Keep in Mind: Digital Lore

Above all, students of folklore should recognize that folklore is alive not dead. Urban legends and jokes are a contemporary part of folk narratives and continue to thrive not only via the Internet but a range of professional and social contexts–from water coolers to computer screens and college dormitories. Urban Legends also include cinema of horror directly, such as the film Urban Legend starring–among other notable actors–Robert Englund, who plays a folklore studies professor.

Conspiracy theories themselves are in the domain of folklore studies and tracking QANON and the reptilians of David Icke and the myriad memes of Anti-Semites are an ugly but significant strand of analyzing the development of communicative beliefs. It is easy to extrapolate from some of the fringe theories of Satanic and alien invasions proliferating on the Internet to science fiction, paranormal narratives, and various films as well.

The advent of Slenderman is a modern reminder of how folklore can also originate from self-conscious fiction writing, be passed on by tradition bearers, and even result in dangerous physical action based on wholesale belief. The role of acting out belief–known as ostension–in order to promote a legendary belief has been studied and theorized prior to Slenderman but has gained a renewed extension due to the role of digital lore and the gruesomeness of the crime committed: “Weier and Geyser told investigators they stabbed Leutner because they thought Slender Man was real. They said they thought attacking her would make them his servants and keep him from killing their families. Bohren sentenced Geyser in February 2018 to 40 years in a mental health facility.”^[1]

Many contemporary folkorists have turned their focus to the Internet as the primary medium for disseminating lore today, and memes are one of several genres of Internet lore.^[2] The Library of Congress in fact has an archive devoted to “emergent cultural traditions on the web.”^[3]

Scholars of folk narratives need to be aware of both the ongoing emergence of new folk narratives and beliefs as well as those of the past. The ways that culture continues to evolve yet maintains a connection to the past is a key feature of folklore dynamics. With regard to Science Fiction and Fantasy and related literary genres, keeping an eye on new forms of folklore in addition to appropriations and negotiations with motifs and tale-types of the past, helps to reveal the multiple voices and dimensions in SFF narratives.