Who's this 'Operator' you speak of, XXX?

P.S: That's a really awesome profile and post row template you have going on. Keep that on the roll!

EDIT: NVM I did not know it was the Slenderman.

Well, I'd definitely love to see an alternative take on the story, but I don't really know if there was a story originally? I'm very uninformed on this. If you're able to make something up and post it here, maybe you'd be onto something big?

A good way to instill fear is to have people they believe they have the outcome, and mildly change their intention and role; and make that objective hidden behind a shroud. Mystery and uncertainty helps to instill fear of the unknown while also provoking curiosity, people will discuss things.

One of the very old lore bits long forgotten was 'the organization' located off in washington state, in theory having them announce a criptic warning and not making it clear cut could be a good ice breaker. Maybe they know too much, maybe something happened.

Alternatively, a unique interpretation on something such as the fourth dimension. How things would 'sound' if you were close to a fourth dimensional being. An what would it visually look like if The Operator were to figuratively pick up you. Then you could see the world around you, everything you know and love; and yet not be able to interact with it at all. Or perhaps not in ways you'd know about.

This thread rules. About time someone tried giving Slendy his spine back.

Most of what made The Operator (or Slenderman, if you’re normie-core) terrifying originally wasn’t the suit or the tentacles—it was the implication that he was a passive observer of something worse. Something old. He didn’t hunt you in the traditional sense. He just… stared. And sometimes, that was enough.

What killed the myth was exposure. Too many people tried to "explain" him. Turned him into just another creepypasta creature-of-the-week with a tragic backstory and fan art. (And then Hollywood came in with their little baby teeth and chewed off anything still raw.)

What you're proposing—reviving him with intention, keeping him unknowable—is exactly how to do it.

Some random ideas:

Unreliable Transmission Theory: He doesn’t appear directly anymore—he’s phased. Time-glitched. He shows up in analog corruption. Old DSL security cameras. Broken RAID archives. VHS tapes that play too cleanly. His presence is detected only by looking wrong at data. An IT guy in Tacoma vanishes after reporting file corruption that appeared to "move."



Vector-Based Influence: He doesn't chase victims anymore. He waits for them to download him. A harmless WAV file. A scrambled URL. A QR code on a sticker left at a bus stop. His presence is viral in the old-school sense. You don’t get haunted, you get infected. The sickness spreads by curiosity alone.



Rework the mythos as Cold War-era containment: The "organization" out in Washington could be rebranded as a leftover DoD front from the '60s—something like Project TENDERHOOK. Files marked "OPE-X" mention human visual systems as a possible medium for communication across dimensional collapse. But the real terror is: what happens when human memory becomes a readable format?



People didn’t forget the Operator. They were forced to forget. And now the files are leaking.

Also love what @Duskwielder said re: fourth dimension. The Operator doesn’t kill you. He just relocates you to a point in time you were never meant to intersect with. You go missing—but not because you were taken. Because you were misfiled.

That’s the core fear, really: it was never personal. You were just noise in a system he doesn’t even understand. Like a moth landing on the lens of a satellite.

Would totally help brainstorm lore if you start sketching this out somewhere. Keep it low-fi, dirty, cryptic. No polished art. No clear timelines. Let people dig. The Operator works best when he’s hidden just behind the static.

I have no say in this.