Board Thread:General Wiki Discussion/@comment-36572169-20180813133907

WARNING: Insufferable pretentiousness ahead.

Can creepypastas be considered as "art" the way popular music or cinema are? Yes, I'm aware that the latter two have existed for a very long time over which they have both produced examples that have furthered the possibilities of expression within their respective fields through innovation and attention-to-craft to create works that are timeless and appeal to generations of viewers/listeners despite being denounced of their legitimacy during their infancies. In contrast, the creepypasta has existed for merely three decades...

To clarify, most people mistake creepypasta for fictional horror literature: while the latter features heavily in the former, it is important to remember that creepypastas are, for the most part, multimedia works which involve (though not restricted to) images, video, audio, popular social media platform/discussion board threads etc. It should also be noted that most creepypastas evolve to lack any definite authorship, much like folklore/urban legends: while the concept of Slenderman was no doubt created by one person (Eric Knudsen or "Victor Surge"), its nearly labyrinthine folklore was contributed to by thousands of others, effectively making it internet-based lore or a "meme" and hence, more of a collective experience than an individual one. (Note: I am NOT denouncing works exclusively of text written by individuals, in fact I quite enjoy some of them. I feel that in order to have this discussion, one needs a clear-cut definiton of what a "creepypasta" is in the first place...maybe you people can help me out in this respect. If such works are regarded as creepypastas, then you have to admit that they are not fully representative of the possibilities of what can be achieved in a creepypasta format...either that, or they need to be placed under a separate sub-genre that is more accurate than the rather ineffective categorizations on this site.)

The goal of the creepypasta is to scare and terrify those who experience it, but the multimedia possibilities of this imply that such an approach can also be used for different fictional genres. This has been extensively used in marketing strategies for games or movies, but I think they could very well exist as stand-alone fictional worlds within the internet that are also believable and realistic. Do such things exist? If so, then I believe that they are some of the most exciting examples of postmodern art available today. But this is, admittedly, outside the purview of this discussion board.

Coming back to the topic at hand: if creepypasta were to be considered as a legitimate artform by-and-large unrelated to pre-existing artforms, then what would be its most path-breaking or influential work in terms of originality of content, style, form and execution? Or most importantly, can it be compared to other fields of art? And as a final question of this already overlong post, what makes a creepypasta?

(P.S.: I apologize for the clumsiness with which I presented the above points.) 