The Digital Campfire

Abstract

This chapter positions the Slender Man in the lineage of traditional storytelling, identifying key elements of oral folklore that the stories recall: variability that leads to shifts and changes in the story according to teller, performance that defines each telling as a mutually communicative event between teller and audience, and community that draws the parameters of each telling according to the culture and tastes of the digital campfire around which it is told. Just as in folklore, the Slender Man stories are considered in the specific contexts and milieus of the communities who tell, consume, and share them.