Unfriended

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 19 May 2015.



One more thought: What if we had a Kickstarter that we were doing everything in our power to stop? Because we realized (too late) that it would allow this ancient (or brand new) menace to manifest?

Okay, the Kickstarter idea wouldn't quite work as is. My point with that was that we wanted to fund the Farthington mascot costume but then got some premonition that it might be a bad idea (for the reasons I mentioned a couple posts ago). But then it got 100% funded and we had to go through with it.

But I think that isn't quite right. In order to express the true viral horror by which myths become reality, it would need to be out of our hands the minute funding hit 100%. In other words, we'd need a rogue group member who still wanted to go through with it, who took that money and started working, no longer responding to the group's attempts to communicate. And then, of course, the mascot starts showing up and grisly murders start happening.

I guess the big question would be whether the first murder would be the rogue group member, who didn't realize what he/she created. I don't like that route. I think it would be better to at least imply that the rogue group member is the one who has donned the mascot suit and is committing the murders. But then, it seems obvious that at some point, that rogue group member is found murdered but the murders continue. So, then the question is who is inside the mascot suit. At some point, there are no natural explanations left.

I like the creepypasta genre because multiple story lines can be pursued simultaneously without investing any one of them with truth.

A totally different plot line could explore the dynamic of online groups like ours, which also have some terrifying possibilities. One is that an anonymous participant (or someone who was supposed to be dead, like Unfriended) suddenly joins the group and starts saying creepy things. Or alternatively, one group member's identity seems to have become suddenly possessed, evidenced by a sudden shift in tone, a subtle change in avatar, etc. In the avatar example, I could start slowly blacking out my mascot suit's eyes until no white is left. This new movie seems incredibly trashy, but it's a good representation of the trend.

As if this couldn't get any scarier, these characters would not be Carlton Farthington or Steffi Humboldt or Victoria Woolf, but us, the writers of this story. I don't know, I'm kind of scaring myself. Let me know if I should stop.

Honestly, if the Sea Devil costume is ever made, I will feel a slight twinge of horror for the rest of my life.