This resulted in a plethora of ill written stories, with little to no literary understanding. Over the past decade, children have become increasingly prominent on the internet, and thusly upon seeing creepypastas decided to try and make their own. Not only that, but while originally intended for a mature audience, I believe that a good portion of the creepypasta community’s fanbase was children, and it could be that after the incident, parents began to pay more attention to what their children were doing online. However, I believe that may have implemented a negative idea of the community in peoples minds, which may have caused the growth of the community to stagnate. I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that the same year that the Slender Man stabbing occurred, the search term hit its peak. (However, it does appear that in July of 2020, it hit another peak in terms of YouTube searches.) So what happened? While there is no concrete answer, I have a few theories. Google Trends shows us that the term “creepypasta” hit it’s peak in terms of searches in June of 2014, and ever since then has hit a steep decline. The early 2010’s were prime time for creepypastas, but the popularity didn’t last long. However, there are always a slight few who take it too far.
As he is a fictional character, you can make him into anything you want him to be. Now, I mean absolutely no harm to those who simply like the character romantically. They see the character as a sad and broken teen who they could fix, a bad boy if you will. The reason why I believe this is, is that the characters’ sad and dark past makes him attractive. Jeff the Killer has an insurmountable amount of fangirls, who wish to go out with the character and even be like the character. You heard me correctly, although it may not be too surprising to you. It was not Jeff the Killers literary prowess that got him to the level of fame that he is at now, but rather young teen girls’ attraction to the fictional character.
The story is not realistic enough to be frightening, there is little to no suspense to the story, and most of the characters’ objectives aren’t very clear. While the most popular creepypasta, Jeff the Killer is regarded as a fairly awful creepypasta in terms of literature. The original image, which looking back on it… is just very badly photoshopped.