Digital Cultures of Horror in Mónica Ojeda’s Fiction

Abstract

The Internet is a world in which all kinds of people with different interests, motivations, and worldviews flock and have interactions with each other. These interactions have given rise to diverse digital cultures, some of which are part of the so-called Digital Cultures of horror. As an inhabitant of the contemporary world, Mónica Ojeda is aware of these cultures’ dark themes and environments and how they shape the world, so she has used them to create her fiction and depict reality. Mónica Ojeda describes the horrors of the Internet and digital cultures in her novels Nefando, where she touches on the subject of the Dark Web and its perverse and violent content through a creepy videogame; and Mandíbula, where she unveils how the digital folklore stories of horror called creepypasta induce fear and affect the lives of a group of teenagers. With this in mind, this paper aims to expose how Mónica Ojeda’s fiction represents the crossroads between horror and technology and the digital cultures that exist on the Internet.