By Jamaal Ryan
Over this past weekend, two twelve year old girls, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, lured another their 12 year old classmate over for a sleep over, then into the woods and stabbed her 19 times. Their alleged motivation, to become a proxy for Slender Man. You can read the full CNN report here.
Surprisingly – and thankfully – there has yet to be any
forced linkage to the video game adaptation of Slender Man, though the fiction
and the lore that the girls were apparently obsessed with were generated from the
wiki Creepypasta.
But this isn’t just about video games, this is about
fictional creativity and the idea that fantastical products of imagination can
somehow have such dictatorship over crimes like this.
Sloshedtrain, an admin on Creepypasta, wrote this in his blog post yesterday in response to the
crime and demands to shutdown the wiki:
“Will these people succeed on their request? Most likely
not. These are the same people who think that violent video games help create
mass murders, because it’s convenient to blame and point fingers.”
This sediment is also shared
by Dr. Michael Rich, the director of the
Center on Media and Child Health at Boston Children’s Hospital:
“Clearly, there are mental
health issues here. No one can stab someone 19 times in an unfeeling way. …
These girls got to a place in their own heads where the illogical became
logical.”
He continues:
“I don’t think we can lay
this at the doorstep of the Internet, computers or even video games.”
It’s troublesome and even
painful to hear that such young children would commit such a horrific and heinous
crime. However the internet shaming following the attempted murder is short
sighted, neglecting how cults, religion, and other forms of worship have driven
people to carry out these “sacrifices”.
If the two girls stated that they stabbed the girl to "serve God" or to serve Saturn, the story wouldn't be too much different.
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