119: We Are Slenderman (w/Kathleen Hale)

Conspirituality

Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, Julian Walker

Social Sciences, Society & Culture, Science, Philosophy

4.0 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 September 2022

⏱️ 92 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On May 31st, 2014, Morgan Geyser stabbed her onetime best friend Bella Leutner nineteen times, while her new best friend, Anissa Weier, looked on. All three girls were twelve years old. Geyser was living with schizophrenia, and Weier had introduced her to the crowd-sourced internet phantasm known as Slenderman, who first appeared on Something Awful, the message board at the root of chan culture. Together, Geyser and Weier came to believe that Slenderman was demanding a sacrifice in exchange for his protection. Their crime, at once naïve and brutal, sparked a moral panic. Author Kathleen Hale joins Matthew to discuss her reporting on this story in her riveting and compassionate new book, Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls.Slenderman is brimming with tenderness for these girls, who are all creative, confused, scared, and ultimately bound to each other through social contagion and mental illness. Hale's writing is accessible but elliptical as it uncovers jagged details, but never easy answers, about a world that predicts our own. On this podcast we spend a lot of time on the virtual demons that animate conspirituality and QAnon, driving some devotees to violence. Hale's work is good medicine for those who know that internet chaos and mental precarity will remain locked in feedback loops for the foreseeable future. Her meticulous investigation—enriched by hours spent interviewing Morgan Geyser—shows that the road to understanding is always paved with empathy. Show Notes Slenderman — Kathleen HaleAm I being catfished? An author confronts her number one online critic | Books | The Guardian Folklore, Horror Stories, and the Slender Man: The Development of an Internet MythologyThe Slender Man Wiki | Fandom -- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a Glassbox Media Podcast.
0:18.0	Hello everyone, Matthew here with episode 119.
0:23.0	We are Slenderman, featuring an interview with author Kathleen Hale.
0:29.0	Derek Julian and I tweet individually under our own names.
0:33.0	You can follow us on IG and Facebook.
0:37.0	We'll also be in the metaverse soon after getting our lower bodies removed.
0:42.0	That's a joke.
0:44.0	And you can support us on Patreon, where $5 a month gets you full access to hundreds of hours of bonus material
0:52.0	and early access to projects like the Swan Song Series,
0:56.0	where we look at the historical and cultural roots of Teal Swan.
1:00.0	Over the next several months, we'll be rolling out other special series as well in that early access category.
1:09.0	Kathleen Hale has a riveting new book out.
1:13.0	It's called Slenderman, online obsession, mental illness, and the violent crime of two midwestern girls.
1:21.0	Previously, Hale published two young adult novels in the murder mystery genre.
1:27.0	One is called, no one else can have you and the follow-up was nothing bad is going to happen.
1:33.0	She also published a collection of essays called Kathleen Hale is a crazy stalker,
1:38.0	which contains an infamous personal essay first published in the Guardian in 2014,
1:46.0	which attracted a wave of online shaming that pushed Hale offline,
1:52.0	but also into the arms of the Slenderman mystery.
1:56.0	We spoke about those origins off the top when I sat down with her for a wide-ranging interview,
2:03.0	but before we roll that for you, I'm going to open with a review of this book
2:09.0	and some stage setting for what Hale has accomplished in it.
	...

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