Preying on the beloved experiences of your past and the inherent oddity and vulnerability (both to malevolent users and glitches) of the digital worlds you made them in, Digital Horror is a subgenre of horror that derives its scare factor from disturbing the memories of the viewer. It primarily takes the form of online video series, Video Games, urban legends passed through social media and Fora, and Websites.
Evolving from the popularity of Analog Horror, the genre turns its attention away from the analog media of the '80s and early '90s and instead towards the Internet age, drawing from the late '90s to early 2010s. The genre typically involves the use of scenarios inside video games, websites, and other things the average millennial or Gen Z likely now considers integral parts of their childhood experience. The genre also borrows many elements from Creepypasta and Alternate Reality Games.
Common elements include popular games of the era such as Minecraft and Roblox, Adobe Flash games, Web Animation in rudimentary tools, websites built by amateurs, videos edited in Windows Movie Maker that you'd see uploaded on YouTube back in the day, and the recurring theme of taking something familiar to the viewer and making it not quite right. Other common aspects include games that mess with the user's device in ways they shouldn't be able to, technology that's a bit too sentient, and stumbling into what appears to be a normal video or website only for it to very much not be. The Deep Web is frequently involved.
Even when not relying on your sense of nostalgia, Digital Horror works lull you into a false sense of security by presenting themselves as being limited to the confines of the digital world — only to pull the rug out from under you, either by messing with the in-universe protagonist or in the case of games and other forms of interactive fiction, affecting things outside the bounds of the work itself.
And sometimes those horrors take on a much more... abominable form.
Some works in the genre overlap with analog horror, particularly works set in the gray area that is the mid to late 1990s, often focusing on video games that are very much part of the digital era but with an analog "found footage" twist.
Compare Sci-Fi Horror. Also compare and contrast New Technology Is Evil and New Media Are Evil. Often overlaps with Psychological Horror, Mundane Horror, and Surreal Horror.
And no, Digital Horror is not about the horrors of having one's fingers cut off.
- Addressing the Player: In-universe, game characters often refer directly to the person playing the game.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Artificial intelligence gone rogue is a common element of the genre.
- Brain Uploading: A person's consciousness is uploaded to a piece of technology.
- Anachronism Stew: Works set in the 2000s and 2010s sometimes have Analog Horror elements that don't fit with the era, such as Deliberate VHS Quality.
- Computer Virus: Sometimes the horror originates from malware, whether sentient or not.
- Contagious A.I.: Digital entities spreading themselves to other devices.
- Copy Protection: Fake anti-piracy measures are common in these works. This is almost always accompanied by the message that Digital Piracy Is Evil.
- Corrupted Data: Sometimes used as either a cause of or a symptom of whatever is affecting the game/website/etc.
- Darker and Edgier: Most works based on existing media fulfill this trope by making innocuous parts of the media into something terrifying.
- Decade-Themed Filter: Many videos are uploaded in a low resolution that mimics the videos you'd see uploaded during the early Digital Age.
- Deletion as Punishment: Deletion of save data or even personal data is often used as a form of Video Game Cruelty Punishment or to punish cheaters and pirates.
- Digital Abomination: Like an eldritch abomination in your computer!
- Disguised Horror Story: Many of these works aim to lure the viewer into what seems like a normal Let's Play video, Machinima or Video Game that looks like it was made by and/or for children.
- Everything Is Online: Any digital device can be hacked via the internet.
- Fictional Video Game: While a lot of Digital Horror works are based on actual games, some are based on fictional ones.
- Flawed Prototype: A frequent setup for Digital Horror works is a beta or prototype gone wrong.
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: When the digital horrors contained in these works threaten to leave the digital world and harm you in reality, too.
- Game-Breaking Bug: Often utilized in-universe as a point of horror, by having familiar games break down in ways the viewer isn't used to.
- Genre Throwback: Digital Horror works frequently try to invoke now-largely outdated elements of online media from the 2000s and 2010s such as games that use the now obsolete Adobe Flash, unregistered Hypercam watermarks, and videos edited in Windows Movie Maker.
- Glitch Entity: Living glitches in games and other digital media are common antagonists in the genre.
- Haunted Technology: A very popular theme, likely originating from Creepypasta and gaming urban legends of the early 2010s such as Herobrine. Games and websites being haunted by some sort of spirit or entity, often otherworldly in nature, is explored heavily in the genre.
- Interface Screw: Messing with the user interface.
- It Won't Turn Off: A device refuses to power off, even when the power source is removed.
- Let's Play: Many works in the genre try to emulate a real Let's Play series, whether for a real game or a Fictional Video Game.
- Living Program: Sentient computer programs.
- Metafiction
- Minus World: Areas that appear to be made entirely from glitches are common, however are often implied that perhaps they were made intentionally by some unseen force.
- Mood Whiplash: Playing on the nostalgia of the viewer by reminding them of things they enjoyed in their childhood, before plunging them into a corrupted version of those same memories that leaves them feeling uneasy.
- The Most Dangerous Video Game: Games that somehow affect their players in reality, often with paranormal explanations.
- murder.com: Death broadcast to the internet.
- Ominous Visual Glitch: Whether in a game, in a video or even in an animation, visual and auditory glitches are heavily utilized by the genre.
- Paradiegetic Gameplay: Games interacting with the hardware or other software and files of your device is a common trait in the genre both in-universe and in actual game examples.
- Programming Game: To progress, or to save the characters (or yourself)... You must code!
- Retraux: The entire genre focuses on emulating the beginnings of the Internet Age, typically anywhere from the late 90s with gaudy GeoCities sites and message boards, to the late 2000s and early 2010s with videos made in rudimentary software such as MS Paint and Windows Movie Maker and presented with an amateurish style.
- Stylistic Suck: Many pieces of media in the genre aim to mimic the naïve style of videos and other creations made by kids and teenagers with limited tools in the early 2010s.
- Subliminal Seduction: Subliminal messages hidden in a work.
- Supernatural Phone: Smartphones with otherworldly capabilities.
- Video Game Cruelty Punishment: A frequent theme involves the morality of the player harming digital characters.
- Virtual-Reality Warper: Antagonists in Digital Horror media often have the capability to manipulate the digital world they reside in in ways that are not intended by the programmers, and that the protagonist cannot.
Digital Horror works:
- Andy's Apple Farm
- Avril’s Appetite
- Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning
- Bubbaruka!
- Buddy (2020)
- Citri Plays Noirwood
- DERE.EXE
- Don't Chat with Strangers
- Dreamy Rainbow
- The Hex
- Harvest Festival 64
- Hypnospace Outlaw
- Imscared
- Inscryption
- KinitoPET
- Kitty Kart 64
- Luna Game
- Mr. TomatoS
- My House
- My Place
- NEEDY STREAMER OVERLOAD
- No Players Online
- Parasocial
- Pony Island
- Randy Learns Science
- Sad Satan
- Scrutinized
- Shipwrecked 64
- SIMULACRA
- Super Surprise Party
- Welcome to the Game
- Fancy Island
- Many SCP Foundation stories fall into this genre, a good number of which can be found in the tags electronic
, online, and game.
- The Sun Vanished
- The Taste of Static
- Ted's Caving Page
- AI Builds
- alantutorial
- BadwaterVideos2009
- Ben Drowned
- brandon works
- Classic GM Videos
- Diminish
- gunslingerpro2009
- Household Felony
- i am sophie
- Internet Story
- Mario Party DS Anti Piracy
- Meets Sonic? Saga
- Mystifying Oracle
- Petscop
- PlasticApple2011
- Rapid Eyes
- Sheriff Domestic
- Speedduo64
- Super Mario 64 Beta Archive
- Super Mario 64: CLASSIFIED
- Teeny Toys Exploration
- Valle Verde
Examples in non-Digital Horror works:
Live-Action TV- Are You Afraid of the Dark?: In episode The Tale of the Renegade Virus, a teenager enters a VR simulation as part of an experiment, and a sapient computer virus begins to hound him through the simulation, intending to download himself into the boy's brain.
Web Videos
- Don't Hug Me I'm Scared loosely plays with this in Episode 4, on top of its normal Disguised Horror Story flavor as an educational children's show.
