Talk:Chat Room D/@comment-26030957-20150411023510

This wonderful little chatroom piece really defines the genre of creepypasta to me. It is a short and unnerving tale about the ghosts that can lurk within our devices. Something or someone is contacting me through this technology; I don’t know who or what they are, and I am beginning to get scared. And then—there it is—in the most intimate of all places, beside me in my bedroom, breathing loudly. I see pastas like these as a metaphor for the real ghouls that can be lurking within chatrooms, such as sexual predators or demented trolls who take their hate to extreme levels. In the old days it was Ouija boards, but they are so easy to laugh at and blow off as silly. There is no denying the evil that can lurk within modern communication devices. It can be very, very real. Horror is a way for humanity to not only confront our fears, but to also let us rationalize it and even mock it. Bram Stoker crafted the tale of Dracula, an undead creature of the night come to England from far off mountains to drain young maidens of their blood; meanwhile, real life serial killers like Jack the Ripper stalked the foggy streets of London sexually mutilating young women. Stoker allowed us to confront our fears but at the same time to separate them from reality so that we could better accept and deal with them, rationalize them. Creepypastas do the same thing, taking this fear of what evil may lurk on the internet, and creating something we can scoff at, such as a satanic pill that takes away sleep, or the image of a smiling dog that can send one into seizures. I like that you briefly mention Facebook, for there is another place where we can often unwittingly let malevolent forces into our lives. This piece also brings about uncanny Freudian themes as well: what I thought was my sister is not my sister; there is an other. An other in my bedroom beside me, that is not what I thought it was. Like all the best pastas the ending is ambiguous. What is this D? What will happen to Natalie? We don’t know. Just as none of us knows what will happen, can never know. And we have to deal with that. The people we know and love may not be who we think they are, and no one knows what is going to happen to anyone, besides the forlorn fate of death that lurks behind every corner, in every chatroom. And this is something we just have to fucking deal with. That is the scariest thing of all.