I grew up in the late 2000s and early 2010s and "creepy internet" was at an all time high back then. Every 6 months for a decade, there was a new creepypasta/ARG that got huge and was actually fun investigating.

>Squidward’s Suicide
>Jeff the Killer
>Slenderman
>BEN Drowned
>Russian Sleep Experiment
>Suicidemouse.avi
>SCP
>Username 666

Those are just the big ones I can remember instantly, but there were dozens more.
I understand that not all pastas/ARGs were good... Most were just copies of each other, and the scary factor was gone when everyone was doing the same
>Hyper realistic blood
>Satanic cult/possessed piece of media
But even with the repetition, you'd constantly get really good stories and ARGs.

There was something different about internet horror before 2016. It had a mystique about it. The internet felt bigger and it felt like at any moment you'd stumbled upon some crazy shit.

2006-2016 was the golden age of internet horror, but then it just suddenly stopped. What was the last big ARG/pasta? Petscop? Backrooms?

What happened?
Are people just way more cynic nowadays and don't entertain/play along with anything?

4chan is less creative in general. less shoops. more frogs. less stories. more shitposting and AI.

>The internet felt bigger and it felt like at any moment you'd stumbled upon some crazy shit.

That's because in a way, it was. It was less centralized, and people spent far more time NOT on the internet... which is where creativity blossoms.

It's also partly because you were younger back then, everything was new and funny and interesting.

>>40781171 (OP)
>you'd constantly get really good stories and ARGs.
This is nostalgia speaking. Most creepypastas were awful, we just didn't know any better as kids.

>The internet felt bigger
The internet was much smaller, but much less controlled than it is now. Common search engines actually worked and sites weren't under a stranglehold by shit loads if algorithms trying to fry your brain.

However, I bet 12 year old kid who hasn't had his brain fried - because of being on a tablet all day for his whole life, can probably still pick up a computer and feel the wonder of the internet.

You don't feel that anymore because you grew up.

>Are people just way more cynic nowadays and don't entertain/play along with anything?
This is the main issue. The 12 year old kid I gave as an example above assumes that the kid hasn't had his brain friend.
The problem is that most kids nowadays get to 10-12 years old and they already have seen everything there is to see. A creepypasta or ARG is a joke. The real world is much darker.
Kids and young teens are way more skeptical now than they were in 2010. The world in general is a more cynical and dark place than in 2010.

>>40781210
Age is part of it, not the whole picture. People are less creative now. The internet changed how people think.

>>40781171 (OP)
This doesn't just apply to internet horror, it applies to life in general. Everything is more cynical, colder and less interesting. Movies, music, sports, tv, art, etc, they aren't as good as they were 10-15 years ago.
The world was never perfect, anyone that says otherwise is a larping fag, but there was way more optimism and happiness.
Even after awful periods like 9/11, 2008 recession, the world never felt like it was going nowhere. We always had things to look forward to, because people were always united.

The elites destroyed that last semblance of unity with the 2016 elections and the shift in political discourse. Making sure politics was part of our every day life and making sure you couldn't go more than a hour without hearing about politics is what drove the world insane. It's what broke up families and friendship and drove people apart.

The pandemic hoax was just the final nail in the coffin.

Now we're just living in a dead world, waiting for something to happen. Maybe a war. Maybe ayys invade... Maybe nothing ever happens.

>>40781171 (OP)
>>40781257
Myth can only perpetuated in the short term fascination that tells narrative towards the unconscious of the psyche. It had benefited the people that believed in profound deities resembling the facets of life's creation. There are other versions of myths of such figures that get lost in obscurity of time, by which many audiences do not care bothering about the symbolic fiction. You know what really brings myth back to life in the essence of what humans HEAR in the first place? Nobody thinks music is the way of continuous progress. Satan is the mainstream radio. Metatron is the forced algorithm against our true interests, aka the rip current of artificial life.

There's some decent webseries out now
https://www.youtube.com/@AlexArchives-lv9of
https://www.youtube.com/@beckettwagner
https://www.youtube.com/@jackolanternfilm
https://www.youtube.com/@pontiacroboticsarchive
https://www.youtube.com/@themckinneyfamilyhomevideos
https://www.youtube.com/@VerticalHellScanner

>>40781171 (OP)
because after Robin Hely got his phd at monash university and wrote the LARP/ARG howto with his neurocam project, the normies found out and riffed on the technique.

Hely's neurocam wasn't the only project out there like it, but since there is plenty online about it, we can use it. his procedures for getting the otherwise normal people involved in the game required, as he describes it, some amount of desire from the player to join in an adventure of sorts.

once the fad played out, no one had the spark in them anymore to do it. consider those escape rooms- they were super popular for a while, then died out, and the ones left are just money laundering operations.

at some point, they go from pseudo-ARG and blur into a cult. the longest running I know of is Forgotten Languages, and even then, most of them are credentialed semioticians, linguists, and spooks.

what you want is a cult. a step up in the commitment, but definitely what you are looking for instead of a boring old larp/arg.

>>40781171 (OP)
that BEN Drowned shit is stupid was stupid as fuck

>>40781996
bendrowned in all this pussy!!!!!

>>40781171 (OP)
That's because it was new and fresh, even if it was garbage it at least had original ideas. Now its just troons riding the bandwagon and copying each others homeworks while not actually wanting to be edgy about it for fear of hurting other people's feelings.

>>40781257
It's insane how successful the MK ULTRA project was after 2015. Everyone is now burnt out and soulless while supporting the same insanity that makes them miserable.

>>40781295
This is another issue. Nobody knows what makes stories good or what resonates with the soul. It's just skibidi toilet ironic humor now that is just meant as a fad.

>>40781171 (OP)
For creepypasta, most were and still are dogshit, and none of the ones you listed were good, but they were fun to read because they had a human element to them. Kids and teens have become less human and more brainfried like >>40781210 said, even before AI written slop with no identity and a barrage of overstimulation.

For ARGs, I always hated them, so take this with a grain of salt, but from my point of view, they lost any charm/appeal when everyone decided to make their own with a cheap payoff. Basically the creepypasta inflation effect, but with larger downside since creating and maintaining an ARG takes a shitload of time and effort.

>>40781257
>Making sure politics was part of our every day life and making sure you couldn't go more than a hour without hearing about politics is what drove the world insane.
This sucks so fucking much. It was absolutely on purpose too. They have studies and records clearly showing that kind of stuff mindbreaks people, and they did it on purpose anyway. I hate it.

>>40781171 (OP)

Here is an A.R.G. for you. look up news on the little red squares and compare the dates of the news with the dates of this 4chan post.

If it spooks you then go forward and read the whole thread.

>>40781996
You're a faggot, you will NEVER be a woman and your tranny media will never have more sovl than OG pastas kys

>>40781171 (OP)
I love sexual feelings. I know I should allow them to drive my life but I cannot control myself.
I goon at least 5 to 9 times a day.
I have photos.

>>40782527
Share or gtfo

>>40782533

>>40782548
NO WAY MY NIGGA BUST A NUT THAT PHAAAT

>>40782559
I suffer from Pluronium Libidus.
I cum fat loads but its mostly sterile...

>>40782527
>>40782533
>>40782548
>>40782559
>>40782567
fuck off porn addicted zoomer faggots, you guys aren't funny

>>40781171 (OP)
They have all effectively been consumed by the metagame.

>>40781171 (OP)
Because zoomers can't deal with mystery, they want everything dissected in "science" terms, nothing can't go unexplained, nothing exists without goal

Think about bigfoot for example, I don't care if it was a hoax or not, watching videos of people searching for the bigfoot has a strange and comfortable feeling in itself
Think those boomer flat earth with emotional background music, even it's completely bogus it creates a distinct and sometimes pleasing atmosphere

Now everything's about cynicism, irony, acting like Tony Stark, puritanism, objective truth
They don't let an ARG go unexplained, it HAS to have some author, some reasoning and such
People are unable to enjoy things now

>>40781171 (OP)
>>40781187
it's true, because 4chan is one of the almost-spoiler free zones which means everyone can scatter any kind of bullshit everywhere; the real layers on which one wants to engage are not on 4chan, but can be accessed by finding a community on 4chan and following it off the basket weaving forum to literally anywhere else; 4chan is still the ocean of piss into which we all piss to start the stone soup in the end

I'm betting the best creepy pastas were retellings of the stories kids were reading in their school libraries. And now since we're all jaded adults, we are only getting new stories from the entertainment industry.
TO THE LIBRARY!

>>40782898
Close. They love mystery, they just want a youtube video to tell them everything that is going on. In fact it's a trend to just drop random tidbits of lore like a resident evil game, except you know, resident evil still had a story you can follow and ARG's are just the lore notes you find in a RE game now.

>>40781171 (OP)
1/2

> be me
> night owl, always lurking /x/ at 3 a.m. for spooky vibes
> buy old CRT TV at thrift store for $10
> bulky af, looks like it’s from the 80s, faint hum even when off
> plug it in, get grainy local channels, infomercials, static
> first night, see weird shapes in static
> squinting like an idiot, swear I see a face—eyeless, mouth stretched, screaming
> blink, it’s gone
> laugh it off, probably just tired

> next night, turn on TV again
> static channel, hear whispers
> low, guttural, not English, makes skin crawl
> record on phone, playback is just white noise
> change channel, whispers stop
> old tech being weird, right?

> third night, obsessed
> seen too many /x/ posts about haunted signals
> flip to static channel, whispers are back, louder
> like a crowd arguing, can’t understand it
> stare at screen for hours, see face again
> not fleeting this time, mouth moving, eyeless sockets staring
> whispers say one word: “Watch”
> nope.jpg
> unplug TV, go to bed, feel like someone’s in the room

> next day, decide to yeet TV
> drag it to curb, leave “free” sign, go to work
> come home, TV is back in living room
> plugged in, humming
> live alone, locks fine, landlord says he didn’t touch it
> freaking out internally

> that night, don’t turn it on
> 2 a.m., TV turns itself on
> static fills room, whispers louder, angrier
> “You saw. You must watch.”
> face on screen, grinning, getting bigger
> unplug it, screen stays on
> eyeless face fills screen, feels like it’s looking at me
> grab hammer, smash TV to bits
> screen goes dark, whispers stop, shaking like a leaf

> sweep up pieces, bag them, dump them across town
> think it’s over
> last night, wake up to static
> not from TV, I don’t have one anymore
> coming from phone, laptop, fucking microwave
> same whispers, same word: “Watch”
> turn everything off, doesn’t stop
> see reflection in window, face grinning behind me
> spin around, nothing there
> whispers haven’t stopped

>>40782898
This is very much true. Look at mysteries like Celebrity Number 6 or The Mysterious Song... They just had to kill that shit, you couldn't have a lick of fun before they reached the conclusion, any theory that didn't go along with the mainstream would get you banned from the gay subreddits.

This applies to everything they touch. It's literally just a bunch of homosexual trannies. Trannies ruined everything.

>>40782955
2/2

> typing this on phone, screen keeps flickering
> don’t buy old CRT TVs
> don’t look at static
> it’s not just noise
> it’s watching
> it’s inside me

>>40782965
The only mystery left is "go for a punch" and even that died down because people didn't get the answers they wanted.

>>40782953
They love mystery, but they don't know how to enjoy it, like they can't deal with unresolved/unexplained ideas or emotions, and their reaction to fear is to delve into cynicism and dettachment
As soon as thing start to feel real they start to speculate on how it's just a story alright nothing to fear just a story...and ruin their experience

>>40783006
Kind of a paradox if you think about it. They love grim derp trauma core stuff only for them to fall back on "its just a story and the mystery is solved." The reason why mysteries work is because it allowed people to put their own head canon into things.

>>40782965
>any theory that didn't go along with the mainstream would get you banned from the gay subreddits
This is also true here sadly, any theory about the world that isn't about a billionaire cabal or archons is mocked, not even appreciated as a story

>>40783019
You can only enjoy fear, if you let yourself feel fear
I had a friend who ruined his LSD trip by constantly doubting something would happen, fighting the hallucination then complaining the dose wasn't enough

>>40783004
The idea of a mysterious deep web anime feels so 90s and comfy, but it has died out since some fag posted saying he made the hoax without any proof
If you want animes with this feeling, try the stuff at the end of anime icebergs like Tenshi no Tamago or Haibane Renmei

>>40782548
>>40782559
>>40782567
>>40782598
I think that's just spilled yogurt

>>40783070
Honestly I am so done with icebergs. Most of them done now are made by people who only have a slight to no interest at the topic at hand and it shows.

>>40783250
Yeah I mean the old ones
The current ones are like
>surface: youtube and reddit where we are :)
>deepest point ever: 4chan the scary place :O