Creepypasta: A New Cultural Expression?

What is Creepypasta? It seems to be another one of those phenomena that have become part of what we can run into when we use the Internet. As the name clearly announces it is not necessarily “nice” material, nothing that could be easily digested. They are a group of short horror stories told or introduced as though they were real, and it is that desire to make them look real the reason why these stories go around the Internet without anyone taking credit for them. A good example is those stories that focus on hypothetical and bizarre experiments always led by Soviet scientists during the forties or fifties (the titles always begin with the words The Russian Experiment...). I particularly liked The Russian Experiment on Sleep because it sounds as a good idea and could easily be translated into a horror movie but because it is a piece of fiction it lacks technical details and the end is a bit forced and far-fetched.

They are not only stories, also videos have been hacked or modified using TV cartoon characters and telling stories we would never see such as Calamaro’s Death, Pokemón Black, or the Dead Bart.  It is said that the famous Slender Man’s story was originally Creepypasta. And there are many more examples which together show us how strongly fascinated we are with horror and how that fascination has permeated the Internet in a way that is both original and disturbing.

In many ways the Internet is adapting to our needs and in the process we are creating expressions that are anarchic but also free and that is perhaps its greatest virtue, the one that makes trends such as these Creepypasta stories all the more interesting if not to be admired then at least to be considered and analyzed.