<p>Aside from a short introduction, the bulk consists of a single, still image of a painting set to ominous music. The “scary” part is the back story. According to the introduction, the painting — a simple depiction of a young girl with myopic blue eyes — was made by a teenage Japanese girl who scanned it to her computer, uploaded it to the Internet, then immediately killed herself.<br /><br />“They say it is hard for a person to stare into the girl’s eyes for longer than five minutes,” accompanying text reads. “There are reports that some people have taken their own lives after doing so.”<br /><br />Is it true? Probably not. Is it fun? Decidedly.<br /><br />The video is part of a growing phenomenon making its way around message boards and e-mail chains called “creepypasta” — bite-sized bits of scariness that have joined the unending list of things-to-do-when-you’re-bored-at-work.<br /><br />“You’re still secure in your chair, so it’s not quite like having a real brush with death,” said Matt Wallaert, a behavioural psychologist and a founder of Churnless, an Internet strategy agency. “It’s like having your little mini pick-me-up in the middle of the day.”<br /><br />Most creepypasta manufacture their own authenticity. In that sense, it’s like “The Blair Witch Project,” 2.0: The possibility that they just might be true is usually built in, often in the form of a compelling — if dubious — history.<br /><br />Authenticity<br /><br />“The stories are always told by someone you could never actually verify,” Wallaert said. “But that gives it a ring of authenticity.”<br /><br />Despite their meta-similarities, creepypasta vary widely. One popular example, known as “The Russian Sleep Experiment,” is a short story about Russian prisoners who are forcibly deprived of sleep until they cannibalise each other.<br /><br />Another, called “Suicide Mouse,” is a nine-minute, Kafkaesque loop of a vintage Mickey Mouse walking down a gloomy street, which slowly degrades into a mix of distorted images, warped music and chilling screams. According to the accompanying legend, the film is authentic, newly discovered Disney footage — the watching of which has led people to kill themselves.<br /><br />Like other food-based techie terms, creepypasta has its own, geeky etymology (“spam,” for example, comes from an episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus). Mike Rugnetta, who is a researcher for KnowYourMeme.com, a project devoted to tracking and documenting bits of viral web ephemera — or memes — explained that creepypasta derives from a term called “copypasta,” which described any piece of text that was endlessly “copy-pasted” across the Internet.<br /><br />Creepypasta probably arose as a creepy form of copypasta around 2007, Rugnetta said, though it’s only recently become really popular. (According to Google Trends, which quantifies the rate at which a given term is searched, “creepypasta” has skyrocketed in just the last few months — roughly five times what it was at midyear.)<br /></p>
<p>Aside from a short introduction, the bulk consists of a single, still image of a painting set to ominous music. The “scary” part is the back story. According to the introduction, the painting — a simple depiction of a young girl with myopic blue eyes — was made by a teenage Japanese girl who scanned it to her computer, uploaded it to the Internet, then immediately killed herself.<br /><br />“They say it is hard for a person to stare into the girl’s eyes for longer than five minutes,” accompanying text reads. “There are reports that some people have taken their own lives after doing so.”<br /><br />Is it true? Probably not. Is it fun? Decidedly.<br /><br />The video is part of a growing phenomenon making its way around message boards and e-mail chains called “creepypasta” — bite-sized bits of scariness that have joined the unending list of things-to-do-when-you’re-bored-at-work.<br /><br />“You’re still secure in your chair, so it’s not quite like having a real brush with death,” said Matt Wallaert, a behavioural psychologist and a founder of Churnless, an Internet strategy agency. “It’s like having your little mini pick-me-up in the middle of the day.”<br /><br />Most creepypasta manufacture their own authenticity. In that sense, it’s like “The Blair Witch Project,” 2.0: The possibility that they just might be true is usually built in, often in the form of a compelling — if dubious — history.<br /><br />Authenticity<br /><br />“The stories are always told by someone you could never actually verify,” Wallaert said. “But that gives it a ring of authenticity.”<br /><br />Despite their meta-similarities, creepypasta vary widely. One popular example, known as “The Russian Sleep Experiment,” is a short story about Russian prisoners who are forcibly deprived of sleep until they cannibalise each other.<br /><br />Another, called “Suicide Mouse,” is a nine-minute, Kafkaesque loop of a vintage Mickey Mouse walking down a gloomy street, which slowly degrades into a mix of distorted images, warped music and chilling screams. According to the accompanying legend, the film is authentic, newly discovered Disney footage — the watching of which has led people to kill themselves.<br /><br />Like other food-based techie terms, creepypasta has its own, geeky etymology (“spam,” for example, comes from an episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus). Mike Rugnetta, who is a researcher for KnowYourMeme.com, a project devoted to tracking and documenting bits of viral web ephemera — or memes — explained that creepypasta derives from a term called “copypasta,” which described any piece of text that was endlessly “copy-pasted” across the Internet.<br /><br />Creepypasta probably arose as a creepy form of copypasta around 2007, Rugnetta said, though it’s only recently become really popular. (According to Google Trends, which quantifies the rate at which a given term is searched, “creepypasta” has skyrocketed in just the last few months — roughly five times what it was at midyear.)<br /></p>