“If it bleeds, it leads” – a familiar cliché, which is why it comes as no surprise that the Slenderman stabbing perpetrated by two pre-teen girls overtook the media for several weeks. If you don’t know the story by now:
Two preteen girls invited a third over for a sleepover and took her to a couple of different locations before pressuring her to follow them into the woods where one girl sat on her while the other stabbed her nineteen times. They left her there to die.
You probably also know that one of the girls claimed to talk to unicorns and that the parents of one were into “gothy” stuff. If you were unaware of Slenderman before, you know enough about him now to recognize the thinly veiled references to him in shows like Supernatural and Backstrom.
But there’s something missing in the media’s educational campaign, and once you notice, it’s the only thing you’ll see.
On its surface, this is a story about a young girl violently betrayed by her friends, but the media can’t sell that as well as it can sell fear. Fueled by the Waukesha, Wis. Police Chief Russell P. Jack’s ominous and, at points, pandering official statement, the media took a running leap off the deep end – suddenly this was no longer a story about three girls. It became a story about the dangers of horror entertainment, the internet, the sexualization of young girls (yes, really). The police chief even mentions “child predators” though there is nothing to suggest any adult was involved, let alone the type of adult we associate with the phrase “child predator.”
As details about the mental state of the perpetrators filtered out and the media focused their coverage on whether the two girls were fit to stand trial, the fever pitch continued with tales of mutilated Barbies and “Satanic symbols.” CNN jumped in to warn parents of the risks of allowing children access to “violent” content while other news organizations were so busy falling over themselves to scare their audiences into clicking headlines, they couldn’t be bothered to check Something Awful and see that “Slenderman” is one word.
Articles would at one point describe Slenderman’s fictional origins at Something Awful, noting that he is “impossibly tall”, “faceless”, and has tentacles coming out of his back only to rush to inform you that though the girls accused of stabbing their friend believed he is real – he really isn’t! Well thank God for that. Let me be clear – if you work for a news organization where your average reader needs to be told that something isn’t real after you’ve described it as “fictional” and “impossible” – quit your fucking job.
Have you noticed the missing element yet?
Her name is Payton Leutner and she’s the living, breathing, twelve year old survivor of this horror show. A few weeks ago in what I can only assume was the result of a slow news day, 20/20 glanced in her direction and sparked a few articles about her. Payton is not the first victim to be all but erased from her own story, and sadly she won’t be the last.
Dead and nearly dead girls litter the footnotes of sensational news stories and the lead-in scenes of crime dramas. Missing girls get news-time because missing means the talking heads and writers of clickbait think pieces are welcome to speculate and sensationalize endlessly while pretending they are helping. If the girl is found she gets a few minutes of airtime on slow news days, or she isn’t found and we forget her. If we can get a perp we can tune in daily for progress on the salacious and terrifying trial. As long as we’re reminded that pretty young girls can be victimized we don’t need to remember the victims – we can focus on the fear.
But Payton wasn’t missing.
Payton was, miraculously, alive.
In an age where the worthiness of news is judged almost solely on its entertainment appeal and clickbait journalism is increasingly the norm, one may argue that the media reported more on her attackers because the intrigue and controversy surrounding them was simply more interesting than a girl laying in a hospital bed. As cynical as that may be, I wouldn’t argue except that Payton Leutner’s story is incredible in its own right.
As a society, we love underdog stories. We love stories where people overcome incredible odds. We paid money to see James Franco pretend to saw his own arm off and escape a Utah canyon. Do you remember being twelve? If there were ever a group worthy of the “underdog” label, it is preteen girls. More importantly, preteen girls love their friends with ferocity. So when Payton’s two best friends pressured her into coming into the woods with them, when they pushed her to the ground and argued over who would kill her, when one sat on her and told the other to “go ballistic” – what betrayal could feel worse for a pre-teen girl?
Worst of all, when it was over, the girls left her lying in the woods alone. The knife grazed her heart, sliced through her diaphragm, cut through organs, and left her bleeding from soft tissue wounds all over her body. A child, alone, bleeding and betrayed, she crawled out of the woods to a road and managed to flag down a cyclist who was able to call for help. Less than six weeks later, she was back in the swimming pool. She volunteered at an animal shelter as a way to feel better, and she went back to the same school where everyone knew what had happened to her.
Many adults lack the tenacity and courage this girl displays.
The media will at once criticize horror entertainment while peddling fear and panic and still expect us to click their headlines and watch their talking heads. They will focus on the salacious and sensational while victims fade out in the background, only to be brought into the spotlight when they need a reason to bring the story back. The fear media hurts us in tangible ways, but perhaps the most obvious is that it robs us of the good news present even in the worst stories. It lets little girls be forgotten even as they live in favor of exploiting the trial of two other little girls for entertainment value.
For some reason, we let it.
