Wisconsin Girls (Tried to) Kill for Slender Man

First off, the victim survived despite numerous stab wounds. So thank goodness for that. If you are unaware of the story, yesterday two 12-year-old girls in Wisconsin stabbed a classmate 19 times after luring her into the woods. What I just discovered today was that the act was a sort of sacrifice to appease Slender Man. I think the summary on Jezebel is good. It avoids blaming internet and gaming culture by pointing out how obviously fictional the character should be to anyone aware of the well-dressed man. However, with brutally violent acts becoming a common part of life in the U.S., the article also notes that possessing some explanation provides something lacking in most cases of violence lately.

I'm curious what people think. This country has a ubiquitous gun-culture, and only extremist talking-heads singularly blame violent video games for shootings. But in this case, putting aside possible mental health, family, and bullying issues related to the crime, there is a simple link between the reason the girls give for their act and the one and only Slender Man of internet/gaming fame. While not responsible for their actions, do we all have some responsibility to curtail the misuse of our culture?

For example, I am in grad school studying religion. Many academics are liberals when it comes to the meaning of theological issues, and simply ignore all the violence done in the name of God. "They are not one of us (Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, etc.) and so are not our responsibility" was the usual response for many years. But recently there has been criticism of this stance which refuses to engage admittedly perverse views. Only preaching to the choir will never increase its membership, so to speak. This issue also made me think of @patrickklepek in two ways. He introduced me to Slender Man with his videos on the site. And I also think this question of how to engage an outlying position is relevant to some topics he has been engaging lately like online bullying and, mistreating women in gaming.

So I suppose I am asking something much broader than thoughts about just this case in Wisconsin. But it is what brought up these broad issues for me again, as I felt some degree of personal unease with the Slender Man link that I don't feel in violent cases lacking links to things with which I identify.

I think parents need to pay closer attention to their kids these days. I'm all for hands off parenting and giving your children the room to breathe that they desperately require at an age when it seems every rule is made against them - but be aware of what they are doing and simultaneously make sure they are likewise aware of their own actions.

It makes me wonder what kind of horrible things these girls went through to make them think this was okay. This stuff doesn't typically happen without a history of childhood abuse or neglect.

I have to say, this horrible news instantly reminded me of a story much older than slender man, where a guy hears a voice in his head that tells him to stab his own son to death, and he's cool with it, until that same voice tells him not to, so he just kills an animal instead.

Hundreds of billions of people over the years have believed that story to be actually true, where as (almost, apparently) 100% know for a fact that the slender man isn't real, and the book that contains that story is the best selling book on the entire planet, yet the Bible never receives criticism like other violent media does whenever things like this happen.

But the larger point is, even when people kill because the 'voice of God' tells them too, it really isn't the Bible's fault. Those people are deranged, just like anyone who would try to kill based on any other fictional character/story. That fiction is just the framework for their violence, not the cause. Whatever went wrong with those girls, it exists separately from any influence that an internet meme character had on them.

@paul_tillich: Sounds like some folie a deux. At work and can't read the Jezebel article, but I'd guess the 2 girls spent a LOT of time together and didn't have many other friends, which can become an echo chamber of bad ideas. Anybody ever seen Heavenly Creatures? Reminds me of that.

Compared to when?

Yo, the part inside the brackets should not be put in brackets.

Kinda makes the thing look like sensationalist bullshit.

Slenderman is not a video game character. He's as much a video game character as the Sasquatch. You can't tie him back to video games just because of an indie game. He was a phenomenon before that was ever made.

I've raised this point on other sites, but this same thing happened many years ago, back when I was still a child in the UK when James Bulger was murdered at the age of 3 by two 10 year old boys who knowingly took James from his parents to a remote location to torture and kill him. Those two little boys didn't have the Slenderman excuse, but in reality I think these two little girls would have done this regardless of having something to please. They would've just made up in their heads or picked a different character to "please" and "prove their worth" to.

Don't feel anything personally about this, duder. Slenderman, at its core, is a horror story. It doesn't matter if it was written a thousand years ago or a month ago. The fact that its entire history, including its creation, is archived and documented on the Internet makes this story even more insane. This has nothing to do with the Internet or gaming culture besides the fact that the Internet was the medium for the story.

Also, there was a thread about this last night, but the link in my profile leads to a 404.... so yeah.

Compared to back in the good old days before the internet when nothing bad ever happened to kids due to parental neglect because the internet wasn't out yet! DUH

@video_game_king said:

Compared to the days before the internet was easily accessible. There was a time when a kids world was confined to the block he lived on. And just as there are many more distractions for kids today, the same is true for parents as well.

This established, how do we know that parents are not paying as much attention now as they were back then? What proof do we have?

However, with brutally violent acts becoming a common part of life in the U.S.

Wait, what? Does anyone have any actual statistics for this?

Let me be completely unscientific and say that I'm convinced (From my own anecdotal experience at least) that before about the age of like 15, everything you do is a reflection of what's around you. It seems like you don't develop a personality until you are in your late teens, before that everything you do is a response to external stimuli from the clothes you wear, to the words you say, to the work you put in at school. Letting young people loose on the internet can be a really bad idea because of this, on a given day around the house or at school, a kid will only be exposed to so much, but google literally opens young minds up to almost anything imaginable before they have an idea of what they themselves are, and that's a dangerous problem. When you're young and your moral system consists only of doing what your parents taught you rather than what you personally feel is right versus wrong, any extra input can sway you towards dangerous behavior if in your head the only voice against it is "Mom/Dad/the adults wouldn't like this."

I'm not saying get rid of google, but parents should take part in what there kids do on the internet, at least early on, as a kid , i had to ask permission to use the internet (Mostly because it was dial up) and when i did it wasn't nearly as easy to surf like it is today, if I had reddit as a kid of 10, i'd be messed up too I think...

I think you've made a mistake right there, our media has so far skewed our perception of society that it's not even funny. Brutal acts like this are incredibly rare and getting rarer with time for the most part in the 1st world. But media coverage of them only grows and in addition to 24 hour news we have blogs, and social networks and Patrick kleppeks of the world, all of which respond to an event and shape a users views on it one way or the other. (Patrick isn't one to stir up worry for no reason, i just use him as an example of a internet news person.) It always looks worse because for the first time in the history of the world, there's always a way to hear about the one time horrible event that happened somewhere far away.

@believer258: Yeah, I'd like some stats as well because overall I think violent crime has actually been trending DOWN and not up. The way the media sensationalizes stories make the world seem like a crazier place then it is.

Wait so what would happen if Pewdiepie went all Jim Jones?

The internet is definitely the best thing in the history of humanity for children; one need no look further than twitch chat to realize this irrefutable truth.

That's exactly what I was thinking. There seems to be more because the media loves to sensationalize things, but I thought that in reality violent crime has been steadily declining?

I'm not tying him to video games. But he has become a part of games. And people deep into games are usually deep into the internet. That is why I posted this in off-topic. There are people who discovered Slender Man through the games. That is why I talked about the crossover, but I hope I was clear that it is a broader issue which has my interest.

Thanks for asking for clarification. The point I wanted to make with that sentence was that we are more aware of terrible violent acts today due to many good and bad things about the media and ways we process information. I am curious if that awareness provokes a sense of responsibility even if raw numbers have changed for the better. The statement I made was poor and vague. However, I was recently at a conference on inner-city justice. Overall crime rates are down in Boston and New York. But the percentage of gun violence is up in Boston. And overall rates of violence are rising in Chicago.

If the girls were younger, I would buy it. If it was just one girl, I would buy it. If the girls were sisters, I would maybe buy it. In all of those cases, the idea of being told by a fictional character to murder someone might hold some water. This just seems like a fucked up thing two bullies did to another girl, and are now looking for a thing to take some of the blame.

@paul_tillich: The Chicago crime rate going up is mostly just Dave Lang bopping fools.

Man. The scene with the mother toward the end of that is so fucking brutal.

This story is really really sad for everyone involved.

I mean, I think it's pretty well understood by people who know what they're talking about that watching horror movies/playing violent video games/reading creepypastas/whatever is not going to turn a healthy child into a psycho killer. What it can do to a child who already may have mental issues, well, the water's murkier on that front.

Really the issue that we have is "Ostrich Syndrome," both on a parental level and a societal one - we would rather bury our heads in the sand and pretend nothing is wrong rather than addressing the problem. Then when something does happen, we immediately jump to blame whatever cause will leave the greatest number of us off the hook. Thus, guns and mental illness aren't the problem, video games are. Lack of parental awareness isn't the issue, it's Slenderman's fault.

I used to be an attorney in a law firm that handled mostly family law. I wasn't there very long because that area of law made me so miserable, but I still saw my share of screwed up kids. What always struck me is how surprised parents were when their kids acted out, despite the kids' actions being entirely and depressingly predictable. So many parents thought their kids were totally fine or were "just going through a phase," when it was readily apparent that there were some pretty serious issues going on.

Parents refused to believe their kids were at risk even after I walked them through a checklist showing the risk factors: Broken home? Check. Abuse/Trauma background? Check. Declining grades? Check. Social isolation? Check. Despite this demonstration, parents would frequently respond along the lines of "Stop trying to tell me what to do! That's not my kid! You don't know my kid! So fuck off Mr. Fancypants Statistics Lawyer!" Then three months later you'd find out the kid was facing a felony beef for knocking over a 7-11. The parent would come back in with a sob story about how the whole incident "just happened," and they never could have predicted their kid would do something like this. Professionalism always stopped me from pulling out the list of risk factors, slapping them across the face and saying "It was predictable and I told you it was predictable. The problem is that you're just a shitty parent," but damned if I didn't want to.

When a kid does something unspeakable like this, it doesn't "just happen." Nor does happen because the child became obsessed with Slenderman. Typically, there is some issue that has been festering for quite a while that hasn't been addressed like abuse, depression, social isolation or some combination. What always frustrated me was that most of these issues aren't exactly what you would call stealthy. They almost all have some obvious behavior or personality trait that should readily apparent even without specialized training. Parents in particular don't recognize them because they don't want to recognize them. That would mean accepting some responsibility for causing the issue and also taking on some responsibility for fixing it, and most parent's would rather pretend that nothing is wrong.

@demoskinos: @believer258: Categorizing violent crime is incredibly complicated, and any numbers by themselves can be misleading so it's hard to make any very specific blanket statements, but this data from the FBI shows the indisputable general drop in crimes of all types since the early 90s.

Criminologists have many different theories for the decrease, and none are accepted as concrete facts, but two factors seem pretty basic and convincing. The 80s in the US saw a giant surge of crime correlated to the surge of crack use. It impoverished tens of thousands leading them to commit crimes as a way of life, and grew gang activity, turning many urban areas into constant battlegrounds. But the social problems and crime that went with it began to diminish as the crack problem significantly lessened in the 90s.

Also, technology has helped prevent crimes in innumerable ways, and clearly that technology has improved dramatically since 1993. From police being able to instantly compile data on 'hotspots' that should be given extra attention, to much more robust databases of known associates and things that make hunting down criminals much easier.

So yeah, as you both say, despite what the media feeds us, the US (and most of the rest of the world) has seen a decrease in violent crime for almost two decades.

Guys, this story is so unusual that I find the posts trying to connect it to issues in society to be incredibly silly. In a country with 300 million + people, with a story that has been branded practically unprecedented, I refuse to give into the immediate need to look for something broad and easy to point at and fix.

Why so instantly confrontational? What proof do we have that they do spend just as much time? Over the years we've observed a rise in violent crime among an increasingly younger demographic. Youths are also becoming sexually active at a much younger age. Unfortunately I don't have a book of concrete statistics that I can point you to, but these are observations that we can all make simply by reading the news. When I was growing up (and there quite literally was no internet)then as @flushpockets mentioned my entire world was limited to the block I lived on and the corner store. My parents didn't filter the media I consumed that rigorously, but then again there weren't that many Saws or Human Centipedes out there for me to watch. Arguably everything was much less violent and sexualized and not as readily available to anyone with a monitor and keyboard.

Now I'm not saying that teenagers watching violent movies or playing violent games will automatically gravitate towards aggressive behavior. Nothing is as binary as that. I am simply saying that kids have access to a lot of really messed up content that is seeping out of the internet and younger parents need to adapt accordingly.

@lawgamer: Unfortunately those risk factors that have been used in the past to identify at risk chidren are becoming more and more prevalent in today's society. Broken homes and single parent households have skyrocketed. The advent of technology has led to social isolation. Children are being left to their own devices more and more. Abuse is not always reported and is often hidden. Couple that with an already strained child protective service workforce and you have a recipe for people slipping through the cracks.

I must say I thought you were spot on in your post.

I make no claims; I simply ask for proof. Like what @joshwent provides.

Insufficient proof. The news media is often biased toward what makes a story, not what is true. (There's probably a much better way to state that. The news is sensationalist? Better.) The constant reporting of crime (which draws in viewership) creates an illusion of constant crime. This link feels at least tangentially relevant, in that it demonstrates the difference between perception and reality.

Again, we need proof. Not knowing the years you grew up, I cannot point out counter-examples that would be just as violent as Saw or Human Centipede. Even then, there may be the issue of false representation.

@video_game_king: Well I'll be more than happy to hear your side of the argument with all the pertinent proof in place - just make sure you use empirical evidence else there really isn't any point in me even reading such a weakly constructed rebuttal as you've thus far presented.

Again, a very similar thing happened in 1993 when the internet barely existed in peoples homes in the UK. Some people are just messed up. This is just an excuse the girls have given themselves. Had Slenderman not existed, this still could of happened (just like it did, back in 93).

@humanity:

I never said I was making an argument, though. If anything, I stated the exact opposite. I'm more or less poking holes in your arguments where I see a lack of sufficient evidence for your claims.

Whoa, so The Binding of Isaac is an actual story and not just a silly game?

Man, some really crazy stuff got recorded as "The Word of God" when in fact it was just mental illness before the knowledge/understanding/acceptance of the existence of mental illness. And now that stuff is preached as scripture to entire congregations of people, some of whom are then bound to believe it as "The Truth" and so they themselves would not question a voice in their head telling them to murder someone.

Religion had a place and a time, and I'm all for communities having a way to come together for the purpose of doing good, but I just have this feeling that religion in its entirety has outlived its usefulness and that it may actually be more of a hindrance to mankind.

Then again! Without all of those Holy Wars to mass murder millions upon millions of people throughout history we would probably be grossly overpopulated at this point. But, like I said above, it had it's time and place.

@jesus_phish: You're right if slenderman wasn't around it still would have happened. Maybe they would have used Krampus instead, or freddy krueger, or the witch in the forest. Folklore and fakelore alike abound with stories of people/monsters that target children. Historically they were used as a means of disciplining children, be good or X will come and take you...

Or they could have chosen a book or movie, like mark david chapman did that gave them a reason to kill. Stories like this are made used conciously or unconciously as a defenese mechanism to protect the psyche from fully accepting responsibility. Essentially, the old Devil made me do it argument thereby absolving the person commiting the heinous act, in their eyes at least.

I completely agree.

Again, to echo a reply to an earlier comment, I am not trying to fix anything with this post. Rather, having something that entertains me associated with an attempted murder provoked much broader thoughts about how I engage my entertainment when compared to mass shootings, given that I abhor guns and have no invested interest in them. That larger question is more interesting to me at the moment.

@lawgamer: Yep- Spot on. the knee jerk reaction to immediately start blaming things like the "internet" or "video games" as the singular reason for violent behavior is like not seeing the forest for the trees. Like rock and roll music or even comic books back in the day- it is easy to assign blame for bad behavior to something you don't fully understand. Slender may have been an element to how messed up these kids were, but you also have to take into account the bigger picture on what got these kids to a place where they thought they needed to stab a fellow student.

And saying that "oh, they are just kids and they don't know what they were doing and video games told them to kill" is BS. A normal 12 year old knows the difference between right and wrong. Normal, being the operative word here.

I think what I and others are saying here is that it's hard to ponder that larger question when it's based off of a flawed assumption. Media influence on society in some ways is a very real thing, but media influence instigating real world violence has yet to ever be proven.

@budwyzer: Woah now, did I miss something? What is the connection between religion and Slender Man you are trying to make?

@cerberus3dog: I believe his point is that a lot of religious texts have about the same believability as modern urban legends like Slenderman, but people were more gullible back then so now those early legends have grown into widely accepted beliefs that are not discarded very quickly.

I guess those girls didnt want no part of the 'hugging it out', 'everyone's a winner' culture. I can respect that, but for their actions and they are guilty, make no mistake, they should be thrown in front of a firing squad on live tv. We put animals down for less and we are animals.

Well best of luck with that I suppose! Try contributing in the future though, it can be really fun to be part of the thread!

@bisonhero: Oh yeah, I agree with that. Thanks for the clarification.

I wasn't. There was a post somewhere up there about the correlation between slinderman and the binding of isaac. I was surprised that the binding of isaac was an actual story and then went off on my tangent. =D

The moon man is right. You can't make arguments without facts. Personal experiences are anecdotal.

@alwaysbebombing: Two 12 year old girls bring a third girl into the woods and stab her because of a video they watched on the internet. I don't think my statement of "parents should pay closer attention to what their kids are doing" is really that far fetched or requires any sort of hard evidence - it's just common sense. The moon man is simply playing his favorite game of devils advocate which is usually fine but often doesn't add anything worthwhile to the conversation.

@humanity: And two boys brought a third boy to a disused railway line and murdered him because.. well because they were messed up in the head. Slenderman is just the "Judas Priest" or "bible" in this story. These girls would probably have convicted this crime regardless of Slenderman or not. They just happened to make up a story about Slenderman in their heads as a game/reason for doing what they wanted to do.

@jesus_phish: So no one is responsible here, we're just supposed to throw our hands up in the air and say it was an act of God? These girls were just broken thats all, nothing could have been done to prevent this.

Ah, but it does. The comparative in your statement begs the question, "Compared to what?" And if I might reach further, your conclusion is ultimately flimsy. One incident that might very well have slipped under the parents' watch is no case that they are not paying attention to what their children do (as many a parent of small children can attest), nor is it a case for greater trends about parental inattention.