Infection

 I started this as a response to a question by Uriel, but it grew to be too large to be a simple reply. So I made it a post instead.

Uriel said: I Wanted to know more about this Abomination and how people usually get involved in all this.

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This is what I have observed. I won't claim to be a scientist or a psychologist, but I am a bibliophile. heh I read, I learn. Observing... watching the world go by and learning from it, that's just another way of reading to me.

Others are welcome to add to this or disagree. There are already links to theories which go into his origins in the Slender theory section, so I won't go into that here. This post is strictly about how people become "involved" in this.

There are three basic ways that the infection seems to spread. The first and current primary source of infection occurs when someone discovers the videos or a blog and through anxiety or paranoia or some unmeasurable level of awareness attracts the attention of the entity. They then introduce others to it via blog or vlog, spreading the infection. Some have argued and taken steps based on this argument that if runners and proxies were taken out of the equation (IE killed), and all record of the Slenderman's existence erased from the internet and elsewhere, that we could destroy him, starve him. This argument is based on the idea that our awareness of the entity is necessary to its continued existence. Based on first hand experience however, I cannot accept this argument. The possibility of people being helped by the experience of others outweighs the argument of reducing infection through "extreme sanction." At best the murder of the innocent victims of Slenderman become a stopgap measure.

Secondary infection occurs via psychic sensitivity. Some people are simply more aware of spiritual/supernatural activity in general. This causes them to stumble across a "proxy" or the Slenderman himself. Their awareness of the entity draws its attention. It proceeds to haunt them, causing them to act out in various ways which causes the spread of the infection as with the primary source of infection, the blogs and vlogs. This has been called a compulsion by others. Having always been interested in writing and words, I can't say if this is true or not. Prior to the creation of the internet and blogs and vlogs, general public opinion would have been to label such people insane, paranoid schizophrenics.

The rarest form of infection was previously the primary source. Prior to the advent of the internet, this was a "patient 0" type scenario caused either by the individual's sensitivity to psychic phenomena or some unknown personal quality which attracted the attention of the creature. (This is the nature of my own exposure to the creature over 20 years ago.) There are certain types which seem more prone to infection than others however. These are people who have psychic or creative ability, who are highly intelligent or inquisitive. Which is not to say that others are not also affected, but that these specific types possibly are more inclined to enter environments or have contact with items which have a higher possibility of carrying infection. Or again, some quality of their minds, as opposed to the minds of others, attracts the creature's attention, causing it to investigate and infect.