Throughout the past decade, a multimodal type of internet storytelling has developed that extends upon the early Web 2.0 viral narrative practices of chain emails as well as pre-digital folkloric storytelling traditions such as the ghost story and urban legend. This popular mode of digital storytelling, known broadly as ‘Creepypasta’, is produced and consumed according to folkloric practices that in turn shape its form and aesthetics. The author suggests that a precise genre has emerged out of the originally wide-ranging terrain of Creepypasta, a generic mode constituted of specific thematic preoccupations and aesthetics that she refers to as ‘the digital gothic’. Through analysis of the foundational story ‘Candle Cove’, the article outlines the digital gothic’s anxious preoccupation with dead and residual media, and with the interface between technological and personal change. She demonstrates how ‘Candle Cove’ deconstructs nostalgia in its tense negotiation of the relationship between analogue and digital cultures. The author’s analysis thus illuminates how vernacular online genres such as the digital gothic productively work through the aesthetic and conceptual tensions underpinning technological change in the networked digital era.

中文翻译：

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Creepypasta、“Candle Cove”和数字哥特式

在过去的十年中，一种多模式的互联网讲故事已经发展起来，它扩展了早期的 Web 2.0 连锁电子邮件病毒式叙事实践以及前数字民俗讲故事传统，如鬼故事和都市传说。这种流行的数字叙事模式，被广泛称为“Creepypasta”，是根据民俗习俗生产和消费的，而民俗习俗反过来又塑造了其形式和美学。作者认为，在 Creepypasta 原本广泛的领域中已经出现了一种精确的流派，这是一种由特定的主题关注和美学构成的通用模式，她称之为“数字哥特式”。通过对基础故事“蜡烛湾”的分析，文章概述了数字哥特式对死亡和残留媒体的焦虑关注，以及技术和个人变化之间的接口。她展示了“蜡烛湾”如何在模拟和数字文化之间关系的紧张谈判中解构怀旧。因此，作者的分析阐明了诸如数字哥特式之类的白话在线流派如何通过支撑网络数字时代技术变革的美学和概念张力而富有成效地发挥作用。