Sacrifice to the Slender Man

[Grumman]

The differerence, I suppose, is that there was never the sort of constant exposure and reinforcement of these legends that an Internet forum provides.

Santa Claus doesn't ring any bells?

Santa Claus never asked me to kill anyone. Unless we're talking about Robot Santa Claus.

My point was that Slenderman is small fry in terms of "constant exposure and reinforcement of legends". Parents have a long history of forcing their children to go to weekly meetings about how awesome a fictional character is, telling their children to perform various rituals to appease fictional characters, and planting evidence that those fictional characters are real and happy with their efforts. A child is given far more reason to believe in the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus than the Slenderman, but they still figure it out. God sticks, but that's the only one.

[Channel72]

My point was that Slenderman is small fry in terms of "constant exposure and reinforcement of legends". Parents have a long history of forcing their children to go to weekly meetings about how awesome a fictional character is, telling their children to perform various rituals to appease fictional characters, and planting evidence that those fictional characters are real and happy with their efforts. A child is given far more reason to believe in the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus than the Slenderman, but they still figure it out. God sticks, but that's the only one.

I agree, but I'm not sure why you think that refutes what I'm saying. It seems to support what I'm saying. The Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus are mostly benevolent (and arguably useful to parents), at least in their modern incarnations, and children believe in them because all the authority figures in their life (as well as society at large) plays along. But getting a child to believe in some kind of malevolent entity that demands human sacrifice doesn't seem particularly difficult. Granted, in the case of slender man, it wasn't the parents/authority figures who implanted the belief, it was the constant reinforcement of an Internet community, which can be just as powerful. The difference is that the Internet is really the first time in history where community-reinforced memes and beliefs can easily be injected into a child's brain from a distance, without the child's parents necessarily being aware or involved.