Gothic Digital Technologies
Gothic media has flourished in the digital world. The internet itself is a deeply Gothic environment, characterised by persistent anxieties of infection, deception, exploitation and surveillance. This chapter explores some of the ways in which digital Gothic media engages with the Gothic potentials of digital technology itself. Opening with a discussion of the Japanese film Kairo (2001), an early and influential example of a narrative which uses the internet itself as a locus of Gothic horror, I shall proceed to consider examples of Gothic digital media including screamers, creepypasta, Slenderman vlogs, Gothic webcomics such as the works of Emily Carroll (2010–16), horror memes such as Zalgo, and social media-based fiction such as the work of _9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES9 (2016), all of which draw upon anxieties regarding corruption and contagion in order to exploit the potential of online technologies to unnerve their users and unsettle their sense of reality.