“O que diabos é um slenderman?”: pesquisa sobre a constituição das creepypastas

Abstract

The present work aims to understand whether there are unique elements that classify a horror text posted on the internet as a creepypasta and, if so, list and elucidate what these elements are. Based on the problem-question “what are the constituent elements of a creepypasta?” a hypothesis was raised based on five points: (1) unknown authorship; (2) potential of going viral; (3) dissemination via copypasta of the text, image, video or audio on the internet; (4) content based on horror, in order to cause a state of fear in the reader; and (5) supporting content with shock value. In this way, we used as a source of bibliographical research the contributions of Freud (2019), Blumstein (2020) and Carroll (1999) to the study of the uncanny, fear and the horror genre; Samoyault (2008) and Piglia (1999) to support knowledge about intertextuality and the textual construction of short stories; Lévy (1999) and Recuero (2009) to explain cyberculture and viralization processes. We used the documentary analysis methodology from Moreira (2010) in order to fulfill the objective of the work. The analysis took place through three moments: (1) pre-analysis, which involves the elaboration of the objective and hypothesis that guide this research; (2) selection and organization, in which we selected fifteen creepypastas arranged in five categories from three online repositories (Creepypasta Wiki, Wiki Creepypasta Brasil and Creepypasta.com): (a) narratives, (b) diaries, (c) rituals, (d ) lost episodes and (e) hack ROMs/alternative games; (3) data processing, which takes place after the analysis in order to define which of the points raised by the hypothesis are most present and, therefore, answer the problem question. The analysis points out points (2), (3) and (4), potential of going viral, sharing through copypastas and content based on horror, respectively, as relevant, while seeing inconsistencies in the presence of points (1) and (5), authorship unknown and supporting content based on shock value, although, of these two, only point (5) was not perceived as coherent, as, among the fifteen creepypastas analyzed, it was the topic with the least appearance, appearing twelve times. Thus, the work understands that creepypastas, despite not having a specific formula, have necessary elements for their categorization as such, such as anonymity, content based on horror, potential of going viral and sharing through copypastas. It is also concluded that creepypasta can be considered a literary genre specific to cyberculture.