Kiwi Farms Unofficial Analog Horror Hate Thread - THE VHS SLOP FILES

Beautiful Border said:
So I've been waiting for an opportunity to talk about this, and this thread seems like it. In my opinion, there's only one type of analog horror that's actually scary: Old-school public information films, like the Protect & Survive shorts:
This is scary because of who made it, why they made it, and the implications of it. More specifically: It was made by the British government and only intended to be aired if a nuclear war seemed imminent. If this was airing on TV and you were watching this, it meant civilization was probably about to end. That's an incredibly spooky concept, and it's been made spookier by the passage of time. The vintage feel and presentation makes you feel like you're peering into another timeline where the Cold War ended in a much more grim fashion, and reminds you that could have been our timeline if things had gone slightly differently.

In my opinion, the entire genre of "Analog Horror" is simply various attempts to replicate things like Protect and Survive and the uneasy feeling they give you... and they've all failed. Because they're not actually real. You can't replicate the context it represents.
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That PSA short is waaaaaaay scarier than any of this "analogue horror" bullshit. The guy speaks so deadpan while describing what to do if someone in your family dies and how to bury their body. "Analogue horror" tries way too hard to be scary to the point where its completely laughable
 
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Literally the most disturbing thing imaginable


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Truly effective "analog horror" would never come from a YouTube channel or anything like that. You'd never know the names of the creators. There would be no Patreon to subscribe to for more. No crowdfunding projects.

A really clever creator would work to make a true analog artifact and let people enjoy the mystery. Most of the work would be in creating a credible piece of media that looks authentic to the period you are recreating and comes in a format appropriate to that period as well.

It has to be as authentic as possible so that it resists all attempts at scrutiny by the viewer. There must be the chance that the person interacting with it actually takes it for a real thing. You can't just put it on a VHS tape either. It has to be a tape sourced from the time, the box should use paper sourced from the time or a clamshell taken from the period. You have to commit to trying to be one step ahead of every question people are going to have about it so when they start peeling back the layers it holds up and that will start to convince a portion of the audience that the thing is the genuine article.

I've had a project in mind for over 15 years that would involve producing a video on period accurate gear and putting on a tape sourced from the correct period as well. Then not releasing it to YouTube or anything like that but slipping it into some of the more well known markets for VHS tape collectors. You seed enough places where tape hunters search and someone will turn it up, watch it and then start asking the tape community about it. They'd rip it and upload it to YouTube. The tapes become highly sought after. I'd even make slight differences between each tape you seed in order to further perplex viewers and invite them to compare tapes. People would try and prove the tape was some kind of contemporary creation and you'd create this mystery about it where it would have proponents of it being authentic vs. sceptics. You let those people do all the "promotion" of the video.

That's the art of it to me. Creating a legend, not just a video or a story. A whole mystery for people to chew on.

You can't profit from this though. You can't even really enjoy your creation in public or receive any accolades for it. You'd do it for the love of the game, for the pursuit of making something so eerie that it spawns a whole bunch of spergs online trying to see if it's real or not. Everybody wants to monetize everything and become a big dog online. It's bad for art.
 
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Everyone's pointing out a lot of what I could say, but I will say I remember stumbling across the sub-genre of Jurassic Park analogue horror tapes and being vastly disappointed.

You'd think this would at least be a conceptual gold mine once you accept it's gonna be based on an established IP brand (JP), within a fictional sub-genre (analogue horror), and by default inevitable low budget work from the zoomers working on these things, right? But even then it's just so dull and poorly-made when JP is set in the golden age of analogue VHS. You'd think people would up their art skills or use common sense to hide whatever they use for dinosaur models in darkness, rain SFX, etc. and sparingly show them the exact same way the ACTUAL JP movie did for the CGI portions of the dinosaurs onscreen....

Like surely we can at least have atmospheric video tapes recorded by some wayward grunt employee or something.... no jump scare or danger needed, just a hint of watching some dinosaur brush through the foliage within their cages, the dino keeping an eye on them BACK as they go to wherever they're supposed to.

....but no. Just really shitty voice acting, really shitty animated dinosaurs, really shitty jump scares. What a disappointment, man.
 
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The Partisan said:
I've had a project in mind for over 15 years that would involve producing a video on period accurate gear and putting on a tape sourced from the correct period as well. Then not releasing it to YouTube or anything like that but slipping it into some of the more well known markets for VHS tape collectors. You seed enough places where tape hunters search and someone will turn it up, watch it and then start asking the tape community about it. They'd rip it and upload it to YouTube. The tapes become highly sought after. I'd even make slight differences between each tape you seed in order to further perplex viewers and invite them to compare tapes. People would try and prove the tape was some kind of contemporary creation and you'd create this mystery about it where it would have proponents of it being authentic vs. sceptics. You let those people do all the "promotion" of the video.
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Sounds like you have an idea for an ARG.
 
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The worst analog horror I've come across is my Dad's VHS Vacation Home Movies, because he used to spend 20 minutes panning across a hill. Yes, Dad. It's a hill. It's not going anywhere. You don't have to film every nook and cranny. At least back when Dad had a Super8 camera, he was limited in the amount of time he could spend panning on landscapes and Old Civil War Cemeteries.

Before Analog Horror there were Screamer videos and animated GIFs which looked like a still picture, but had something scary pop up on it. I miss scary Flash videos like 99 rooms and The Hospital. Eerie interactive environments that heralded today's "liminal space" analog horror. Too bad Flash doesn't work anymore, because a lot of this stuff was lost to time.
 
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Meat Target said:
Sounds like you have an idea for an ARG.
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I hadn't really looked at it from that perspective but in a way you are totally right.

What I really want is to manufacture a mythical object. Something that actually becomes the stuff of urban legend and takes on a life of its own without me needing to create "content" about it which immediately betrays its artificial nature. It creates a culture around itself by virtue of it existing and continuing to stand up to inquiry and thus maintaining the possibility it is a truly anomalous thing. Not an easy task. Part art, part forgery and social engineering.

If I had the resources to pursue it to the level I'd be satisfied with I think that's probably what I'd be doing with my time.
 
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Beautiful Border said:
So I've been waiting for an opportunity to talk about this, and this thread seems like it. In my opinion, there's only one type of analog horror that's actually scary: Old-school public information films, like the Protect & Survive shorts:
This is scary because of who made it, why they made it, and the implications of it. More specifically: It was made by the British government and only intended to be aired if a nuclear war seemed imminent. If this was airing on TV and you were watching this, it meant civilization was probably about to end. That's an incredibly spooky concept, and it's been made spookier by the passage of time. The vintage feel and presentation makes you feel like you're peering into another timeline where the Cold War ended in a much more grim fashion, and reminds you that could have been our timeline if things had gone slightly differently.
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EAS scenarios can replicate this feeling.
It's designed to startle you and get your attention when shit's going down. The tension grows as you wait to hear if your city or county is in the path of a tornado.
 
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The Partisan said:
I hadn't really looked at it from that perspective but in a way you are totally right.

What I really want is to manufacture a mythical object. Something that actually becomes the stuff of urban legend and takes on a life of its own without me needing to create "content" about it which immediately betrays its artificial nature. It creates a culture around itself by virtue of it existing and continuing to stand up to inquiry and thus maintaining the possibility it is a truly anomalous thing. Not an easy task. Part art, part forgery and social engineering.

If I had the resources to pursue it to the level I'd be satisfied with I think that's probably what I'd be doing with my time.
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Have you read about how Boards of Canada released Tomorrow's Harvest? They seeded record stores all over the world with clues and enough autists found out that they followed the clues, leading up to them finding GPS coordinates. People went there and there was a trailer set up with equipment to play the album and let people listen to it for the first time in a specifically crafted way.

I'm paraphrasing and likely getting details wrong but it was a crazy cool modern example of this working.
 
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Hardline Traditionalist said:
Vita Carnis is okay, I guess.
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Vita Carnis would be better as a blog or some website. There really isn't any horror. It just has dry information.

Most analog horror series are just a collection of the same few tropes they don't put much spin on. They don't follow any kind of dramatic structure. They consist of style, not substance—and their style is only scary to zoomers.
 
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MerelyAPlateOfSpaghetti said:
Have you read about how Boards of Canada released Tomorrow's Harvest? They seeded record stores all over the world with clues and enough autists found out that they followed the clues, leading up to them finding GPS coordinates. People went there and there was a trailer set up with equipment to play the album and let people listen to it for the first time in a specifically crafted way.

I'm paraphrasing and likely getting details wrong but it was a crazy cool modern example of this working.
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I had never heard of this before but that is awesome. Boards of Canada are the coolest.

All the art I make now is playing with these concepts. I love the idea of triggering weird obsessive episodes in people where they put themselves outside their own comfort zones to try and "figure out" what they are seeing. Something that draws them outside into the real world and into places we ignore now in favour of the virtual space.

I hate the idea of artist as marketer. There is nothing sadder really. The artists job is to make art. Seeing all these artists having to debase themselves making "content" to get online attention on their work fills me with a visceral feeling. I don't like it. Make what you make. Let others find it and become the evangelists for it. Let the work speak for itself and let people find their own way to connect with it instead of parasocial nonsense with the artist.

I understand that this is just marketing of another kind but at least it's based on real interest and not just doomscrollers.

It's the opposite advice anybody would give you but I think artists today should be avoiding social media and this modern conception of "content".

My take is that artists make art. Consumers make content.
 
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