Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:20):
Welcome to why we do what we do many. I
am your host, Abraham, I'm your host, Shane. We are
a psychology podcast. Copy We are a psychology pod, creepy
podcast and pasta cost Yeah I tried. Anyway, that's what
we do. We talk about the things that humans and
non human animals do, and for the month of October
(00:42):
we celebrate the spooky things and talk about the something.
Usually it feel as like, even though we like talking
about the creepy things, we end up making them less
creepy by sciencing them to death.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Yeah yeah, yeah, so the thing, Yeah, the thing about
knowledge is like, you know, people fear what they don't know.
We make you know things. It's so that you don't
fear things.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yes, fear is the mind killer. Anyway, Welcome to our podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Our doing podcast, which we did. If you didn't know,
We've said this time and time again over the last
couple of weeks. We're doing podcasts now more or less.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah, if you slice it the right way, that is correct.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Anyway, I don't remember where I was going with this.
This is a mini We record these short form episodes.
They come out on Mondays. Our full length episodes come
out on Wednesdays. If you'd like to support us, like
subscribe rates, review, tell a friend, join us on Patreon.
I'll talk more about that when we're done with this,
but I think we're ready to jump into our topic
because that's all the things I have to say, right,
Am I missing something?
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Uh No? I think that covers it. So support us
like us, share it with a friend. These are bite
sized episodes, you know what. It's spooky season, so they're
more like snack size episodes.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
There you go, Yes, fun size.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Fun size, that's the word I was looking for.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
All right, we're talking about creepy pasta. That is pasta
that you look at it and you're like, ooh, yeah,
I should neat that.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
You know, it's such a bummer. Creepy pasta is good,
but Poki noodles would be so much more fun.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Missed opportunities, you know. But you know, we're talking about
creepy pasta as in the stories, these these very interesting
weird Internet stories. What is or what were creepy pasta?
Where did they come from? Where are they now? And
just sort of give a like list some of the
more popular ones that there have been. And that's our topic.
Da Jore yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Actually really like this, So I do have a fun
story about this. My buddy was on a podcast he
got invited to, like a popular podcast to talk about
a story that he had had that like they called
her a creepy pasta, but it was like an actual
thing that he experienced, which was a cat with a
human face in the witch town that is near us,
and so it was like a one thing. He's like,
(02:44):
he's going to go to the grave believing that he
saw a cat morphin. Do like a cat with human
face morph into a cat and it's a whole thing.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Anyway, was this a Joe Rogan podcast?
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yes, it's Joe Rogan podcast. No, he was on last
podcast on the left actually, Like he was.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Like, Ody, that is big.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Yeah, yeah, and the guys were like what they were
freaked out, and he's like, yeah, dude, it was crazy.
So anyway, let's talk about creepy pasta. So creepy pasta
is a is a horror related narrative, often in the
form of a legend or parable. These are the sort
of democratized, usually short form, user generated stories, often depicted
(03:21):
as reporting real events, albeit often somewhat vaguely supernatural. So
it's like it seems like it could happen, but it doesn't.
It's like kind of like something's a little bit off. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yeah, it's like that doesn't feel quite right, Like I
feel like that you're saying something that intuitively feels wrong
to me. Yeah, but yeah, so that's what they are.
This comes from copying and pasting stories or section of
stories over and over again and various online forums. And
that was called copy pasta, which morphed into creepy pasta,
(03:50):
and that was coined circa two thousand and seven or so.
And I believe nobody said this, but I'm like, I'm
fairly confident that it was like copy paste and they're
like copy pasta and then it turned into creepypasta. I
think that's sure the trajectory it took anyway, So, as
I said, coined in two thousand and seven with this
advancing tendency toward somewhat paranormal scary stories in their telling.
(04:15):
But they sort of have that urban legend vibe.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah, absolutely, like found footage, like you're not supposed to
be reading it. Something's uncomfortable and weird and something just
a little bit off right.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Yeah. Yeah, And oftentimes like it's not made. It's like
really big stakes. It's not like end of the world stuff.
It's like, oh, this weird thing happened to this small
town and it was just weird. So it's like it
didn't make the news. And so that's why it often
feels like kind of plausible that you're like, why if
it was that major, why wouldn't I have heard of it?
But it wasn't that major, so it kind of allows
it to just live in this under the radar sort
(04:46):
of place.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah. Now, creepypasta were sometimes accompanied by pictures or videos
depicting ambiguous or distorted or gory or unnerving content to
kind of add to the lore and the spookiness of it.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
And over time these have evolved to sometimes include multi
part complex narratives with a lot of content and requiring
a commitment to get immersed in the story or whatever,
different presentation modalities. There's kind of various ways that these
exist now, like things do on the Internet, it just
kind of grew and changed and morphed and became other things.
(05:21):
But that's sort of where creepy pasta is or has
been lately.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah, And these are often intended to convey a sense
of reality, and so they might be told in first
person narratives as if relayed from personal experience, and this
is sometimes referred to as an anecdote formula. And you'll
see these sometimes where people are just kind of like
sharing stories or like testimonials and stuff. It's interesting.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Yeah, there are also a lot of creepy pastas that
require specific actions on the part of the reader. So
you maybe remember things like the emails for those of
us who were of an earlier generation, maybe like when
emails were happening in the nineties. For those of us
who are around back then, you might sometimes get an
email that said, like forward to ten people, you'll have
(06:04):
bad luck for one hundred days, or something ridiculous like that. Yeah. Yeah,
they anyway, they had some kind of action you had
to take. Sometimes it was spreading the message, sometimes it
was just doing something. But anyway, these are called rituals,
and they involved performing that that action in real life. Irl,
you had to go out and do a thing or
on think gear computer do a thing, but it was
like something Your engagement was not passive. You weren't just
(06:26):
reading it. You were also doing something. It might include
traveling to specific locations at a specific time, or perform
specific actions, or just be at a place that there
were supposed to be part of the sort of ritual
involved in the creepypasta. And I think a lot of times,
even if there wasn't a coordinated event that took place,
it was supposed to evoke the sort of sense of unease. Yeah,
(06:48):
you're just sort of like I'm looking for something I
don't I don't know exactly what to expect. You're still
kind of immersed in it, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Yeah, yeah, Like and just as an example, like sometimes
people have a hard time with this, but example would
be like something like this, listen to this ad or
have bad luck for ten days. So we're back. We're
talking about creepypastas, not this spooky noodles that God, I
just I feel like now we've just got now we've
(07:19):
got a business line. We have to see if somebody's
trademarked spooky noodles. Why we do what we doodles spooky noodles.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
I love this idea.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yeah, this is great. We're gonna make stickers. So there
also is a kind of creepypasta called the Lost Episode
that are presented as some hapless observer stumbling upon lost
footage of a TV show with disturbing content that was
evidently never published and hidden from the public. There's a
famous example of this, relaying a story in which some
intern came across an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants and which Squidward,
(07:52):
after failing a clarinet recital, chooses to die by suicide,
which is dark.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Yeah, quite dark. Yeah, there's kind of this meta level
creepy pasta that's like a story about a story type thing.
But yeah, these are a fiction And that's actually a
really good example of a thing that's fictional that didn't
actually happen, but it's like plausible enough. But you're also
sort of like, why would they? I mean, first of all,
you have to understand the sequence of events that someone
(08:18):
had to order this story. It had to then be written, edited,
and then gone to the animators and voice acted, and
like then they're like, no, we're not going to release that.
I'm like, at what point along that sequence did someone
not stop and go like, I think we probably shouldn't
do this, guys. I'm like, of course this, yeah, But
(08:38):
that's that's the kind of plausibility that's embedded in this
the way creepy pastas are constructed, it's like, if you
think about it, it doesn't make any sense, but like
you could sort of logically hear it and be like,
there's no major red flags here, just like a whoa,
that's crazy. That happened anyway. One of the most famous,
probably of all the creepy pasta stories that have ever existed,
(08:59):
as slender Man. People have heard that if any of
you have heard that, that's where it comes from, and
that actually resulted in the real life stabbing of some kids.
It also inspired a movie that had just the worst
reviews you've ever seen. So, yeah, that's if you're wondering
what we're talking about still and you've heard of Slenderman,
then that's where that comes from.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah. Another one is also the Russian Sleep experiment, which
participants are kept awake for it to scene the amount
of time and as a result undergo horrific psychological torment
and death. So again, like you kind of have like
this like sense of like there's a little bit of
reality here where like it could happen, or maybe something
similar did happen, and they've kind of expanded on it,
like you'll see that kind of happen and show up
(09:39):
a little bit to just give it that sense of like, oh,
that's uncomfortable, because that could be real.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Yeah. Importantly, one thing to know here is you might
hear this and think that this is trolling people. Trolling
is really not the same thing as creepy Pasta. Neither
of those weird chain mails that as I mentioned earlier,
that are like forward this really get bad luck, or
you'll die in ten days or something like that. The
idea with trolling is like to specifically like get under
someone's skin. Right, we did a whole episode on this
(10:06):
at some point. But with Creepy Pasta, the idea is
really just to write a unsettling story that has a
level of plausibility that has people actually like question it. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
and then to just have it spread around like you
just really wanted to get as many eyes on it
as possible.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Yeah. Absolutely. So the question that kind of comes up
is like why, like why why would somebody put so
much time and effort into doing something like this. And
the truth is, it's like it's kind of fun, Like
people like being scared and that's kind of a fun thing,
but like it does this cool thing where it stretches
our creativity and imaginations and gives us an opportunity to
practice a sort of kind of avant garde storytelling instead
(10:44):
of traditional story formats and structure. It gives usn opportunity
to kind of share with a community like something that
people really enjoy and some of the best stories, like
some of the best kind of like creative output I've
seen has come from this creepy pasta space, like and
you can kind of see how like like like really
cool and interesting lore can emerge and stuff like. It's
(11:04):
really just kind of a fun exercise in creativity more
than anything else.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Yeah, I mean it is. It's difficult to do that.
And so people democratizing this so kind of anyone can
participate and they can sort of lend their own ideas
to it, I think really builds this sort of interesting
social movement.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
And I also think that the lack of sort of
winks you know that that people have and an official
participation in traditional storytelling avenues also kind of facilitates the
believability and credibility of them, which makes them seem distressingly
plausible because it's like you're not being fed this as
if it's a story. You're not being fed this as
(11:43):
if it's a fictional entertainment piece. Yeah, being fed this
as if it's reality. And so it's like it doesn't
really wink at you. But at the same time, it's
not so disturbing that you are like, except for slender Man, maybe, yeah,
but like it's not so disturbing that you're like actually
in action about it. It's just sort of like, well,
(12:03):
I don't like that.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
It's kind of like the feeling, the sense of like
dread or the sense of like unease that like the
Twilight Zone.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Will give you, yeah yeah, or like god, I'm really
dating myself right now again. But when the Blair Witch
Project came out, they marketed that movie hard as like
a legitimate found footage document. Yes, And there was like
a website and everything, and this was like brand new.
By the way, at the time, websites for movies was
not a thing, right, And so anyway, a lot of
(12:32):
people saw this thinking like is this did this really happened?
Like this looks like it really happened. I mean, of
course it didn't. Lan's a movie, but it was marketed
that way, and like it was kind of a very
similar idea, albeit an actually fleshed out story.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
So, but anyway, that's that's it. That's I think the
fun thing about creepy pastas. They're creepy, they're pastas and
they're fun.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Yeah, that's it, all right?
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Anything to add there before we wrap ourselves in mummy
cloth and get out of here.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
No happy spooky season. Look out for our new product line,
Why We Doodle Spooky Noodles, and so, it'd be great.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
If you'd like to tell us your favorite creepy pasta
stories or tell us something we missed about creepy pastas.
You can certainly email us directly at info at wwdwwdpodcast
dot com. You can reach us on the social media platforms.
We look forward to hearing from all of you. If
you like to support us, you can do all the
things that I mentioned, like subscribe, tell a friend, rate review,
and you can join us on Patreon. If you do that,
(13:28):
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join a cool group of people that we really love
and we will share. We like to say our thank you,
and we thank those people on our full length episodes
by saying their names, and you can have your name
also read by us in our silky smooth voices if
you joined that group of people, which we so appreciate,
but otherwise, thank you to my team of people. Thank
(13:49):
you all for listening. Is there anything I missed or
that you would like to add before we bury it?
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Nope, I don't have it. I got anything else? All?
Speaker 1 (13:57):
All right? Very good? Then this is Abraham.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
It's a shame.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Why we do what we do? Mini is out.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Bye. You've been listening to Why We Do what We Do.
You can learn more about this and other episodes by
going to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and
we hope you have an awesome day