Why Slenderman became a moral panic [Audio] [Ad-free] [Extended]
Added 2025-07-23 02:00:00 +0000 UTCWhat is the creepiest thing you’ve ever seen on the internet? For many people, it was Slenderman. This particularly lithe fellow started off as kind of a fun, spooky thing, and then of course got out of hand and caused a panic both on- and offline. We’re joined by Kaelyn Moore of Heart Starts Pounding to talk about his role taking creepypasta mainstream, and how Slenderman is still lurking in our cultural consciousness over 16 years since making his first appearance on Something Awful.
Our guest Kaelyn Moore hosts Hearts Starts Pounding, a show about folklore and other creepy stuff, which you can find anywhere you listen to podcasts or @heartstartspounding on all the socials.
Comments
I just reached the point in the episode where Kaelyn makes the great point about how creators got successful curating an internet that felt inaccessible to the new generation of internet users. And I wonder, is that what the reddit voiceover channels/accounts are doing now? Reddit feels like a relic of the old internet for this newest generation and these accounts are curating the “best” most marketable stories, doing the work of sifting through the slop and smacking it up on a new, more exciting platform. Is this just the cycle of the internet? And so each new generation feels more and more derivative and can be traced further and further back?
erin Mahan
2025-09-13 19:01:08 +0000 UTC
