I've always loved horror media. I grew up on creepypasta, internet horror, hoaxes, ARG's and all of that cool stuff. A lot of this actually originated with minecraft myths and creepypastas like herobrine, or youtubers like dark corners or O1G. I also really LOVE analog and digital horror because of a lot of those series giving me genuine scares during the inception of those genres. Unfortunately, most internet horror now genuinely kind of sucks.
I've seen a lot of horror series now get a lot of recognition for doing basically nothing but following the trends of the year. Why has this happened? Well its nothing I can say for certain, all I have are my personal thoughts and guesses on why stuff is happening. But my current guess is that it has something to do with horror creators doing nothing but following trends. You could probably go back a few years in time, and see exactly what I mean. Remembering the growth of analog horror, there were some really cool series' that I used to watch like local 58, Gemini Home entertainment, Marble Hornets (probably more digital but whatever), etc. This changed during the release of the Mandela catalouge which, don't get me wrong was a great series, set a horrible precident for the Uncanny valley trend.
The years that followed the Mandela Catalouge saw a whole LOT of new series' emerging out of its success and trying to replicate that success in a similar manner. It reached a point where the uncanny valley became synonymous with analog horror. At a certain point it just became old and even made people turn AWAY from the medium of analog horror altogether. I shouldn't need to explain why this is a problem, the fact that analog horror is seen as annoying by a large percentage of the human population is not at all a good thing, and in my opinion, is directly as a result of people trying to mimic the success of the Mandela Catalog.
In addition to this, people aren't innovaitng with their horror projects, a lot of it just follows the same analog horror tropes as existing series. The slideshow with the stick figure people, the text to speech voice. People followed these trends because they were easy to replicate and were done with the express thought of "If the Mandela Catalog did this and went viral, maybe mine will to!" Decisions like this do NOTHING but make people get used to the same tropes over and over again, reaching a point where the exact series they are mimicking become generic. This is something I have PERSONALLY experienced, I used to watch lots and lots of analog horror series up until I went back to rewatch local 58 and gemini before saying "this is kind of generic." This really surprised me because I remember thinking these series were so well done at the time period. They've effectively forced into being products of their time by the very fans that wanted to replicate the success that they had.
My Request to Horror Creators
Taking all of my thoughts into consideration. If there's any horror writers reading this, PLEASE for the love of god try to innovate with your horror projects. Copying successful horror series probably COULD get you some success if you follow the trend at the beginning, but eventually its just going to get old, and your series will be forgotten or treated as a product of its time. If you want your series to be remembered for a really long time, innovate with your project and do something entirely unique. The process of coming up with something entirely original and being acknowledged for it will make you feel amazing and in doing so, you contribute to keeping a media genre alive.