Marble Hornets

Over the course of the last week, I had the pleasure of watching through the Marble Hornets webseries, along with the accompanying explanation expos by NightMind.

Marble Hornets was my first foray into an ARG story, though I am watching it many years after it was completed. An ARG- Augmented Reality Game- is quite an intriguing medium of storytelling, as it allows the audience to be actively evolved in the unfolding plot. This should create a very high sense of realism and suspension of disbelief, though for Marble Hornets, I already knew that it was a creative project and it was too late for me to be involved as an audience member.

Marble Hornets was begun in 2009, finishing out in 2014. It was forged right at the beginning of the Slenderman mythos- indeed, becoming a founding piece of Slenderman's cultural presence. Of course, the name of Slenderman has primarily become synonymous with two things; with the tragic stabbing that occurred in his name, and the terrible 2018 film that bears his name.

With that being said, it is easy to forget the reputation and atmosphere surrounding Slenderman in his earliest days, and this is why Marble Hornets struck me. I remember when my friends and I first discovered Slenderman, and how much it got into our heads. We were at an age where we were becoming more mature and independent, but that childlike sense of wonder and magic wasn't all the way gone either. We knew that Slenderman had to be fake, but it was hard to believe. We would talk on end about his mysteries. We would huddle around a computer, playing Slender: The Eight Pages (a game I could never get past the first page without making someone else play!). We would even play a real-life Slenderman game out in the woods at night, with one person acting as Slenderman himself.

Because Marble Hornets was made during the time Slenderman was being established, and because it was so authentic in its delivery, it is the perfect series to take me back to that adolescent time of mystery, fear, and excitement.

As for what Marble Hornets actually is, it's the story of a group of college kids who were involved with the making of a student film called Marble Hornets, and the subsequent supernatural and dramatic happenings that unfold as a result.

For how it is communicated, there were three primary and interconnected ways Marble Hornets progressed. It is important to note that they are all meta- the characters act as real people in the real world, and when they interact with the audience, they are doing so in character. Additionally, the content itself is considered real; a character in the story can watch a Marble Hornets episode, and even use that knowledge to further the plot. If an episode shows a character in one location, another character will be able to know they are there. It goes a good deal further than even something like The Blair Witch Project, whose marketing was dependent on it being taken as an actual, found footage film that was real. Marble Hornets, as it unfolded, was reliant on both its audience and its characters interacting with itself. 

Onto the first medium the story was communicated through, and the primary. This was the actual Marble Hornets YouTube channel, owned by the character Jay. He would upload numbered entries. His first entry was him saying he was given some tapes by his friend Alex, the director of the student film, after the project had suddenly been suspended and Alex had moved away. The following entries are either tapes from Jay's camera, or Jay uploading tapes he gets from Alex and other sources. In it, Jay often gives a written description of what he's thinking, what he notices, and what he plans to do. They can be as short as a minute or as long as twenty minutes.

The second was Jay's Marble Hornets Twitter, in which he would interact with the audience directly. He would give updates on his mental state, this thoughts on his current situation, and so on. He would also give indications on when he would upload next. Most of the big reveals were saved for his channel, but his Twitter was an important way for the audience to infer more context and peek into his mind. In fact, sometimes the creators, through Jay's Twitter, would even drop clues for the audience if they were stuck and could not figure something out, such as a coded message.

That brings us to our third medium, the ToTheArk YouTube channel. By far the most cryptic, the ToTheArk channel nevertheless held the most important keys for figuring out the various mysteries of the series. ToTheArk began uploading soon after Jay did, and seemed to be addressing him directly. However, ToTheArk's identity was unknown, and their videos were heavily distorted and creepy, often pieced together of strange footage from other existing media or taken of the characters from a stalkerish angle. ToTheArk's messages were always coded; there were cyphers using 0's, matching pictures and colors, clues in the video description, and so on. It would be impossible to watch a single ToTheArk video devoid of context and figure out what it could mean. 

It is only through keeping up with all three of these mediums that one could truly figure out what was going on in Marble Hornets. Sure, the main entries would show you what happened, but without the Twitter and ToTheArk channel, you could never figure out who mystery characters were, what the motives of all the characters were, and so on and so forth. 

That is why it was necessary for me to watch NightMind's expo as a companion piece. I would watch a season, and then watch his breakdown of the season. His explanations were critical in me understanding. He would crack the cyphers, keep track of relevant information, bring back clues from earlier episodes, and highlight important information from the real-world production of the series, including Q-and-A's with the creators.  

This might sound unnecessarily convoluted, but that would be missing the point of an ARG. It's easy to say it's too complicated when watching years after it was completed, but that's not how an ARG is supposed to be consumed. When Marble Hornets was running, you would actively be involved in its process. You would wait for Jay to tweet, you might respond, and he might even acknowledge your response. When an episode dropped, it was new information for you to eagerly eat up and ponder until the next one dropped. There was a community formed around it, including codebreakers who would continually posit theories and decipher messages,  often changing their conclusions upon the release of new information. Marble Hornets wasn't a traditional film or episodic series. It was an involved experience you were a part of.

Moving away from its production, I want to talk about its effectiveness as a story and its portrayal of Slenderman. In the series, he is never referred to as Slenderman- he is only known as "The Operator". This distances him from other Slenderman stories and makes him more unique to Marble Hornets, allowing the audience to interpret him more freely from the rest of the mythos.

They diligently make sure to never reveal much about the Operator. His true motives and origin are never explained. Even his powers are not directly revealed, but rather must be inferred from what you observe him doing and his effect on others. This is an excellent approach. Not knowing what he is and what he wants is where much of the fear comes from. If they explained too much, it would weaken his scare factor. 

The other brilliant aspect of the Operator is that he never actually kills or hurts anyone directly. The Operator, from what we see in Marble Hornets, cannot come up to you and actually slay you himself. 

His presence makes you ill. He degrades your mental state, makes you paranoid. He stalks you. He screws with your electronics, especially cameras. He can teleport you across great distances, and potentially even periods of time, and to an alternate dimension, which disorients you. He can wipe your memory for as little as a night, up to several months. He makes you lose sleep. He can even seem to possess you for small amounts of time, though the limits of that are unclear. The Operator strips you of your sanity, denies your ability to be a functioning member of society, unable to focus on anything but him. And, because of all this, you do things you would not normally do.

What makes Marble Hornets so good is the fact that it is driven by the human drama. All of the violence, broken friendships, confrontations, and so on are the character's doing. Sure, it is because of the Operator's influence, but he is never the one to do the deed. In fact, most of the time, he isn't even directing characters to action; most of the characters are in active opposition to him. It is their obsession with him, their desire to overcome and get rid of him, combined with their unstable mental health, that gets them to commit the heinous acts they do. In essence, the Operator isn't just a monster; he is a monster that makes you a monster, which is what makes the story not only scary, but actually sad. Friends argue, fight, and torture each other. Their story is one betrayal and regret against one another. It is also one of revenge against the Operator, but this revenge only ends up damaging them. That is the Operator's game, to turn people into schizophrenic, aggressive recluses who will end up hurting others and themselves. 

This is a break from many monsters, including other iterations of Slenderman, who could physically attack you. It also doesn't rely on direct possession, though there are some points where a character is likely under the Operator's control, but even then, all of the worst acts are committed by the characters' own misguided intentions. The Operator will not stab you, crush you, or eat you. But it will make you the worst version of yourself. 

So, would I recommend the Marble Hornets series? Yes, with some important caveats. It is certainly an intelligent, well-made, ground-breaking piece of media. It is a unique experience, and an excellent example of the potential of ARG storytelling.

But, for a casual viewer, Marble Hornets is an intensive experience that requires a lot of mental energy and time. Given that it is many years ahead of its run, supplementary material, like NightMind's expos, are basically a requirement. It is a slowburning series, with many of its entries feeling uneventful. The scares themselves are fairly standard, and by the end, the series is pretty much moved all away from horror. The spooky imagery and sound design aren't going to ramp up that much, because the heart of the series isn't scares, but the drama. 

Additionally, watching it in retrospect takes out a great chunk of its intended experience, which is your participation. There is no illusion that the characters are real anymore, you can no longer interact with them, and there isn't an ongoing story that you are following in real-time. 

Despite all this, for a patient viewer who wants a look into ARG and the formative history of one of the internet's most famous legendary figures, Marble Hornets is an excellent choice. At the very least, even if you do not watch it yourself, it is something that you should be aware of for its importance and cleverness, which was my intention to share.