User blog comment:SoPretentious/What Makes a Great Creepypasta?/@comment-25755652-20150513154504

There are a lot of great points here! The only thing I would have to (somewhat) disagree with is the scare factor. I have yet to read a creepypasta that genuinely made me scared/ afraid. It is really only the true scary stories that get to me because, well, they are true, and you never know if the same monster someone has encountered will come after you. But creepypastas are by definition fake, fiction, creations of an author's mind or imagination so they can't really be scary as much as they can be interesting and present interesting ideas. For this reason, I like to read and write psychological thrillers. They aren't scary either; but they have a haunting element about them which causes you to think about how it could apply to your own life, similar to a real life scary story. In my opinion, those are the most effective creepypastas. Jump scares have their place in B horror films, but lets try to keep them out of literature. Unless you are writing a parody fic, and then by all means, add all of the skeletons in the closet that you like.