Question from Jourdua:
Are there any skeptics out there who have done research on slender man, aliens, and alien abduction?
Are pictures of slender man fake?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ppyyqev1NY
Can you give me any information on skeptic research on this topic especially slender man and child abduction?
Answer by SmartLX:
In the Slender Man, we have a rare opportunity to witness the birth and early dissemination of what we know for a fact to be an urban myth. As explained on Know Your Meme, the first images of Slender Man were created as entries for a Photoshop contest on Something Awful, the object of which was to deliberately fabricate images of paranormal phenomena. (The KYM link even has an interview with the creator.) The images captured the imagination of the online community, which started cranking out videos, games, cosplay and every other conceivable kind of contribution to the Slender Man mythos.
Right now nearly everyone knows it’s made-up, but who can say how long it’ll be before a significant number of people have heard of the Slender Man without also hearing that he’s not real? At that point, he will become a bonafide mythical humanoid creature alongside Bigfoot and the Mothman – which goes to show how easily those could also have been made up years ago. The important thing, though, is that real children have nothing to fear from this new blank-faced boogeyman.
Aliens and alien abduction are of course a much broader subject, and one to which skeptics have devoted considerable effort, especially since the idea was massively popularised by The X-Files. An overview of the subject can be found on RationalWiki, and here for instance is an active forum (aligned with world-famous skeptic James Randi) devoted to analysing any such claims that may surface. The consensus at the moment is that there’s no credible threat to children or anyone else from alien monsters. Sadly, there are plenty of ordinary but monstrous humans capable of being as cruel to children as any imagined creature.
Really, the skeptical material on aliens is all over the place if you do a simple search. As they say down here, get amongst it.