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.