Example of how to format and approach your "Create a Monster" essay

Below is an essay that, while not perfect, does a good job of focusing on the prompt. 

Final Essay: The Wi-Fi People

            Over the last few centuries, humans have created monsters that reflect the culture around them. Common monsters like vampires and zombies are are always changing with the times to reveal new fears, such as a fear of contamination due to viruses. In the 21^st century, our culture has changed drastically when compared to past centuries. Technology has advanced to the point of taking over people's lives, especially since many people have access to the internet and all its resources at their very fingertips. The Wi-Fi People are monsters that are found inside a Wi-Fi network and attack people who are constantly on the internet wasting time. The Wi-Fi People know these people have a desire to do absolutely nothing but be online and they want to help people fulfill their desires.

            The Wi-Fi People represent the desire to do absolutely nothing. People are constantly worrying about life and all the responsibilities they have, yet most of these people choose to ignore these responsibilities and simply waste their time online. This is especially common with teenagers in high school and college who procrastinate by being on social media instead of studying. The cultural fears that the Wi-Fi People represent is the fear of being isolated and both desiring and lacking a sense of community on the internet. Technology has developed new ways for people to communicate with each other, no longer requiring people to actually meet in person to socialize.

            The internet has become such a huge part of our lives that it has become somewhat of a crisis; the crisis being that we spend more time on social media than actually interacting with people face to face. And as Jeffery Jerome Cohen states in his Monster Thesis 3, “the monster notoriously appears in times of crisis as a kind of third term that problematizes the clash of extremes”; the Wi-Fi People first appeared when people began getting addicted to the internet. Once a person connects to the free Wi-Fi they offer, that is when the person’s faith is sealed. The person will begin to notice a man and woman dressed in black formal suits popping up in ads. At first the person will dismiss them, but the person will begin to notice these people more and more while spending time online. Once the person begins to notice the Wi-Fi People, the monsters quickly vanish and the person can no longer find them, which makes the person believe that he or she was simply imagining the Wi-Fi People. The Wi-Fi People always seem to escape before a person can fully process that they are even on their screen, because “the monster itself always turns immaterial and vanishes, to reappear somewhere else, often slightly in a new form” (Cohen). The thing that changes about the Wi-Fi People are their eyes. Each time a person sees them, their eyes look like the spinning pinwheel on computers that shows up when a computer is frozen. 

            These monsters are similar to Dracula in that they want to create more of their kind. “The monster attracts” people with free Wi-Fi and that is when the victim becomes obsessed with the internet (Cohen). The Wi-fi People and vampires have a similar appearance in that they both have the physical appearance humans. Once a person gets connected to the free Wi-Fi, he or she begins to lose interest in the real world without even noticing it; all they notice is the weird people in the ad with the black suits. The Wi-Fi People’s goal is to turn people into emotionless people that live in the Wi-Fi and lure even more people to become like them. They are not like the other monsters we have studied in that the Wi-Fi People are emotionless and do not speak. The other monsters studied: vampires, Frankenstein’s monster, and zombies, all seemed to be overly emotional and want to figure out their purpose in life. The Wi-Fi People simply want to make more of their kind and take over the world. They do not speak to each other; once turned, all one wants to do is make more of their kind. The Wi-Fi People stay quiet because in our current culture, people posts and tweet about their day and it is public so everyone is able to see what a certain person is doing or where they are. The Wi-Fi People are the opposite of this and only smile; their silence is part of what makes them scarier to people. They have the physical appearance of a human being, only with red bloodshot eyes which represent the hours spent online.

            The inspiration for the Wi-Fi People first came from a Doctor Who episode, “The Bells of Saint John”. This episode provided the idea that the Wi-Fi was being controlled and people’s soul got trapped online. The idea seemed fascinating, but there was a physical monster missing. The Wi-Fi People’s appearance is based of The Gentlemen, a monster from an episode in the television serious “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. The female version of the Wi-Fi People was inspired by an old Japanese urban legend, “The Slit-mouthed Woman”. These monsters inspired the creation of the Wi-Fi People because of their creepy smiles that can bring shivers up anyone’s spine.

            The fact that the Wi-Fi People live inside the Wi-Fi brings terror to people. It is unknown territory to us, as we cannot live inside the machine ourselves. As Cohen state, “the monster always exists at the margins of the world- it cannot be incorporated into our epistemological systems.”  Even if one knew about this monster, it would mean staying away from any form of Wi-Fi or internet in order to stay away from the monster, which no one can easily do in our current society. Cohen states in Monster Thesis 5 that in order to avoid being the monster, one would have to avoid the monster’s “official geography”. This seems almost impossible since the internet has become such a huge part of everyday life. In order to avoid coming across the Wi-Fi People and becoming one of them, a person who would normally be online on a daily basis would have to stop being online all together.

            Our internet dependent culture has created this monster, or as Cohen stated in his Monster Thesis 6, our culture has created this child. Cohen mentions in Monster Thesis 5 that “cultures or groups create monsters in order to scare other people into behaving in ways that serve the groups’ goals”, meaning that the Wi-Fi People were created to scare people away from being on the internet too much. Mothers will tell people the story of the Wi-Fi People to scare their children from wasting time on the internet. Monsters are first created from a specific crisis that is occurring and gains more physical traits and qualities from the culture at the time of the crisis. As the culture changes over time, so will the monster.