The Las Vegas incident was one of an alarming number of shootings, widely attributed to stripped regulation of guns, and fueled by the fantasy that the federal government wants to repeal the Second Amendment. These are the so-called false flag conspiracies, which purport that each mass shooting is staged by the government, and cast Obama as the bogeyman. It is storytelling in the same way Slender Man is, interpreted widely and varyingly, depending on who the story is being told by and told to.

As urban legends once thrived at slumber parties and conspiracy theories at clandestine basement meetings, there is now the web with its cultures, regions and territories. Unfortunately, the darker corners provide a space for commonly unacceptable beliefs to coalesce. There has never been a tool such as the internet to provide a forum for developing and fermenting ideas among the similarly-minded. Beliefs can be more extreme, because there is no existing social fabric in those realms to hold them in place.

Is truth stranger than fiction? In the online sphere, it is increasingly difficult to discern the two, if even a difference still exists. We watch events transpire in real time, and become news; those of us participating in cultural production feed back into the story. Aliens abduct our airplanes, and horror fiction characters demand blood sacrifice from our kids. Meanwhile simple facts, such as more guns means more gun deaths, are obscured as political positions, which shows how far we've shifted away from empirical reasoning, and toward superstition. If we allow superstition to lead, we will follow down a dark path. Deep in those woods lurk the ghosts of those who strayed, who were hunted and tried as witches. Or at least those will be the stories we tell.

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Slender Man: Why You Should Be Afraid of The Internet Bogeyman