A trope in creepypasta that is way, way too heavily used is the Absence of Facial Features. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheBlank
It'd be interesting to study the usage of this trope over time. Obviously it spiked as boring redditors began piggybacking off of slenderman.
But, *why* does facelessness seem to strike a chord in these communities? Why does facelessness scare them?
Before around 2014, a big aspect of creepypasta was exaggeratedly large mouths. Tons upon tons of toothy mouths stretching uninterestingly from ear to boring ear.
Around 2015 or so, those mouths began to be accompanied by lack of eyes. Faces blank from the nose up. Over time, the noses vanished too. By 2016, most monsters had nothing but mouths for faces.
Why facelessness, and not, say, dead matte eyes, dried and scratched corneas in an otherwise normal face
There's probably a reason the eyes were the first to vanish in this rush to cookie-cutter a generation of trendy faceless monsters
Recently, even the mouths have disappeared. Every other monster wants to fit in with the fad for facelessness. Why *this* trend, and not, say, a trend toward monsters whose teeth are writhing wormy tendrils?