Digital Monsters

Horror storytelling online has a rich history as detailed and long as the internet itself. Digital Monsters explores many of these narratives and reads them to see what these stories tell us about the internet, about digital communities, and about ourselves. This book seeks to explore the monsters of the virtual world. It will not only detail the narratives but also explore the connections between these monsters and the world outside. It demonstrates what these monsters have to say about the people who write them and draw them, and what they show us about the communal and social words surrounding them.

The digital monsters in this book enjoy living in the middle ground between typically considered strict dichotomies. These monsters, which both are and aren’t simultaneously, reveal other categories the communities hold dear. These categories, as well as the destruction of categories, are what will be explored through the detailed study of these digital monsters. Studying these narratives will provide us with an understanding of how these narratives relate to the broader horror genre, and what it has to say about the social and cultural contexts it finds itself in.