Talk:Jeff the Killer 2015/@comment-25941663-20151207121708/@comment-26030957-20151207163918

But what is better? What does that mean?

Say you heard an old recording of a bluegrass or folk song, one of those old-timey "I killed my woman by the river" songs, that was badly recorded, the banjo's timing was off, the singer flubbed the lines, there were no solos; but, it had heart and soul, an ethereal feeling to it that spoke to you viscerally. If you rerecorded it with a symphony, in perfect time, and rewrote the melody to make it fit the chord changes more smoothly, would that make it "better"? Even if it lost all its intensity and vitality? What is this quality of "better" that we seek? Sometimes it is the very badness and amateurishness that give a work of art its life blood.

Are you familiar with Picasso's painting Guernico? It's a rough, raw painting the depicts the bombing of innocent civilians, in the center the crude image of a horse bent and twisted. I went to see it in Spain and there was an entire room that was filled with sketches and paintings Picasso had done preparing for it. They were detailed and realistic, nothing like the cubist primitiveness of the finished piece. He purposely made it crude, to convey an emotion.

It's like the White Stripes. Imagine if they had a real drummer who was putting in fills and syncopation, instead of the basic beats of Meg. Imagine if they had a keyboard player and bassist and recorded in a high end studio where everything was polished and gleaming. It wouldn't be the same. It would lose its magic.

Or punk music. They were tired of Led Zeppelin and twenty minute guitar solos. They wanted to strip the glamour away from rock and roll, make it raw and pure again. Dangerous. Yeah, I think that's the word here. Dangerous, scary. Alive, kicking and ugly.

I don't even know what I'm rambling on about anymore. Too much coffee. I think my point is that the rawness and punch of creepypastas were what originally drew us to this weird shit. If you polish it too much you lose that spunk, that drive, that beat and danger.