Were old creepypasta's just built different?

[Zulk RS]

So Creepypastas are internet horror stories that got big around I think 2011-2013 I think? Without diving too deeply into the whole history of it basically, it's horror stories people would post on the internet describing a scary incident or supernatural phenomenon. The writing style suggests its "Something that happened to them" but the stories themselves don't necessary try to be realistic. Kind of like the stories you might tell your friend to scare them even though you made the whole thing up.

 

Now as a teen I was really into Creepypastas. I really loved reading them and loved listening to creepypasta narrations even more. However, with time, they sort of died out and I also started feeling like they kind of lost their charm. A lot of the channels started covering r/nosleep stories and, not to put down the stories of r/nosleep which are good in their own way, the r/nosleep stories just didn't have the same impact. Something was missing and the newer Creepypastas didn't have their old magic. I simply figured that maybe I just grew out them or something.

 

Then recently I heard one of the very early Creepypastas narrated. "Ted the Caver." When I heard it while I worked, I found myself experiencing that same sense of enjoyment I got as a teen. That got me thinking. Did old Creepypastas just have something to how they were written that sets them apart from modern ones? I'm not saying they were objectively better. No, I'm wondering if old Creepypastas were just written with a different approach to the newer ones. Are there some trait or traits that are objectively different between older and newer creepypastas that make it so that someone might enjoy one more than the other? I tried to think of why I enjoyed Ted the Caver more than the modern pastas but I couldn't pin down a reason. Is it simply nostalgia? Can I even be biased towards a story I've never even heard before thanks to nostalgia?

 

So I bring it around back to the question I asked in the thread title: Where old Creepypastas just built different? More specifically, did old creepypastas have any objective difference in writing which would make it different from modern ones? Any of you guys have any answers? Any insight on why I liked one and not the other? You have any similar experience with Creepypastas?

[Mortrixs19]

Looking back it's not like creepypastas were really good to begin with. Most of them had horrible writing and used the same tropes over and over again. Do you remember the "My whole family was dead and there was blood on the ceiling, but I didn't care and keep playing the haunted game" thing? Like, I swear to good, all the lost tv episode/haunted game creepypastas had a line written like this. 

 

Now I believe it was charming or scary to me because of just one reason. Because I was a 8 year old with unsupervised access to the internet and ,as 8 year old, I'd get impressed easily and didn't really care about bad writing or stuff that the old creepypastas had, I'd still shit my pants.

 

I think we just got older, seeing old creepypastas like Jeff the Killer, Slenderman, Zalgo, the staircase game, Godzilla NES, you get the point with a more mature mind will just point out how stupid and ridiculous these stories are. And no, I tried searching up some modern creepypasta to see if these issues improved over the years, but somehow, the writing, settings and characters are even worse or more ridiculous than the older ones. 

 

 

 

[Bauul]

I would also add that there was probably (and you likely read) just as much dross back in 2011 as there is today.

 

The likely difference is you are only remembering the good stuff from ten years ago, because only the good stuff is memorable. So this is possibly contributing to your perception that creepypastas were generally better back then.

 

It's a common form of cognitive bias to compare what you remember of a previous era with the totality of the present, and typically the past comes out on top.

[Zulk RS]

19 minutes ago, Mortrixs19 said:

Looking back it's not like creepypastas were really good to begin with. Most of them had horrible writing and used the same tropes over and over again. Do you remember the "My whole family was dead and there was blood on the ceiling, but I didn't care and keep playing the haunted game" thing? Like, I swear to good, all the lost tv episode/haunted game creepypastas had a line written like this. 

 

Now I believe it was charming or scary to me because of just one reason. Because I was a 8 year old with unsupervised access to the internet and ,as 8 year old, I'd get impressed easily and didn't really care about bad writing or stuff that the old creepypastas had, I'd still shit my pants.

 

I think we just got older, seeing old creepypastas like Jeff the Killer, Slenderman, Zalgo, the staircase game, Godzilla NES, you get the point with a more mature mind will just point out how stupid and ridiculous these stories are. And no, I tried searching up some modern creepypasta to see if these issues improved over the years, but somehow, the writing, settings and characters are even worse or more ridiculous than the older ones.

 

 

5 minutes ago, Bauul said:

I would also add that there was probably (and you likely read) just as much dross back in 2011 as there is today.

 

The likely difference is you are only remembering the good stuff from ten years ago, because only the good stuff is memorable. So this is possibly contributing to your perception that creepypastas were generally better back then.

 

I mean I'm not saying the older ones were objectively better. I'm saying that comparing the older ones to the newer ones it feels like something is different. Like with NES Godzilla, it wasn't scary but it was entertaining. Same can be said with Jeff the Killer and Sonic.exe. These two were shit but it went into laughable territory and became enjoyable that way. With NES Godzilla specifically, I was on the edge of my seat wanting to read what the game was going to throw out next. The description of each of the new bosses, the glitches, the levels were all really vivid and I enjoyed just listening to it. With that one it was kind of the feeling you get when you're talking videogames at school with a friend and he starts BSing you about something dumb like how you can get the ultra super secret Dragon Type Eveelution and you know it's BS but you're still enjoying the convoluted methods and creative descriptions he's throwing out.

 

You know it's interesting you brought up the lost episode Creepypastas, @Mortrixs19, because I remember those being the genre that I fell off from the first. I think I got the same feeling from those that I got from most modern Creepypastas. I think they just got formulaic after a while. Every single Lost Episode pasta was just the same shit over and over again.

 

15 minutes ago, Bauul said:

I would also add that there was probably (and you likely read) just as much dross back in 2011 as there is today.

 

The likely difference is you are only remembering the good stuff from ten years ago, because only the good stuff is memorable. So this is possibly contributing to your perception that creepypastas were generally better back then. 

 

It's a common form of cognitive bias to compare what you remember of a previous era with the totality of the present, and typically the past comes out on top.

 

I mean that was what I was thinking but the recent experience of enjoying "Ted The Caver" story made me second guess that. Like I've never heard that story in my younger years and literally listened to it less than a month ago and I could feel the same kind of enjoyment I used to get from Creepypastas. It could be possible that I was tricking myself with a subconscious bias "Oh. It was an old one so it must be good" and the fact that the story was better than most of the trash of both past and present contributed to that.

 

Then again, when I tried the r/nosleep stories in around 2016 because most of the Creepypasta readers were moving to that, it just didn't feel the same. Like I remember some stories that were good but it was just missing something. Maybe the wild creativity?

[out_of_service]

I love creepypastas and horror stories in general. Ted the Caver is probably my favourite out of all of them. I even wrote a few stories myself and posted them online. Some of them even got narrated on YouTube.

Edited September 4, 2021 by PSXDoomer

[Mortrixs19]

2 hours ago, Zulk RS said:

I mean I'm not saying the older ones were objectively better. I'm saying that comparing the older ones to the newer ones it feels like something is different. Like with NES Godzilla, it wasn't scary but it was entertaining. Same can be said with Jeff the Killer and Sonic.exe. These two were shit but it went into laughable territory and became enjoyable that way. With NES Godzilla specifically, I was on the edge of my seat wanting to read what the game was going to throw out next. The description of each of the new bosses, the glitches, the levels were all really vivid and I enjoyed just listening to it. With that one it was kind of the feeling you get when you're talking videogames at school with a friend and he starts BSing you about something dumb like how you can get the ultra super secret Dragon Type Eveelution and you know it's BS but you're still enjoying the convoluted methods and creative descriptions he's throwing out.

TBF, Godzilla NES is A tier stuff. Considering the type of things people would write about at the time. But back on topic, I still think that modern creepypastas aren't as scary because a lot of the shit that's coming out today already came out before. Like, we will never see another Russian sleep experiment, when that came out that shit was terrifying, but I don't (or I haven't) seen a modern creepypasta of that magnitude or creativity. Same with Godzilla NES.

 

Godzilla NES is, like, so elaborated. It came out with edited pictures, videos, audio files alongside the text and I think that contributed to the horror, and it didn't look amateurish for the most part. I think that modern creepypastas are like just copies of what came before. Look at how many "The killer" type creepypastas we have now, it was supposed to be Jeff and Jane and now people just type a random name and put "the killer" next to it. 

 

 

[mrthejoshmon]

Here's how I see it, or saw it.

 

Back when it was the wild west Creepypasta were so much more fun because there were no "staples" like Slenderman and the several teen angst derivatives of the dogshit Jeff the Killer, everyone was trying to think of something original, horrific, they didn't use established cryptids and instead basically had to make their own horrors from scratch, that was the era in which stuff like Ted the caver was made.

 

There was no boundaries to be pushed, no popular formats, no tropes, no "popular" or "successful" ideas or guidelines...

Everyone had free reign, they could shape whatever they pleased and they didn't even know/care it would be successful and garner fans. Then, the whole idea of Creepypastas started to gain traction, attention and intrigue, with that came the side of the fanbase that every fanbase has and you know how it went from there. A lot of newer stuff is either a derivative of what is popular or is an attempt to pander to fans, it's just how it goes, I'll never understand why what's popular is actually popular but it just is.

 

Granted, there were some utter stinkers back in the day (I mourn the loss of the Trollpasta Wiki's "Bad but Trying to be Good" section like you wouldn't believe) but because a lot of the "new shit" is aping off of utter garbage in the first place I can't help but feel as though the feeling is compounded by this.

[thiccyosh]

I think over the years Creepypastas became more of a laughing stock if anything (for example memes, a bunch of horror games, the fandom you get the point). Today you have more videos and pictures about real monsters caught on tape 2019 no bullshit that are more unsettling than made up stories about "I bought a viddy game and luigi is going to murder me". Heck, even the name doesn't take itself seriously,  Creepypasta -> Copypasta. And perhaps the aspect of them not being real are making Creepypastas less and less interesting. A big and slim black monster in the middle of the Schwarzwald in Germany (I know there are more real locatons in these stories but this one is the more popular one I know of) would be a headline for years on end. And yet he does not exist.

[45th Parrallel]

Man Door Hand Hook Car Door

[Major Arlene]

I have to say, I think SCP Foundation is still one of the most unique horror worlds I've ever seen (I think people refer to it as creepypasta but not sure). As a teen I'll admit to having Jeff the Killer as a wallpaper but the stories did feel mostly "emo angsty teen fantasy" tropey sort of stuff.

[Doomkid]

The name of the genre making me think of cheese and meatballs resulted in me never paying them much mind! It’s hard to be creeped out when thinking about pasta.. 

 

The story about the early “Japanese Pokémon version that made kids sick by using a tone that triggers illnesses in the Lavender Town song” story was pretty creepy and cool though, and had an initial air of believability because the tones used in that song definitely cause headaches. I think (like most of them) the story becomes absurd in the final stretch but I don’t really remember, I read it like 11 years ago now.

 

I think I read one more after that and it sucked from the first paragraph, and I’ve yet to read one again since. I get my “cheesy horror” fix from watching movies generally speaking.

[DannyMan]

If I remember correctly, there were 2 versions of Jeff The Killer story.

[Sena]

Nearly all of them (although probably just all of them) are something to the effect of "I bought the game at a yard sale, and the owner really wanted to get rid of it and when I turned on the game the ghost of the necronomicon whispered my full name and social security number and asked me if I wanted to join the Church of Satan, which I thought was weird but I kept playing, and then after playing the game I died and they showed this child friendly game character's mutilated corpse with hyperrealistic blood and then I died in real life." Naturally, those stories weren't ever good, if anything I think they're just more public now what with all those channels of people who just narrate Reddit posts who need to fuck off honestly, if I wanted to read Reddit posts, that's where I'd be. Maybe it's just age as well, I remember being about 7 years old and getting one of those "I am the ghost of a dead girl you have to send this email to 8 other people or I will kill you" messages and being scared by it, but unsurprisingly that wouldn't scare me now, not when I know the only girls who are going to bother emailing me are actually just Indian scammers.

[Bobby :D]

Creepypastas, for the most part, were very amateurish in design. Mostly based off the spoken word format of one of it's originators, campfire stories, of course the majority of them were going to be goofy or bullshit tales with not much substance. The few that are genuinely amazing tread the line between the bizarre and real on fine wire, like Ted the Caver or The Showers, are far and few between and cover a large part of creepypasta's short history

 

That, and like campfire stories, people made derivatives of many popular formats and tropes, which lead to some repeating offenders, stuff like Lost Episodes took over the late 2000s with it's use of nostalgia bait. However, some sorts of popular format has worked to create amazing pieces of fiction, such as SCP, which leaned harder into creepypasta's other originator, copypasta, creating a super spreadable little tidbit of curiosity.

 

It's a really wide and open field and trust me, alot of old creepypasta aged as badly as some more recent ones. All in all, it's just a way for amateur writers to dip their toes in the world of a varied, speculative method of storytelling, so don't expect there to always be masterpieces, and don't try to look to fondly at the past or you'll oversee such classics like "The Real Chuck E. Cheese".

[Gangstalker]

Being honest with you, I don't think they were ever that good. As Cybershell put it:

"They're basically horror stories written by 14 year old's."

 

Alot of them have really, really bad writing, not talking about trollpastas like "Who was phone" but alot of one's that try to be genuinely scary fall flat because the writing is abysmal. They got a scare out of me when I was 11, but I'm past those days now.

 

One 'pasta I will give credit to is the Russian Sleep Experiment, I really liked that one.

 

 

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

Every single CP I've ever read:

 

-Written by somebody who is obviously young and inexperienced with writing in general. It's like reading a ninth-grader's story that they wrote for their class. Formatting problems, grammatical errors, cringeworthy dialogue, etc.

 

-Usually full of try-hard angst. Like reading a Slipknot fan's version of a Goosebumps story.

 

-Most stories are filled with cliches, overused tropes that aren't even put to good use, and shock tactics that are only capable of shocking a young and naive audience. "This story takes place in a forest and there's a serial killer on the loose!". "This Sonic game had a secret Mario level that puts a curse on you!".

 

-Terrible fandom. Most of the CP doesn't actually care about scaring you, they care more about drawing anime tiddies on the monsters and characters featured in the stories. There is nothing worse than a 13 year old unironically talking about how they want to hug Jeff the Killer for being an outcast like them.

 

In all honesty, I just think the audience grew up. Reading most of the stories as an adult is enjoyable in the same way that watching cringe compilations on Youtube is enjoyable.

 

"this story is cool lol but i thibk jeff should of married slendee man at the end lol i love jeff XD :DDD <3"

-bvbarmy4lyfe2002

 

Edited September 4, 2021 by TheMagicMushroomMan

[Spooner5020]

The only good creepy pastas I remember reading were Mr.Widemouth and Abandoned by Disney. Reason why Abandoned By Disney actually worked is because Mowgli’s Palace or whatever the area was of Disney the narrator was at actually existed (or WAS going to).

 

Yeah I agree some of these stories do not hold up well anymore. For whatever reason Photo Negative Mickey really creeped me out, but today the reason for him makes no sense. Why would there ever be a photo negative suit of Mickey and why was the scariest thing the writer could up with him for to do was to take his head off? 
 

By the way Ted The Caver was actually made into a movie. It was called Living Dark: The Story of Ted The Caver. It was pretty decent actually, but made some dumb changes to the story and had a really disappointing ending.

[Nikku4211]

I guess they have a so-bad-it's-good charm to them similar to classic horror B-movies.

 

Even the angsty teen stuff that would make any reasonable person groan and roll their eyes has its charm to it, as someone who was a little kid watching TV and YouTube in the late 2000s.

 

I did have a childhood reading this stuff back in the 2010s, though it mixed more with my fascination for retro console and computer hardware, as a lot of them were about retro games like Sonic and Pokemon(it is no coincidence 2 of the more infamous fandoms tend to overlap with creepypasta fandoms).

 

I guess the only reason I get a kick out of these stories instead of the actually better written r/nosleep stories is nostalgia for the stories themselves, making the nostalgia-bait creepypastas ironically nostalgic themselves. And also how crazy they can get, similar to how people treat Godzilla. You don't get quite the same craziness with r/nosleep, because those stories put focus on actually being scary, and it's hard to get scared over something you currently think is ridiculous.

 

I know, it sounds weird comparing stories some teenagers wrote on 4chan and the Creepypasta Wiki (back when it allowed new video game creepypastas) to cheesy movies made by entire teams in the 20th century.

[Tony_Danza_the_boss]

Ben Drowned and the Haunted Majora's Mask Cartridge still is the best creepypasta imo i ever read, even though the hacked cartridge turned out to be faked, the hype and mystery surrounding the story was really well done

[Mr. Freeze]

I never liked creepypasta. 

 

[Test Tickle]

[out_of_service]

 

[Dexiaz]

13 hours ago, Zulk RS said:

did old creepypastas have any objective difference in writing which would make it different from modern ones?

 

Yeah, the JVK creepypasta tells that you have to use DOS or DOSBox to run the game for Windows 2000, lmao.

 

I don't think that modern creepypasta's can mention such old OS :>

 

But despite this half-joke, I don't think so. The already mentioned JVK could be created even today, but without details about OS.

[spineapple tea]

5 hours ago, DannyMan said:

If I remember correctly, there were 2 versions of Jeff The Killer story.

Actually if I'm remembering correctly, there are. The first one is the one everyone remembers, aka a shitty edgelord circlejerk session, and the other being a rewrite by a prominent writer in the creepypasta community in a contest to actually write the story well. I'd try looking for it but I cant be bothered to scroll through a fandom wiki page for more than a minute.

[JustCallMeKaito]

I've been listening to Creepypasta narrations since 2012 or so, and old creepypastas were definitely different, but not in a good way.

I'd honestly say modern creepypastas are far superior to the older stuff. We've gone from poorly written "The truth about", "Lost episode of", and "Haunted copy of this game with HYPER-REALISTIC BLOOD" being the norm to relatively more thought out stories being common.

[OliveTree]

2 hours ago, N1ck said:

Actually if I'm remembering correctly, there are. The first one is the one everyone remembers, aka a shitty edgelord circlejerk session, and the other being a rewrite by a prominent writer in the creepypasta community in a contest to actually write the story well. I'd try looking for it but I cant be bothered to scroll through a fandom wiki page for more than a minute.

You're correct on all fronts except for "the first version" being the one everyone remembers. Technically, when the character of Jeff the Killer was introduced it was in the form of a 2008 youtube video which was eventually taken down. A mirror of it is here (presumably by the same creator(?)). The version which would go on to be remembered was itself a reimagining of the story told in that video, which shared only the most basic of details (a person named Jeff being a serial killer, being disfigured by some kind of liquid, and having a brother named Liu).

 

Edit:

For convenience's sake, the text of the popularly remembered story is preserved here: https://jtk.fandom.com/wiki/Jeff_the_Killer

and the remake by K Banning Kellum is here: https://spinpasta.fandom.com/wiki/Jeff_the_Killer_2015:_Creator's_Cut

Edited September 5, 2021 by OliveTree : added some links

[Zulk RS]

Reading this thread, I've come to the conclusion that old creepypastas did have something that r/nosleep and modern creepypastas don't. They were just way more wild while the modern ones and r/nosleep ones are much more grounded and thus, can be much scarier. Going to go read the Chuck E. Cheese Story now.

[Argent Agent]

Think this is all that I need to say about Creepypasta.

 

 

[Mortrixs19]

6 hours ago, Argent Agent said:

Think this is all that I need to say about Creepypasta.

 

 

Surprisingly good quality image, tbh considering that we usually get shit like

 

[The BMFG]

imo ben drowned is the best creepy pasta. there were other good ones too though. this sonic.exe image used to scare the shit out of me.