in the dying realm of radio or broadcast television.
Then fate intervened, and during a mandatory elective class I had to choose, on a whim I chose sociology. At one point during the class they talked about the transmission of ideas over social media (which was really only then starting to show up en-force.... weird, right? There was a time before Twitter!) and how it was going to affect us socially and culturally. And then they did the awesomest thing ever. They played Susan Blackmore's TED Talk on Memes and "Temes".
I'm going to link it here because it's short and it's AWESOME.
In 21 minutes my world was changed. I knew that this thing I had for studying how people passed knowledge from one person to another and seeing how we behaved with one another, what we picked up off one another, was my calling. I had to do the Meme Thing.
Then came the fun of going through all of the classes to learn about how culture shifts and responds based on given stimuli and how it can change based on economic level, education level, religion, region, gender... and I fell further in love with all of it.
To this day, if you stand in front of me in line, I will watch you for non-verbal clues about you, from how you dress, to how you stand, to how you observe those around you and how you speak, and I can tell pretty much where you came from immediately.
Sounds creepy, right? Guess what? We ALL do this. It's sometimes oversimplified as "stereotyping", but we all guage one another like this ALL the time. How awesome is that? Our brains are built to be mini sociologists, to figure out how to interact with one another. It is THAT important.
I guess you could say I am studying the science of the brain studying interactions. Or just interactions between human beings. Or really, I just watch people talk, if you want to get stupidly simple.
I could go on at great length about this, but please understand this above all else... I AM A SUSAN BLACKMORE FANGRRL. I care not for your fancy arguments against the idea of meme as thing! Which I guess is obvious, since I'm throwing many thousands of dollars at this whole goal of professionally studying them, huh?
If anybody is still reading and has any comments, thoughts, or wants to do some (polite) arguing/trading of viewpoints on ideas, I am absolutely open to it in the comments. And thanks for listening.
So, yeah... memes. Or Mimemes, as it's actually technically called (which spell check is trying to advise me I have horribly destroyed the word "mimes" to type there). It is the idea that a thought is a thing. Or rather, even less anthropomorphically, that information strives to replicate itself using the minds and behaviors of living creatures. In this case, it also embraces the radical theory that ideas and information are the same as DNA, passed along from one living organism to another; the only difference is that it is transmitted via sound and sight and occasionally touch and smell instead of through the union of zygotes and all the fun and angst that surrounds that particular action.
When I initially stumbled on to the U Penn campus a few years back, I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. Honestly I figured I would go in to communications because I liked people and I liked picking apart how people learned and picked up information from ads, books, the news, whatever. I figured it would serve me really well in whatever job I managed to get in the dying realm of radio or broadcast television.
Then fate intervened, and during a mandatory elective class I had to choose, on a whim I chose sociology. At one point during the class they talked about the transmission of ideas over social media (which was really only then starting to show up en-force.... weird, right? There was a time before Twitter!) and how it was going to affect us socially and culturally. And then they did the awesomest thing ever. They played Susan Blackmore's TED Talk on Memes and "Temes".
I'm going to link it here because it's short and it's AWESOME.
In 21 minutes my world was changed. I knew that this thing I had for studying how people passed knowledge from one person to another and seeing how we behaved with one another, what we picked up off one another, was my calling. I had to do the Meme Thing.
Then came the fun of going through all of the classes to learn about how culture shifts and responds based on given stimuli and how it can change based on economic level, education level, religion, region, gender... and I fell further in love with all of it.
To this day, if you stand in front of me in line, I will watch you for non-verbal clues about you, from how you dress, to how you stand, to how you observe those around you and how you speak, and I can tell pretty much where you came from immediately.
Sounds creepy, right? Guess what? We ALL do this. It's sometimes oversimplified as "stereotyping", but we all guage one another like this ALL the time. How awesome is that? Our brains are built to be mini sociologists, to figure out how to interact with one another. It is THAT important.
I guess you could say I am studying the science of the brain studying interactions. Or just interactions between human beings. Or really, I just watch people talk, if you want to get stupidly simple.
I could go on at great length about this, but please understand this above all else... I AM A SUSAN BLACKMORE FANGRRL. I care not for your fancy arguments against the idea of meme as thing! Which I guess is obvious, since I'm throwing many thousands of dollars at this whole goal of professionally studying them, huh?
If anybody is still reading and has any comments, thoughts, or wants to do some (polite) arguing/trading of viewpoints on ideas, I am absolutely open to it in the comments. And thanks for listening.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Greetings, Citizens!
I'm just going to randomly test this out with a few sentences, don't mind me....
After seeing the complete goofiness that was 10 minutes of me explaining to the internet WHY I wanted to study the Slenderman mythos, I realized... nobody wants to watch me talk for 10 minutes about the Slenderman mythos. So I'm going to move the talk-y bits explaining my thought process and the research I've found over here. It's going to be really, really exciting, but probably only to me.
I guess that means the youtube channel is probably done-for, until I start officially fleshing out my presentation and recording it to see if it flows well. Maybe I'll use it for fun stuff later on, like the beach at the end of August (I can't wait to go, you guys!)
Anyway... testing, testing, one, two, three....... and off we go with all of this!
After seeing the complete goofiness that was 10 minutes of me explaining to the internet WHY I wanted to study the Slenderman mythos, I realized... nobody wants to watch me talk for 10 minutes about the Slenderman mythos. So I'm going to move the talk-y bits explaining my thought process and the research I've found over here. It's going to be really, really exciting, but probably only to me.
I guess that means the youtube channel is probably done-for, until I start officially fleshing out my presentation and recording it to see if it flows well. Maybe I'll use it for fun stuff later on, like the beach at the end of August (I can't wait to go, you guys!)
Anyway... testing, testing, one, two, three....... and off we go with all of this!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)