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.

Invisible Blog and Vlog posts

I've given some thought as to how this is even possible (after a discussion with Rev). How can a proxy post to someone's Youtube channel or blog, or even contribute to a legitimate blog post without the owner of said mediums being aware? And conversely (and directly applicable to Rev's Vindicate problem), how could you post information online for most people and make it inaccessible for a select few?

I'll be the first to admit that computers? electronics? Not my thing. Technology is no friend of mine. Go look to my personal blog to see the swath I've cut through the ranks of electrical devices. If not for my internet addiction, I would probably be a Luddite.

So how can someone post to your account(s) without your permission?

• Well, the most obvious answer as to why there are things on your account that you didn't put there is that they hacked it. It's the answer most people leap to when they can see the posts and comments in question. I'd even be willing to bet it's sometimes true.
• Unfortunately, the internet is not the only thing that can be hacked. While it is true that proxies may physically haunt a person and physically hack into their accounts, the bigger danger is when they get into your head and use your own body to skulk about. Once you are "possessed" in such a way, I don't imagine it would be difficult at all for your secret-creeper to keep you from seeing things from the inside out, especially if you don't even know the information exists.
• The third possibility is that some kind of glamour has been placed on the blog/vlog to stop you from seeing the posts. The third seems unlikely simply because it would require a lot of work and fine tuning to make it apply only to one person. The internet not being a physical place, it would be very difficult (though not impossible) to do this... It's not something I'd like to try, but I do have theories on how it could be done.

A glamour would be difficult for a number of reasons. I don't know enough about computers to pull it off, but someone who's well versed in them AND in magic might be able to do it. That is part of the problem right there. While there are some people who like to refer to themselves as Techno-magi, I doubt the field is quite so advanced as this concept would require. Again, not an expert in this area, however Most of Slendy's followers just don't seem that bright.

Theoretically you would need the IP address of the devices(s) you wanted to affect in this manner, and possibly personal information and property from the human target as well. Though in this instance, information would be the better acquisition, considering this is a manipulation of information on the "information super highway."

While it is conceivable that all this information could be reduced to a sigil, a better solution would be to come up with a symbol to lock the specified target out, and then collect every single little thing that you wanted to keep from them as it was posted. I'm sure you can see how this could eventually become cumbersome. Again, not saying it couldn't be done, but it would be time consuming and tedious. The alternative, that you might modify the sigil each time some new thing was added would be even worse.

(This is for you Rev.) The simplest method for setting such a spell in motion would be to set up a website, put the lock sigil on the front page and make it the only thing accessible to casual observation. Upload everything you want to keep from the target and keep it inaccessible behind the lock sigil. Then just keep adding to the files as need be while posting them publicly to your hearts content. So long as the site hosting this spell never went down, the information would always be safe from the specified parties.