Slender Man
The Waukesha stabbing and the negative media attention it generated irreversibly altered the Slender Man legend and the online community surrounding it. What had previously just been a creepy horror meme to most people suddenly acquired a new level of reality that most fans of Slender Man found horrifying. Meanwhile, by around the same time, the Slender Man character had lost much of his original popularity. Most of the original blogs that had once been devoted to Slender Man either shut down completely or became less popular. Slender Man's presence in mainstream popular culture also contributed to a decline in how frightening he seemed to many people.