Do you think creepypasta will ever come back into popularity? I know sonic.exe made a comeback but that's more for memes rather than horror. I miss when creepypastas were everywhere on the internet. I used to spend hours listening to creepypasta readings and I miss when the internet was more horror focused, even if most of those stories were terrible.

I disagree! Ever since those psychos that made FNF opened the floodgates, Sonic.exe's comeback was NOT ironic or just for memes. The big Sonic.exe mod has resulted in several Sonic-based exes to the point where I think it's sorta become a community of its own. I don't know if any creepypastas are being written or if it's more like creepymaestroing since it might just be more FNF mods, or maybe it's just because I'm in way too deep into FNF, but I think some interest is genuinely there.

That being said, I think creepypastas have kinda evolved from crummy stories thirteen year olds wrote to a general love of mascot horror. Not saying Scott Cawthon got inspired by Sonic.exe or anything, I just think there's a lot more "kid thing that people like is now SPOOKY and EDGY" scratching people's itches, so you're more likely to see stuff in those fandoms instead of people having to spook themselves with silly fanfictions.

I'm kinda kicking myself for missing the creepypasta collab. I'd love to give it a shot, but I don't know if I'm any good at scaring people...

Analog horror, ARGs, and containment fiction gave usurped creepypastas. So unless there is an analog horror adaptation of creepypastas, the likelihood of creepypastas making a comeback is slim.

Yes I am aware of the Marble Hornets ARG, but thay was pretty niche.

I would argue it never left, it just evolved into different forms, like analog horror for example

I doubt it's ever going to make a huge comeback.

Man the day creepypastas comeback chills is gonna become a billionaire

Considering the whole "MLP infection AU" (or rather AUs) thing, I guess one could say they're on their way back home, more horrifying than ever, maybe.

I don't think it will be as big as it used to be if it does come back but it might. Like remember those mlp creepypastas, they sort of came back in the form of those infection au's on tiktok and other social media apps. But if creepy pastas do come back, I say it most likely would be ruined by those weird ass content farms, but that is what I think anyway

number 15...

If the second one by @Emizip was any indicator, there’ll probably be more!

Ye I think so but for it to become super popular its gonna take more then a mid story and a scary face, Sonic.exe for example was huge since big gaming youtubers played the game that was based off the story, Now in days with analogue horror being the next big thing now creepypastas has more competition for it to get through.

Personally, I do think that Creepypasta will make a comeback! I just hope that people don't reimagine the classics (Jeff the Killer, Slenderman, Sonic.EXE, etc.) lol

He made a whole video called and I shit you not "Top 10 videos that will give the hebbie gebbies"

No :3

i think it will, just in a different format, like analog horror.

i think creepypastas-- as in text-based horror stories-- are still popular in some circles, though analog horror seems to have taken the initiative and yoinked the market from them. it's easier to digest cause it focuses on visual storytelling, in addition to most being better quality in terms of storytelling and originality(? depends...), served with a decadent sidedish of fancy visuals.

edit: oh whoops everyone said the same thing. i'm a contrarian so i have to offer a counterpoint.

creepypasta, as we know them, will never make a comeback.

compared to the wild west of the early 2000s, the bar for these sort of stories have been set extremely high, right to the point that it's difficult to break into the niche market. we've all gotten older. gone are the days where you would just need to write a slab of text accompanied by some sort of visual you yoinked off the web. what was revolutionary back then-- cursed games, urban myths, forbidden rituals-- have become the eye-rolling norm, not to mention the boat load of avenues we can share these stories on compared to the days of yore where you could just post it on a forum board. they've expanded from this tiny subsection of the internet and has permeated itself into movies, comics, 2000s-cringe-compilation-worthy fandoms, pop culture itself. creepypastas, the small, niche but dedicated community, will never make a comeback. but i don't think that's a bad thing!

anyhow, i was just born a couple of hours ago. still drying off. take this with a massive grain of salt.

Yeah, I miss those times as well, even if I was like 9 and couldn't experience the whole thing, but I knew the basics. But the creepypasta fandom ain't deas and it sorta revives every October on Halloween. Now, almost every fandom revives at some point, it only takes a good boost. I think that if someone releases a good creepypasta and it has the proper "advertisment", it's enough to revive it for at least some weeks.

What if somebody made a creepypasta collab this October to remind us of the good ol' times.. hmm...

I think like most online communities, it’ll keep fluctuating and having rises and falls of popularity with time. Might not get back the style of content, activity and far reach of the fandom I particularly remember from the early 2010s, but it’ll never truly go away, I think. Just changes with time, new forms of spooky internet stories and such.

i wrote an awful creepypasta as a kid called Shantae 64: the unreleased sequel

Creepypastas are the best. For so little data, you can scroll through stories for hours.

My favorite ones are the “based on a true story” where the scary surprise is somewhat plausible, even if most details are embellished.

i think the dip in Creepypasta popularity is just a result of people’s attention spans getting shorter and fewer bookworms

Short: No

Long: The problem is that creepy pastas were the 'net version of campfire stories. Bullshit (Myabe exaggerated tales) to cause some fear, same with creepy pics. Now you'll have more chances finding a creepy doll or bootleg Mickey as a "Cursed picture"

It doesn't help that most of the internet is full of know nothing know-it-alls who want the SAUCE and have this PICS OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN mentality which of course would throw Creepastas to shit.

I mean, reading back some like Jeff the Killer that one was just absurdly edgy and stupid and the Russian Sleep Experiment was creepy until the ending which was some edgy shit.

Then there's my favourite pasta "NormalPornForNormalPeople" but with the spotlight shining ever brighter on the dark side of the internet and real life horrors being more common *anywhere* online even that fic feels outdated.

Then you have things like ARGs or that one YouTube channel (Analog Horror, sorry forgot the name of the gnere!) which in the end rely more on shock value or "wooo so gory and scary, scared yet?" and it's just... I dunoo maybe I'm just an old bitch. but that's how I see it

In the end: It won't come back as it was because back then in the late 00's we were younger, impresionable and so was everything online. Now everything is more public and more "connected" to the real world so Creepy Pastas will be naturally dismissed.

yeah its very possible but with a few conditions like atmosphere setting and metatrails and themes but its not very easy it takes alot of effort and effectiveness to make a very strong come back

Not unironically, the online horror landscape's much different.

If and when it comes back, it can't be in the subgenres that have been done to death already (haunted games, deleted episodes, every other form of "kid thing scary now," etc.) otherwise it's just going to come off as derivative and cringe.

I think the jumpscare image paired with a halfway decent story approach still has potential, though historically the image seems to do all the heavy lifting, especially when it predates the story. There's a lot that can be done with somewhat plausible cryptids and folktale-type horror short stories, but I think the "ghosts in the machine" with ARGs milking every last drop of attention out of the audience are pretty cooked for now.

I do write horror stories myself, and I am writing one right now, but I don't creepypastas will ever come back. I mean there is the SCP Foundation, which is still going on. And of course my story is fictional and not like a creepypasta where you are meant to believe it's real. People are not as naive to believe this stuff. Can't say the same with Boomers or others who believe that Lizards rule this planet or the Earth is Flat.

I agree that most people probably won't believe that creepypastas are real, but their is one demographic that will and is on the internet now more than ever, children. You have to remember just because we were dumb little kids when creepypastas were at their peak doesn't mean that the adult internet users believed them the way we did. Honestly all I want at this point is some horror that doesn't get turned into kids slop.

Could not agree more. A reason why I hated Five Nights at Freddy's. I used to like that game until I eventually started hating the series. I had disliked horror for a while until I got into Stephen King's works like the Shining, although the movie adaptation as well as Lovecraft's works.

It's even worse now that fnaf is actively appealing to kids by making the glamrocks as unthreatening as humanly possible. I still like early fnaf for nostalgia reasons but I wish they would at least pretend to not be toddler horror.

me who begun to groan at the horror genre as a whole after trying to find survival games on itch io and 99% of the entries were survival horror... just makes me not want to bother with the genre at all without somebody else's recommendation.