Internet ARG Horror - Your Thoughts?

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So I've stumbled across the pages for some recent internet horror series like Marble Hornets and I remember the first time I read MAJORA and the excitement I had when the story was continuing... and the confusion and apathy I felt when I found out it was continuing as an ARG and if you wanted to be a part of it you had to start searching for forums and Twitter accounts and I don't even care what else.

I've never really be in to ARGs. First and only one I ever tried to be a part of was in the far wayback times when I was into Neopets. I read the first clue and searched the Neopets site up and down for answers, but found nothing. Eventually they published a solution: Save an image from the site and run it through a ringer of filters and treatments in Photoshop. Confusing, unintuitive, and taking you out of whatever you're experiencing. That's how I feel about ARGs, and that's why ARG horror makes me apathetic. No, I don't want to have to keep up with Youtube channels and Twitter accounts and Facebook pages and private forums. I just want to get my scares.

Another aspect of this is something that I felt when looking over the fan-wiki for the ARG that MAJORA became. An obsession with preserving the "masquerade." Acting like everything is real and everyone who reads has to act like everything is real. You're not allowed to just enjoy the story or even act like it's a story, because everything has to be real. Truth be told I didn't even realize this was bothering me until I read NES Godzilla Creepypasta and read the creator replying to his commenters and being open about answers and his process. He wasn't acting like everything was real and he wasn't making social netoworking pages for the protagonists. He just wanted to tell a story and have people enjoy it.

But I'm not everyone.

So how do you feel about this trend of ongoing horror stories have this ARG vibe to them, with multiple sites and media formats involved? Are you okay with it? Does it bug you? Am I crazy? Am I dead now because there's something I don't like about the presentation of Slenderman shows? Sound off!
 
I think its a very great usage of the horror genre. If it can effectively establish itself as a realistic situation like Marble hornets had in the beginning, It could make you stay up at night, opening your eyes every now and then to check if that masked madman, or that faceless horror from another dimension that you keep trying to convince yourself, cannot get into your home unless you're dumb enough to leave something open. At least you wish that's how it worked, because it seems it can appear in your home regardless of whether or not you've given it an entrance kind of being happens to find itself lusting for your gruesome demise.


























Oh grud. Those nights I couldn't fall asleep because I wouldn't keep my eyes shut for five minutes...
 
Yeah, I know that feeling. After I read MAJORA I thought I'd wake up and find an Elegy of Emptiness statue besides my bed. But I don't now, and I think that feeling dropped after I found out what an ARG that series became. It kind of killed the horror that it had for me by just drawing me out of it. I guess the process has the opposite effect on me, instead of reinforcing the story by bringing in elements from outside the original medium/viewing area it kills it since I have to break my immersion and go to another site to read something. Or read a timelime compiled by a fan which does the same thing since it's also out of the intended experience.
 
I personally have never participated in ARGs, nor do I plan to, mostly because I do not consider myself smart enough to actually affect their outcomes or come to conclusions on my own. I merely enjoy reading slash watching how ARGs unfold, as I find that much more fun than to actually try and go through layers and layers of cyphers. Sure, code breaking can be fun, but if it is too complicated, then it becomes tedious after a while. I think that ARGs are a good way to tell a story, especially the way Marble Hornets is doing it. Their videos almost always manage to keep me on the edge and because I am not reading the theories, I am usually surprised by the twists.