“Creepypasta”: Images Of Waiting For Death And Danger In The Online Space

Abstract

The digital age generates a lot of new phenomena that are developing and affecting the current sociocultural environment in a special way. The article examines the phenomenon of such a subspecies of the horror genre as the Internet folklore "creepypasta" from the point of view of the phenomenon's influence on the formation of expectations of death and danger among consumers of this cultural product. Different approaches to the phenomenon are described, combined in the narratives of "creepypasta", based on the specific capabilities of digital textuality and the unique properties of various platforms of the Internet space. The author comes to the conclusion that the specific features of "creepypastas", as well as methods and platforms for their distribution, lead to the formation of fundamentally new fears, expectations of danger and death in a person, and also highlights the key features of "creepypastas". The author also says that a person's expectation of danger, death or horror in the socio-cultural reality, on the one hand, forms images from "creepypastas", when a person acts as a narrator, and on the other hand, it can partially be formed under the influence of these very images, when a person acts as a listener. In conclusion, the author summarizes that the terrible images of "creepypastas" reinforce new expectations about death and danger, which spread through real users across platforms and between them using the same means of textual and visual representation, appearing real and hidden and violating our sincere readings of these spaces.