Analog Horror/World Building general - A tranny boys club deciding what should and shouldn't scare zoomers + geek out about cool projects made by people with real talent

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Blue Gem Kosher Queen

This user is Anne Frank
True & Honest Fan
kiwifarms.net
Joined
Jun 22, 2023
By popular demand, I've the honour of giving you a thread we should've made a long time ago. This thread is dedicated to everyone that posted about AH in the YouTube Horror thread but specially dedicated @Justsomecicada who proofread half the OP and @FILTH Tourist that handed me the link for one of our minor incidents.

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According to its Wikipedia entry (likely made by a terminally online fan) Analog horror is a subgenre of horror fiction originated in the late 2000s and early 2010s, characterized for its low-fidelity graphics, cryptic messages, little to no traditional jumpscares and an audiovisual style that seeks to replicate the limitations of analogue media through distortion, glitches and grain filters. While the Wikipedia entry tries to give the subgenre a real history by implying that fake reportings such as Orson Wells' War of the Worlds served as a precedent or that any found footage web series (such as Marble Hornets, No Through Road and Kraina Grzybów TV) belongs in the genre by sheer virtue of not being filmed in digital, the true OGs of it are the much celebrated Local 58 and Gemini Home Entertainment, as they set up the bases of what most people associate with analog horror and Local 58 even coined the term.

Analog horror is by and large crude presentations, most of the time through fake media briefings public or private, of a story involving gruesome crimes or conspiracies made with limited media assets that try to replicate the natural decay associated with analogue recording techniques. Much like how "ARG" is now used to describe using different media in a project to tell a story, analog can mean whatever the fuck the creator wants it to mean.

This subgenre didn't become a thing until June 2021 when the runaway success of the Mandela Catalogue spawned a plethora of other teenagers and young adults to create their own scary world building projects. Unlike Kris Straub, Alex Kister (the creator of the MC) left the skill threshold extremely low as he kickstarted the trend of 'remixing' of old media to give authenticity to his series and many of the most annoying tropes started with his work such as dysmorphophobia, audio peaking instead of traditional jumpscares, complete disregard for what analogue media actually looks like, eventually moving to digital, and worse of all, the boys club mentality that permeates the community.

Kiwi Farms users have found a myriad of ways to say that analog horror isn't scary but the truth of the matter is that anything can be an analog horror series as long as you don't understand or care how analog media works. Jurassic Park, Godzilla, DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Sonic The Hedgehog, Sonic The Hedgehog with PETA, Tom and Jerry, Doctor Who, Adult Swim and even a dog. It goes without saying that the community is over-saturated as it is and against all odds it hasn't fully died down yet. Let's finally get to meet the main players in this community.

Alex Kister / The Mandela Catalogue (MC)
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Goes by any pronouns.
The biggest channel in the entire community, dubbed by Wendigoon (we will get to him later) as 'the next Spielberg' and confirmed to be in cahoots with him. The MC follows several residents of the fictitious Mandela County, WI as they try to survive swarms of the Alternates, shapeshifters that push people to kill themselves for the lulz. It would receive massive attention even by people outside the horror community through memes such as The Intruder/Albanian. Kister is the true originator of the aesthetic of analog and its every convention and trope. This has made him develop a massive ego and self-appoint as the arbiter of what should and shouldn't roll in his corner of the Internet. Taking a page from breadtubers Kister would go to, allegedly, coordinate the cancellation of Urbanspook on the grounds of being an edgelord just to retroactively alter the MC (taking out the 'kill yourself' part) so he didn't look like a complete hypocrite.
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Shortly thereafter, Kister would suffer his own failed cancellation by an ex. Here't a post with the bulk of the leaks. Despite being exposed on having a shapeshifting fetish, using YouTube subliminals to try to become a femboy and just being a shitty partner, his ex came off as the bigger sperg.
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Kister then went on to flip the script and survive to the chagrin of everyone else.

Alex Casanas / ALEXKANSAS / MISTER MANTICORE / THE MONUMENT MYTHOS (MM)
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Goes by any pronouns.
Perhaps the biggest schizo in the entire community. Casanas is behind the MM, an alternate history project that on paper is recorded and distributed by conspiracy nuts about a government using cosmic horror entities to take care of dissenters. Casanas drops plotpoints and seems to have a hateboner for Wendigoon as he ended the series originally once Wendi covered it, he also took the time to correct him in his personal Discord. Is generally agreed the passing of his father affected his projects. He has basically being carried by some of his most dedicated and talented fans since Season 2.
The government took one of his videos down. He would get his own expose made by an ex about being violent and controlling, it was uncovered a second time later and being defused by said ex which led to the Sharty doxing him. Another separate incident would also be excused by his personal circle. The controversy of if the original VA for Virginia Arnoldson left because of his schizoism revives every once in a while.

Kane Parsons / Kane Pixels / The Oldest View (OV)
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Literally the only sane person among the heavy hitters. A VFX wunderkind that made a name for himself in the Backrooms/liminal space fandom and managed to snatch a deal with A24. The OV revolves around an urban explorer being hunted by a giant puppet in an abandoned real life mall. A good buddy of Wendigoon and otherwise a functional human being.

Our thread brethren:
Martin Walls / The Walten Files
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A FNAF spin-off based on a previously failed FNAF spin-off known for its typical FNAF brand of autism, ugly as sin characters you are supposed to believe were made for children and conducted by a man willing to kill immersion in order to tell you Israel is a genocide state among some other current day statements.

Party Coffin aka Clown / Welcome Home
An "ARG" based on a children's muppet show where every character has its own set of pronouns despite happening in the 20th century. It has been rebooted at least two times due to the creator not being able to not give away who the true baddie is.


Other noteworthy players:
Gavagang / Greylock: Hailed by the community as the best series and seen by some as having way too much shit going on, this one was made by someone that actually knows how analogue media works. Gavagang came under scrutiny when some 'based' tweets of his were discovered by the analog puritans.
The East Patch / Angel Hare: My waifu is stuck in the telly. Has no business being as good as it is considering is furry bait.
Unknowingly / The Man in the Suit: Receives mild criticism, almost nukes the whole series.
Darian Quilloy / Vita Carnis: Perhaps the actual best analog horror if mainly because its visual quality is explained in-universe.
Liminal Land: A merch brand by Nexpo that empowers mouth breathers to larp and consoom at the same time. Totally AI art free.
OBlIVIon (motherfuker changed his time twice already) / DC Analog: The bastard emo son of Zack and Scott Snyder. Basically Marvel Ruins but even edgier. @Doctor of Autism, I owed you to ridicule this guy and ON GOD I'm going to.
Piggy Soda / Dog Nightmares: Unintentionally funny story of an antropomorphic dog that only scares the wrinkliest of brains.
Doctor Nowhere / The Boiled One Phenomenon: A teenager that managed to ride a meme into relevancy.
Midwest Angelica: The new 'underrated' analog. Tech wise one of the best but also unapologetically weeb shit.
Woodlands National Park: The only analog KF likes.
White Stag Education: Same as above.
Chilling Abyss / Arcadia TV: Your pick if you want to impress me.

The Grifter Ecosystem
Analog horror owes its success to the online word of mouth provided by more established channels. This has created a feedback loop in which analog creators seek to cozy up to tastemakers in order to receive more recognition, often times by leaving a comment or down right giving nods in their projects. There are many smaller channels that cover analog for one reason or another but some of the more noteworthy ones are The Game Theorists, WOWMAN, Baz and EmortalMarcus. Something you may notice right off the bat while seeing AH coverage is the big emphasis on lore explaining and above else theory crafting. Mr. Mirage, one of the many orbiters of the community, has carved a niche of 'logically' surviving analog horror entities. Two of the bigger players and the only ones not completely tied to the AH community are ironically knee-deep in AH projects.

Nick Nocturne / Night Mind
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An aggressively bisexual thirsty furfarg with a deep voice Tumblrinas lust after that has made a career explaining ARGs for almost a decade. He isn't above being bribed like the male prostitute he is to cover your story, such is the case of DAD which otherwise could've been forgotten despite the budget and planning involved. Like most content creators in the sphere he has moved on to more profitable ventures such as vtubing (where he can be free to sexually objectify once esteemed doc-maker, now furry punchline Fredrik Knudsen) and of course, analog horror. Despite the fact that his very existence is a red flag, he has only ever gotten in trouble by 'poking' NyxFears' hat, which apparently was an instrumental part of Nyx's transition. NM managed to get a role in Welcome Home and as such may be doing more to salvage the project than its own creator.

Explaining to zoomers and gen alpha why they should be scared is one good gig. Chief among them sits one man that many even in this site still like.

Isaiah Mark Nichols / Wendigoon
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Wendigoon is a largely liked guy that has suffered enough slander as it is but if there's one thing you can pin on him as much as how astroturfed he himself is, it would be his role in granting analog horror a not insignificant platform. Wendi has showed several times his closeness with several of the people already discussed and is no exaggeration to say that the 'Wendigoon effect' is a tangible force in horror discussion circles as both Junji Ito's version of No Longer Human and Blood Meridian saw significant increases in sales because of his coverage. I personally came up with the term 'Wenditurfed' to refer to analog shows suddenly getting big once Wendi covers them as he is to horror what Anthony Fantano is to music. In Creepcast, the podcast he shares with Meat Canyon, he started to alternate analog horrors with r/nosleep creepypastas.

From producing over 12 hours of edited coverage of the MC, to streaming himself watching OV with Kister and Pixels, to interviewing Kister, there's an undeniable conflict of interest that became all the more obvious with the biggest schism of the community.

Scary vs. Disturbing
The Scary vs. Disturbing debate can be summed up best as using genuinely shocking situations being considered a crutch for otherwise weak stories. While this is a fair criticism to make it came off to many outsiders as hypocritical for a couple of reasons:
  • The straw that broke the camel's back was UrbanSpook's MEAT (in which one of the corpses has several cuts filled with seminal fluid), despite the fact that sexual abuse had likely already been alluded from the very begginning (both in FACES and PIGS).
  • Many considered that sexual violence being off-limits was bizarre considering religious blasphemy, rewriting of historical figures and different kinds of violence including mass murder were common place in the community.
  • The MC was retconned to not include Alternates pushing victims to kill themselves since it looked tone-deaf that Wendi's best pal in the community was using another touchy subject for his own gain.
  • Wendi dubbed UrbanSpook's The Painter the 'worst' analog horror and compared it to Greylock as a polar opposite. While Gavagang was one of the few people that sort of came to defend UrbanSpook it also came as another conflict of interest as Wendi had streamed himself watching Greylock shortly before this video.
Wendigoon would go to change the thumbnail and title of the video twice, buy merch of Spook and take a page out of Charlie's notebook in fence sitting. Wendigoon's last stream as of 8/17/24 was a coverage of the MC Vol. 5.

UrbanSlug / UrbanSPOOK / The Painter
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Perhaps the biggest pariah of the analog horror community. UrbanSPOOK's The Painter revolves around the hunt for two serial killers that leave paintings of their victims on the scene. The series from its very inception was celebrated by some for being viscerally raw and 'more grounded' than other analogs as it doesn't feature any explicitly supernatural elements. Spook is now deemed to be a talent-less edgelord by people who can't draw, as he had the brilliant idea of including sexual assault in his project. UrbanSPOOK Derangement Syndrome has manifested in a year long hateboner for the guy, with many smaller channels jumping to try and get some notoriety by beating the dead horse. To this day searching for Spook's channel will show you hit-pieces before anything he made. People as late as this week are still making videos about this.

Safe-edgy
The scary vs. disturbing debate kickstarted a debate of sorts if the analog horror community even likes horror as seemingly some ideas are considered out of bounds. Mass murder, abuse of the mentally disabled, conspiracy theories about big government and the subversion of childhood icons are completely fine as long as 'real life' horrors like sexual violence are out of the wholesome chungus analog horror. Genres such as splatterpunk and horror manga are now being gate-kept by zoomer tastemakers who will decide if something is good based on if the suffering shown is 'deserved', the perpetrator is 'in power' or some other similar made-up criteria. Horror can't be horrifying for the gratuity of bad things, for these people every horror has to have a very specific purpose that connects to the greater story or otherwise is just 'shock value'. Every force for evil either has a clearly set up goal or the goal is part of the mystery box.

Mystery box is a thriller subgenre known for world building through clue dropping. Many of its biggest representatives (Cloverfield, Lost, DARK) were released throughout the 2010s. Most of the AH and related communities happens to be into mystery solving either through these shows or shows that were influenced by the mystery box such as most of the Disney TV and Cartoon Network line-up for the last decade. This last example is probably worth a closer look as the reigning aesthetic for the last 15 years has been cutesy looking shows with dark stories and imagery.

The AI Question
AI has made impressive leaps of quality and has started to truly justify the fear it instils in the hearts of artists with nothing special in their portfolios. Unsurprisingly, the analog horror community's official stance is anti-AI. You could make the best possible story and people still wouldn't give you a chance because 'it detracts from real art' or 'they probably used ChatGPT for the story too' which means greetingsfromatomville and 4.n0m4ly_ are seen in an unironically lesser stand than shit like Dog Nightmares or the DC analog series. The creator of Midwest Angelica got in trouble for using an AI for voice acting even though he gave the reasoning as to why he had to do it.

This is perhaps best connected to the suspension of disbelief. Most AH fans are willing to sit through it for the ideas rather than the execution. It doesn't matter that the obviously photoshopped elements are implied to be real or a character uses a tape as a personal diary as long as the story gives you something to work with. AI, rather than being seen as another path for immersion is seen as the natural enemy of the community even in cases in which you can tell the creator didn't use it because they couldn't get it rather than as a statement.

Minor incidents
Verdict
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Nothing screams new horror icons quite like marketable garbage.
 

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The Urban Spook situation still makes me kinda of annoyed. Dude was practically forced out of making videos because of the outrage baiting around it. Unfortunately, the YouTube algorithm rewards people more for making hit pieces to the detriment of actual content and UrbanSpooks case really highlights that for me. I don't think the series was perfect but they should of let him cook.

Can't these people like dm each other? I swear half of all YouTube hit pieces could be resolved if they literally dmed the video subject.

Also I like the Walten Files. It's great content for the budget it was made for.
 
Awesome write up!
Taking a page from breadtubers Kister would go to, allegedly, coordinate the cancellation of Urbanspook on the grounds of being an edgelord just to retroactively alter the MC so he didn't look like a complete hypocrite.
For clarification, was the suicide of Mark the only thing he changed or was there more edits?
 
Awesome write up!

For clarification, was the suicide of Mark the only thing he changed or was there more edits?
Kister also took the 'kill yourself' part out of THINK. Besides some visual remasters and not including a scream, it was the same.

Work is calling so I'm going to keep the positive part of the OP short and sweet.

All Tomorrows
Snaiad
Mystery Flesh Pit National Park
Simon Stålenhag works
Serina: The World of Birds
Birdbugs
The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black
Barren: The Unbroken Kingdom
 
Does Valle Verde count as Analog horror? Next to Kane PIxels, the creator, Alluvium, has made the highest quality series I've ever seen, some of his work wouldn't look out of place as professional PS1 cutscenes from 2003. AFAIK, he's from Argentina, animates all of it on his own, and the series got attention due to Night Mind's coverage.

Night Mind is another figure to note, he's similar to wendigoon in that he covers Analog horror, and he has done the best retrospectives on Marble Hornets, EverymanHybrid, and Tribe Twelve. He is personally involved in many projects as a voice actor, I believe he's a voice actor in some Welcome Home audio segments. He is a homosexual furry, lately streams with a vtuber avatar, and I'm certain would have involvement in the AH space due to his connections and fame.
 
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Does Valle Verde count as Analog horror? Next to Kane PIxels, the creator, Alluvium, has made the highest quality series I've ever seen, some of his work wouldn't look out of place as professional PS1 cutscenes from 2003. AFAIK, he's from Argentina, animates all of it on his own, and the series got attention due to Night Mind's coverage.

Night Mind is another figure to note, he's similar to wendigoon in that he covers Analog horror, and he has done the best retrospectives on Marble Hornets, EverymanHybrid, and Tribe Twelve. He is personally involved in many projects as a voice actor, I believe he's a voice actor in some Welcome Home audio segments. He is a homosexual, lately streams with a vtuber avatar, and I'm certain would have involvement in the AH space due to his connections and fame.
Agree on Valle Verde being kino and this might be the best thread to discuss it.

I've to admit I lost track on NM somewhere after DAD. I was going to flesh out the grifter part a bit more about Marcus and Mirage but really only Wendi came to mind as having any real importance. Will go see what Nick has in the AH sphere.
 
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Good thread! I expect the griftosphere around analog horror to basically implode once people start leaking all the back channel discussion like what happened with the skeptics. I don't post much in the other thread but I like following the drama and people postings recs.

Kister also took the 'kill yourself' part out of THINK. Besides some visual remasters and not including a scream, it was the same.

Work is calling so I'm going to keep the positive part of the OP short and sweet.

All Tomorrows
Snaiad
Mystery Flesh Pit National Park
Simon Stålenhag works
Serina: The World of Birds
Birdbugs
The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black
Barren: The Unbroken Kingdom
Curious about where we draw the line for series that can be talked about in this thread. Is it all inclusive? Or is the thread purely for digital series and Internet projects adjacent to horror? Does something like james gurney's dinotopia and spinoffs count? Could we go as far back as eddison's the worm ouroboros or is this mainly about things that lack a traditional plot?
 
Good thread! I expect the griftosphere around analog horror to basically implode once people start leaking all the back channel discussion like what happened with the skeptics. I don't post much in the other thread but I like following the drama and people postings recs.


Curious about where we draw the line for series that can be talked about in this thread. Is it all inclusive? Or is the thread purely for digital series and Internet projects adjacent to horror? Does something like james gurney's dinotopia and spinoffs count? Could we go as far back as eddison's the worm ouroboros or is this mainly about things that lack a traditional plot?
It’s for world building stuff as well
 
But it’s not just mocked and disregarded, it’s about people saying horror can’t have shock value
People who say that are retarded, but I don't think thats where the majority of the criticism is coming from. It's the fact that UrbanSPOOK's style of shock value is just 'shocking for the sake of being shocking'.
 
People who say that are retarded, but I don't think thats where the majority of the criticism is coming from. It's the fact that UrbanSPOOK's style of shock value is just 'shocking for the sake of being shocking'.
It is, but going on 10 fucking months dunking on a guy who hasn't uploaded anything new in that time, "Obsessed" doesn't even begin to describe how mindbroken these faggots are.
Not to mention your average Tranalog Horror isn't much different compared to US, only diff is that he pushes for more graphic shit.
 
Curious about where we draw the line for series that can be talked about in this thread. Is it all inclusive? Or is the thread purely for digital series and Internet projects adjacent to horror?
Talk about whatever world building you like. If this thread serves for anything positive I want it to be for people to discover cool shit.
People who say that are retarded, but I don't think thats where the majority of the criticism is coming from. It's the fact that UrbanSPOOK's style of shock value is just 'shocking for the sake of being shocking'.
I think is fair to feel however you want to feel about UrbanSPOOK, what I think most people regardless of how they feel about The Painter will agree is that the a-logging of him is pretty gratuitous and, as I've wrote before, the community decided to gang together against him very late. The gingerbread looking thing that people always use to represent UrbanSPOOK is a boy and his painting is called 'Fucktoy Cory' it was featured in the first episode. PIGS has one woman being raped by a horse and a girl being decapitated with her painting calling her 'Four Holes'. The Painter is gratuitous don't get me wrong, is the timing of it what soured some people and Wendigoon jumped in, made things worse and sort of took the worst approach possible in the end.

I've written at length why I think The Painter isn't good, but the worst or even the most disgusting? No, Kister took the 'kill yourself' part out because he wanted to take the ladder he climbed away from other edgelords. UrbanSPOOK is a great painter, that's the best thing I can say about his entire Internet presence. He isn't le based, he isn't a misunderstood genius and this thread wasn't made so we can say that he is a good boy that was wronged by a personality cult. Seeing people disturbed about The Painter reminds me that trend every once in a while of some TikToker tries to push an audio sample from some lesser known movie as a spooky encounter or some random forgotten Hostel clone as the next trauma generator.

You want to share why you hate UrbanSPOOK? Be my guest, I'll read you and take you at your word.
 
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aw, what the fuck is this? I remember watching and loving Local 58 about 4-6 years ago, I think I dropped off when he hadn't uploaded in a year or two and found his videos less and less scary on subsequent rewatches. I thought the idea was great and hoped to see more stuff with a similar premise of "old mundane media turned horrifying through minor distortion or heavy implication."

I'm a complete fucking pussy so that kind of thing was the only thing I could genuinely stomach. I was more deeply interested in the execution than I was scared by the creepy shit, and I really liked that even just as a brainteaser. Was hoping that if it became a more popular thing I could use it to gateway-drug myself into accepting real horror a little more easily.

This write-up hurts to read lol, I had no idea what happened with this stuff past late 2020 and it breaks my heart to see it be cannibalized by the endless horde of brainless tiktok spawn. There's so much potential for disturbing storytelling through this kind of stuff that's just being squandered to shove scary faces and shock value into peoples' faces. And, of course, the freakish fetishists had to get to it and kill the entire concept's appeal by turning it into a sexual fantasy, as always. *sigh*

I wish this stuff just stayed as autistic and underground as modern-day text-based RPGs or stuff like that. It'd probably still have plenty of weirdos, but it'd otherwise be a creative pursuit enjoyed deeply by a few and never oversaturated to the point of complete disrepair. I should've known better, given its absolute requirement of being tied to the eternally-over-romanticized 80s and 90s... then again, given that people are apparently counting iMovies and PowerPoints as """analog horror""" now, I guess that wasn't a very fair metric to go off of either.

How do people get this definition wrong, even? It's in the fucking name. "Analog" horror. That means anything relating to digital shit isn't included. If you're going to include that, just call it "cyberhorror" or something equally-as stupid but descriptive. I dunno.

Thanks for reading my tired rant lol. Didn't bother proofreading, I'm exhausted rn but genuinely felt something reading that OP and wanted to comment. Is there a group of retarded analog horror purists who share my definition that I can go grump around with? A referral would be much appreciated haha. Really hoping that once the trendiness of this dies down it'll have its true potential tapped more thoroughly down the line.
 
The term "Analog horror" always just felt like a way to distance yourself from the term creepypasta and all its baggage while still using all the same tropes. I'm sure there specific points differentiating both "genres" but from a casual viewer it just seems like even more derivative marble hornets or ben drowned but people don't want to invoke the stigmas of things like "hyper realistic blood" or "labelless garage sale videogames"
 
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