Bizarre news out of Wisconsin today, as two 12-year-old girls stabbed a classmate as a result of their obsession with a popular Internet meme.
"Slender Man" is character created by Eric Knudsen that first appeared on the comedy website Something Awful in 2009.
Slender Man Stabbing Report
The character was meant to be a sort of Blair Witch-style prank on the Internet, and fans were asked to manipulate photographs, accompany them with made-up backstories and post them on websites as though they were real.
Sadly, the unnamed pre-teens in Waukesha, Wisconsin didn't understand that the Slender Man story was intended to be a sort of crowd-sourced work of fiction.
When they were questioned by police after stabbing their friend 19 times, the girls reportedly stated that they hoped to commit a murder in hopes of becoming "proxies" or acolytes of Slender Man.
The girls are now being held in a juvenile detention center and will reportedly be charged as adults.
The attorney for one of the girls has stated that his client is mentally ill, and unable to distinguish fantasy from reality.
Despite being left in the woods to die, the victim of the stabbing is expected to recover.
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