Reading between the lines, I think you might hate horror....

People who insist stuff is not scary, just means they have no imagination and are boring as fuck....

I think its largely to do with it being a relatively cheap way to make something and therefore low barrier of entry. This means there is an awful lot of separating the wheat from the chaff. Quite a lot is weird distorted faces and FNAF or some other existing IP, rinse and repeat.

What have you watched so far? I could suggest Vita Carnis, Midwest Angelica, Local 58 and Gemini Home Entertainment.

The other thing you could do ia dive into Nightmind's index:
www.nightmind.info

Yeah, thats pretty cool, I have only watched the main documentary part so far and the cooking crawl, and how to looking after a trimming. I have some more watching to do. I've not watched Arcadia. Will add it to my list

Watched some of Vita Carnis recently. Really well put together, I especially like that some Carnis are docile and others are horrific.

I must have been sleeping but only have vague recollections of the case at the time. Grim reading.... not finished yet, but reporter mentions 4 previous children removed from their care. Seems like a motive to hide the birth of another child... no matter how, in practice, its plain stupid.

Definitely had the ARG vibe to it. I think the creator must have dropped some hints along the way. I've "played" a few ARGs before and its great when you get on a Discord and you're all trying to work out the next puzzle but also theories of what the narrative is etc. Ah fun times.

I played a short indie game recently in which i thought it was a short creepy game. But turns out there was a whole separate part of the game to explore with ARG elements. I followed a guide. No idea how anyone actually worked it out in the first place.

I just remembered that the dev was Bullfrog based in Guildford, must be why the British accents and Midland Sofas. Also, Syndicate by same developer was my go to game in the 90s...

Will give it a go... cheers

I just started to listen to this and noticed you mentioned House of Leaves. I've not read it myself, but my brother independently mentioned it to me recently. That weird thing where you hear about it in two separate contexts but have never heard about it any other time

I enjoyed this a lot. I have to rewatch and I'm also aware that there are more parts that I've not seen yet.

Just as an aside, and you'll probably be aware of this, but Nightmind's index is awesome:

www.nightmind.info