Farthington's Voicemail: through April 1st processed

A treasure trove of Carlton Farthington's voicemails has been made available to the blog.  At the request of researchers, enthusiasts, law enforcement agencies, and other followers of the project, voice-to-text transcriptions have been published as-is rather than edited for sense.  We hope that this will better capture the texture of the spoken word, rendering it more accessible and/or flexible for the diverse purposes of our audience.

 11/20/15 4:44 PM 3 months ago (910-541-3466)

Hey, so we say that this is one step beyond love lily it's variance. You know maybe the the the Madman the the person is Insane was the prophet of this coming arrow where we are the image of the symbol or the sign would become more real than reality It's Ralph and that the reality which day. So that's the world and let's show Lazarus junior fine since so and then it's it's I mean potentially. Even more just tripping when something. Get out that really shouldn't exist. Cakes for and I'm reminded of the whole creepypasta Slenderman Phenomenon where by you know someone kind of makes this off makes it up, and then I'll just you know it and then kind of through April 1st processed. That that Artist becomes reality and maybe even maybe even a greater kind of reality Tell you know and and I think this is I'm feeling ideal this place and I think a lot of people feel this bye. Just driving around right now and being a flag at half past seems like every single day flag fan, and you we get into wondering. What is the flag at half-mast? And ever since 9:05. I think thank you x x I have finance class started flying at half past all the time or you know fairly often where you don't even know what it is that we just point help of points does flag buying it have passed actually drive whatever the cast your teams and so the black find a half mast and knows why it was. You know lowered. But you know it creates if you pastor free. And so I think that one of the things is dramatize Bye Joe Lazarus junior Confronting his clone Joseph flat surface the 3rd.

Marxism and Form

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Liza to the group on 21 May 2015.

Abandoned structure at the corner of Orleans & Wilkins, Eastern Market, Detroit

Ding, ding, ding! Exactly!

To quote Frederic Jameson's Marxism and Form, "The profound vocation of the work of art in a commodity society [is] not to be a commodity, not to be consumed, to be unpleasurable in the commodity sense" (395).

From my experience working as a content writer for an indoor-gardening supplier, labeling something "Made with Cave-Dwelling Bat Dung!" is as effective of a selling point as "Made in Detroit!" Such products, without fail, flew off of our shelves. Whether buying the bullshit I rambled on about in the product descriptions ("Nature's Super-Food!", "Multipurpose Elixir!", "Unmatched Organic Activator!", "Cannot be Duplicated in a Laboratory!") or the literal bat shit, it is a truth universally acknowledged that the people liked it, loved it, had to have it.

While I was (mostly) being fecesious about marketing it for human consumption, there are a multitude of other options. While I don't think they're the right options by any means, they're options nonetheless.

1. Paper. While traveling in Botswana, I learned how to make paper out of elephant dung (rich in fiber!).

• Pros: realistic, simple process, unique product, low production cost.
• Cons: would need a steady supply of elephant dung. The thought of the effort involved in the procurement process alone has already got me mentally pooped.

2. Guano-Tea. As a cost-efficient alternative to working bat guano directly into the topsoil, many of our customers fashioned nylons and old pillowcases into guano-filled tea bags. Similar to compost teas, the steeping process extracts optimal amounts of nitrogen, phosphorous, and "flourishing microbes!" from the guano, increasing both a plant’s and product's life spans (“content writing” at its finest).

• Pros: also realistic, easy, and cheap.
• Cons: limited target audience, small profit window.

3. Guano Moisturizers, Dung Masks, Sea Salt Scrubs ("Go against the grain with these skin-smoothing salt blends!"), or Anti-Aging Serums ("The secret to eternally youthful skin discovered in cave-dwelling bats!"). Of course, there would be no actual guano in any of these products, which would be made clear on the packaging.

• Pros: futile to list because the
• Cons: are way too expansive and expensive.

At this point in the e-mail, I give you all full permission to trash all of the ideas I’ve thrown out thus far in order to make room in your brains for the following schemes. In four words, “Less Work, More Gain!”

1. Upcycled (though this word makes me seethe) Garbage. While this idea is by no means novel, I think it still carries the most potential for success. Every time I go to Eastern Market, Rust Belt, or any local craft fair, it seems like every single booth is simply littered (can’t stop, won’t stop) with these sorts of products (ie: jewelry, clothes, bags, lamps, furniture, frames, uncategorizable tchotchkes, etc.). And they’re expensive. And they sell. Owning a piece of Detroit’s world famous ruins is like owning a piece of the Berlin Wall. It’s the aura made tangible, and people are dazzled by it.

• Pros: minimal production cost, widely marketable, allowance for drastic variation in terms of price, size, practicality, and aesthetic.  
• Cons: some effort required, the word upcycled.

2. DIY Junk Kits. “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and repair!” Customers would have three (or more!) options to choose from. One option would include a collection of random trash with no cohesion and no guidance. The tabula rasa of all trash kits. The fate of these specific types of trash boxes would lie completely in the hands of the buyer to make it (or not make it!) into whatever they want it to be. For an up-charge, they’ll even get a map of origin for their box of garbage. The second option would include a partially constructed product. Included in this kit’s box would be the remaining pieces of trash needed to finish the product, if the buyer so desired. For an up-charge, their box will include an instruction booklet to help guide them through the upcycling process. The third option is the Diversity Kit: a mixture of garbage from a variety of trashcans in a variety of neighborhoods. This option offers the full Detroit experience! It also encourages the buyer to mix in some of their own trash, an experience that will help the buyer feel more connected to the garbage’s creators. It will eradicate their loneliness. It will offer them an intimacy like no other. Maybe there’s an app for this option: the Find My Garbage! app. This option will offer transglobal connection like never before. Strangers will connect over what they’ve chosen to destroy. (Cue DeLillo: “America can be saved only by what it’s trying to destroy.”)

• Pros: mostly realistic.
• Cons: slightly unrealistic.

3. Haunted Remains. Relating to the creepypasta trope, we could sell pieces of Detroit's most haunted history. The options would be expansive, but for the sake of visualization, picture, if you will: plastic bottles found in Belle Isle's haunted woods filled with water from Elmwood Cemetery's haunted creek (that, according to folklore, once ran red from the blood of fallen British soldiers during the Battle of Bloody Run). "Two haunts for the price of one! Open at your own risk!"

• Pros: Navigating haunted places at nightfall to collect garbage.
• Cons: Navigating haunted places at nightfall to collect garbage.

4. DIY Dan Gilbert Voodoo Doll Kits. As Dan Gilbert profits off of trashing Detroit’s history, perhaps we could help Detroit profit off of Gilbert's trash.  Hair strands, chewed gum, clothing scraps. Of course, with this scenario we would be morally obligated to donate all proceeds to the poor souls of Gilbertory who have been displaced by his empire and victimized by Quicken Loans’ predatory lending. If this isn’t a Fair Trade, though, I don’t know what is.  Eat yer heart out, Dr. Bronner.

• Pros: iViva la Justicia!
• Cons: Nice knowing you guys. Big Gilbert is watching. Bring on the lawsuits.

Under the spreading chestnut tree,
Liza

The Happy Heart is True

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 20 May 2015.

The Virgin Mary from the Ghent Altarpiece, 1432 by Jan van Eyck

Brief, bright new thread...

You're going to like this, you've been waiting for this. With all of that compellingly creepy stuff, how can God possibly win out? How can Christ possibly win out? How can the Blessed Virgin Mary possibly win out?

O, so definitively... So definitive is their victory.

Not going to fully flesh any of this out, but this thought has invigorated me.

We've had this conversation before: surely Christian art will never again have relevance, in part because its reliance on the deus ex machina.

First of all, how non-postmodern to say "never"!

Second of all, our this God isn't in a machine. Our God is the CREATOR OF EVERYTHING. Our God is CREATOR.

Aristotle said the poet should always "seek what is necessary or probable"

so that it is either necessary or probable that a person of such-and-such a sort say or do things of the same sort, and it is either necessary or probable that this incident happen after that one. It is obvious that the solutions of plots too should come about as a result of the plot itself, and not from a contrivance, as in the Medea and in the passage about sailing home in the Iliad. A contrivance must be used for matters outside the drama — either previous events which are beyond human knowledge, or later ones that need to be foretold or announced. For we grant that the gods can see everything. There should be nothing improbable in the incidents; otherwise, it should be outside the tragedy, e.g., that in Sophocles' Oedipus.

And yes, on the human plane that makes sense to a certain degree. But here's the rub: our God is different than the gods of Euripides. And one of the places we see that most clearly is in the gratuitous designation of Mary as Mediatrix.

Check out this section from Lumen Gentium:

III. On the Blessed Virgin and the Church

60. There is but one Mediator as we know from the words of the apostle, "for there is one God and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a redemption for all".(298) The maternal duty of Mary toward men in no wise obscures or diminishes this unique mediation of Christ, but rather shows His power. For all the salvific influence of the Blessed Virgin on men originates, not from some inner necessity, but from the divine pleasure. It flows forth from the superabundance of the merits of Christ, rests on His mediation, depends entirely on it and draws all its power from it. In no way does it impede, but rather does it foster the immediate union of the faithful with Christ.

The italicized portion is mainly what I wanted you all to see, but it's all so beautiful and good I can't bring myself to excerpt. God as CREATOR can't be constrained by "what is necessary or probable"! That italicized phrase, if you can momentarily step outside your cradle Catholic mind, is utterly MIND BLOWING. I think we often think of God as operating from necessity: God would necessarily be one, would necessarily be omnipotent, would necessarily be good, etc. But we sometimes don't realize that there is this peerless CREATOR who moves things, who makes things, who speaks things into being. Not some Plotinian god who helplessly radiates, but a Being who possesses a degree of creative agency utterly unimaginable to us.

And so we go beyond the Sabbath to the Lord's Day
And so we go beyond death and Purgatory and Halloween to All Saints' Day

New wine in new wine skins, son!

And you can see why saints like St. Brigid have been inebriated by this riotous superfluity:

I should like a great lake of beer to give to God.
I should like the angels of Heaven to be tippling there for all eternity.
I should like the men of Heaven to live with me, to dance and sing.
If they wanted I’d put at their disposal vats of suffering
White cups of love I’d give them with a heart and a half.
Sweet pitchers of mercy I’d offer to every man.
I’d make heaven a cheerful spot,
Because the happy heart is true.
I’d make men happy for their own sakes.
I should like Jesus to be there too.
I’d like the people of heaven to gather from all the parishes around.
I’d give a special welcome to the women,
the three Marys of great renown.
I’d sit with the men, the women of God,
There by the great lake of beer
We’d be drinking good health forever,
And every drop would be a prayer.

And God can do creepypasta too. Just read about the Three Secrets of Fatima. Let Slender Man wave his octopus arms around the playground.

Because the happy heart is true.

A Permeating Presence (Part 2 of 2)

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Liza to the group on 20 May 2015.



Relating back to the initiating artist’s presence in the project, I don't think it inhibits its growth.

Contrarily, I think it is this permeation of presence that guarantees its growth. There’s a lot of speculation, which you know if you read the article I sent, that the anonymous Kanye Quest gamer who uploaded the Pastebin was either the game developer or an Ascensionist.

Why? To become part of the story.
Why? To bring awareness to the story.
Why? To only tell part of a story bound to enrapture many with its creepiness, mysteriousness, and incompletion.

(Think Slender Man's blank face, which alone encourages infinite amounts of interpretation. Would the manifestation of the Sea Devil costume ultimately close this channel for open interpretation? Whereas seeing was once believing, in the age of simulacra we only have to believe in something to see it. So, like Slender Man, the more ambiguous Farthington is, the more we believe in his existence. The more we believe in his existence, the more we see him. Simulacrum precedes reality, yes, but it must also remain simulacrum which must remain reality.)

None of the aforementioned speculation comes as a surprise, of course, but what I’m fascinated by is the extension of this speculation from the first Pastebin that was posted "anonymously" to every subsequent article, comment, video, etc. The digital footprint is the same, some claim.  If discovered too early, this can inhibit the story's growth, yes. After a certain point, however, it really doesn’t matter. The story has already become bigger than the storyteller, and is no longer the storyteller’s to tell. It is now ours to do with it what we want, to take it where we want it to go. Eventually it becomes bigger than us even, and goes where it wants to, heedless to our instructions. The initiating artist then not only provided us with road signs leading us to what McLuhan calls the “roads and canals” of modern media ("make happen agents") but our messenger has also become our partial guide through the roads and canals. I think, were the initiating artist to recede too quickly once the others begin to exceed, the others would go wayward and the story’s survivability would be doomed.

This reminds me, have any of you seen The Institute? How about Faults?

I think both personify this notion.

A Permeating Presence (Part 1 of 2)

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Liza to the group on 20 May 2015.



What an interesting phenomenon that Slender Man is.

Over the past couple of years, many of my students have been inhabitants of the Slenderverse. It was interesting to witness some of their involvement in this world dwindle into nothingness following the Wisconsin tragedy. It was equally as interesting, albeit more horrifying, to witness some of their involvements deepen post-pronouncement.

(Does this validate the Tulpa Theory? Can we kill Slender Man simply by killing our thoughts of him? Or does he operate on some sort of quantum level? Is he still there even when we can't see him? Has the story become bigger than the storyteller(s)?)

It is perhaps more interesting to me now as I sit here and relate all of these stored memories to everything we’ve been talking about.

Art, I'm with you. There’s something very Baudrillardian about Slender Man’s proxies acting out their hyperrealities in "reality," of their human experience not becoming simulated but rather being a simulation of reality. I fear we're treading dangerously close to Baudrillard's fourth stage of the sign-order system. Some would even argue that we’re already living in it. Do you think these girls were just plain maladjusted and therefore were predisposed for "possession," or do you think they were unable to foresee the repercussions that would arise in the transference of their digital fantasies in the realm of reality because their sign "has no relation to reality whatsoever. It is its own pure simulacrum"? Have any of you seen the film Heavenly Creatures? Perhaps the Slenderverse was their Fourth World.

In response to your first message, I partially agree that the knowable presence of a project’s initiating artists can suffocate the project’s aura (and subsequently its survivability). However, I also believe the initiating artist is frequently the one who helps catalyze the progression of the story from the constructed identity of an anonymous observer. Someone relatable, someone detached, someone with similar levels of separation from the project as the rest of us.

So, the initiating artist is there with a permeating presence, (s/)he just chooses (wisely) to stay concealed behind the curtain until the final scene. Sometimes (s/)he never emerges at all. Sometimes we assume the process was organic. Sometimes it was really just an unlabeled Genetically Modified Organism, creating a schism between what we think we are consuming and what we are actually consuming.  

Art, this goes back to the e-mail I sent you in regards to DeLillo and the postmodern propensity toward anti-reality, toward the blind acceptance of artifice as reality. Unless we diligently peel off the layers upon layers of gleaming, plastic packaging we’ll never know what they’re hiding at their core. However, what are we to do when there is no core, only endless layers of more synthetic packaging? Do we bemoan the lack of objectivity or do we embrace the abundance of subjectivity? Is all of this fruitless to even wonder about since there is no fruit, just a representation of the fruit?

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.

The Pure Simulation of Farthington

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

Jean Baudrillard lecturing at European Graduate School, Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

Is it at all plausible that this is the kind of existence Carlton Farthington has? I mean, surely someone would have to have met him face to face right? Someone would have verified at least the slightest shred of his existence? Or is this what Steffi discovers?

Now, that doesn't mean that Farthington wouldn't have an effect on his environment, just as Slender Man supposedly led two teen girls to stab their classmate 19 times. This is very Baudrillard, in which simulcra now precedes the reality. So, it's not that Farthington doesn't exist, it's just that he has come to exist through this postmodern mechanism. Perhaps there was the slightest of originals on which Farthington was based. Perhaps this was some actual person who someone met at some point. That person could have died or just disappeared into a normal life somewhere in the world. Or never existed. Or was cobbled together from multiple people. It really doesn't matter.

Regardless, it is the pure simulation of Farthington that now predominates, that grows ever stronger, and that impacts the lives of his followers. Maybe one or more people actually occupy this meme for a time. Maybe an actual demon is summoned by the clearing that is created. It's not implausible that this is what happened in the Slender Man case.

I have been thinking about how much fodder for creepypasta we have!

Doesn't it strike you as the slightest bit strange that on November 1, 2014, I began communicating solely from my carltonfarthington account? And that our first show since then was at All Saints Church?

Don't want to scare anyone, but with 4 people, we do technically have enough for a horror story.

What would be terrifying, Liza, is if you actually went all the way through with creating the Farthington outfit. At that point, someone or something could occupy that space.

That is why The Benefactor is so nefarious. Yes, we'd love to have things funded to the maximum, but what happens when an idea like this starts to exist in space and time? Seems like #1 on a created thing's list is to seek out its creator. To what extent is creating a costume an act of invocation? Do we create that being or just give it a place to manifest? Alternatively, is that being planting this idea in our heads, trying to get us to give it a place to manifest itself? At that point, we will have served our purpose and will likely be summarily dispatched. Or possessed. Or who knows, maybe it will just leave us alone. Or nothing will happen at all.

Another similar move would be to find out where the nearest buried stream is. Is there one that flows through your neighborhood, under your school, under your house? What's the nearest one? Is there a point of access to that underground network somewhere in your basement?

Whatever the case may be don't give out any addresses, don't ever give out your address over email!

Creepypasta

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

Let the children... by Victor-Surge on DeviantArt

Incidentally, our story has a lot of potentially creepypasta fare embedded in it. The whole summer pilot program venturing down into the steam tunnels, reading drafts of Yeats's "Second Coming," catching glimpses the terrible beast Farthington had warned about,

sometimes swaggering in the distance up ahead of us in the dim intermittent rays of our flashlights, sometimes turning around suddenly to face us, its human physiognomy smiling to reveal a terrifying array of lion's teeth.

See the original post here.

Also, the idea of Carlton/Steffi inside the Sea Devil suit. Jawless or not?

As with creepypasta in general, I'd love for our story to eventually encourage the type of underground fan fiction, fanart, and cosplay that tend to proliferate around these threadbare stories. I don't know how all that starts, but it's almost like too much involvement by the initiating artist can actually inhibit its growth. This, of course, is the open source paradigm in a nutshell. Also that of King Arthur, whose legend grows as his reality recedes from view.

I just remembered and looked up the Slender Man meme, which was started as a thread on the Something Awful Internet forum, namely, a contest to doctor everyday photos to look terrifying. It relies on the exact same dynamism as our project.

As the author of the linked article states,

Slenderman highlights the strength and weaknesses of the Internet simultaneously...Of course when Victor Surge first created him, he was just a creepy picture with minimal back story. Now he is a cultural phenomenon and terrorises the dreams and thoughts of many.  What makes Slenderman a fascinating study is that he is the the personification of how modern myths work. At the core of Slenderman, most of us know he is created. You can trace back his history to specific posts and websites. The Internet ruins the myth but at the same time, the Internet gives it an authenticity and connectivity that continually builds upon it. 

The strength of this meme comes from its ambiguity, which has been part of the reason why I have been so reluctant to go on record with a lot of specific details we sketch out on the blog. At times, this kind of clarifying impulse seems to trespass on the minds of would-be co-creators. Interestingly, I've always seen our performances as running a similar risk, especially when characters lose their indefinitude. I don't think it needs to be that way; our attempts to justify our invariably less than ideal configurations (e.g. like Friday, making an inexplicably young J.J. Lazarus into Joseph Lazarus III) allows us to avoid painting ourselves into an ontological corner.