When I first stumbled upon creepypasta I was amazed, and gorged myself on a banquet of amazing, terrifying stories. Smiledog, Candle Cove, The Russian Sleep Experiment... you name it. I ate up the suggested reading list and had many a sleepless night with the hallway brightly lit.
But... the more I got into the site and started reading other stories, the increasingly disappointed I got. I refuse to believe I have been desensitized- the other stories all seemed terrible. Granted, there were a few excellent stories I came across here and there, but of the 2,500 pages on this wiki I found one in thirty appealing.
Now, I'm not here to judge the userbase of this website or tell people what to do or write, but I earnestly think this site could be a whole helluva lot better than it is. I mean, do we really need fifteen poke'mon pastas alongside our small battalion of increasingly horrible minecraft pastas? Was 'Happy Appy' not good enough without 'Happy Appy Episode Fragments'? Are pastas a paragraph long worth reading?
My point is, I feel like this site has a lot of wasted potential, and this is coming from somebody who genuinely enjoys being riveted in fear as I walk down a foggy country road and wonder about the existence of Slenderman. (Believe it or not, one of the most popular past-times among some of my companions is traversing dark, wooded roads late at night.)
Perhaps my appeal is worthless- after all, on a site like a wiki it’s a melting pot, right? Maybe. But can’t we do better? Can’t we segregate the quality stuff from the crap? Can’t we be rid of the pastas that clearly have no value (despite having maybe had effort put into them.)
I’m a purist. I think this site could rock the world. But only if we let it.