In some ways, Marble Hornets can be considered the granddaddy of Youtube ARGs/slenderseries. If you haven't seen it or heard of it, here's an excerpt from the introductory video:

It follows Jay and his attempts to go through the recovered footage from Alex, and eventually unravel the mystery he's gotten himself into.

Slenderman's original creator, Victor Surge, forbade people from making their own media about him at the time and so the creature in the videos is named the Operator, but, yeah, he's obviously Slenderman. MH founded basically 80% of the most pervasive "lore" surrounding it and how it functions. Proxies, in particular, went on to become VERY popular OC fodder. For good reason! Who doesn't love a spooky masked character under the influence of an unknowable, possibly malevolent creature?

It also set the groundwork for a lot of slenderseries/youtube ARG that came after. A main storyline interspersed with strange, surreal videos to set a sort of tone or present a puzzle/actual ARG elements.

The ARG part of this is somewhat lost to time since most ARGs are a bit of a "you had to be there" situation... but to me this was a pretty formative piece of media. "The Hooded Man" is, of course, my favorite character.

Would I recommend people who haven't seen it watch it, though? My gut says yes, but it's a long commitment and, to be honest, a lot of the acting and pacing is less than stellar. Definitely easier to watch than EverymanHYBRID. I still don't know what the heck went on there.

If you've watched it, who's your favorite character? Would you recommend the series?