Here’s a comment posted to my Facebook page by a friend on September 29, in response to a column that included a bit about a “creepy clown” of the sort causing low-grade hysteria around the Southeast being spotted in Largo:
“I wonder how long before you write the post about someone popping one of these clowns in the dome with a 9MM.”
Now here’s a headline from early Tuesday morning:
“Fort Wayne Man Dressed As Clown Shot In Head; Condition Critical”
Both of these are jokes, after a fashion; my friend was echoing the morbidly funny conversations going on everywhere since the clown sightings began a few weeks ago, and the headline was quickly reported to be a hoax by the debunkers at Snopes.com and others. But less than two days later, a 12-year-old was arrested for online threats to shoot up New Port Richey’s Seven Springs Middle School, and another investigation was initiated into a separate threat against a Hillsborough school.
What the fuck is going on?
Maybe some people are a little overstimulated by Halloween’s approach this year, and the break from reality it promises. Maybe some people have had enough of reality just now, what with the overwhelming round-the-clock election-year asshattery and the do-nothing Congress and the ongoing arguments over whose lives matter and the way the hottest summer on record hasn’t gotten the hint that maybe it’s couch-crashed in our lives well past its welcome and what have you. Maybe some people are looking for something, anything that might lend a little control, a little power, a little entertainment to their seemingly meaningless lives.
And maybe some of those some people just happen to be idiots, with too much time to spend on the internet and too little experience thinking about what might happen after they indulge whatever impulse momentarily monopolizes their attention.
Look, I haven’t exactly lived my life like it’s a chess match, visualizing actions and possible reactions three moves down the line. In fact, if I’m the grand master of anything, it’s probably doing or saying something I think might be entertaining without considering potential consequences like hurt feelings or bodily injury or torturously long and serious audiences with unamused authority figures of all stripes.
But even I know scaring strangers who haven’t paid or volunteered for the experience is a bad idea — in part because strangers might be even more cavalier about indulging their own possibly dangerous impulses than I am about mine.
And some people have a serious, serious aversion to clowns. Like, a run-screaming-for-the-gasoline-and-try-to-kill-it-with-fire aversion.
So, to recap:
Halloween: fun.
Scaring people who like to be scared: all in good fun.
Seeing a few stories online about people dressing up like clowns and menacing folks and thinking that’s just what a boring Friday night needs, then deciding to up the ante with a few shooting-spree threats on social media: so far beyond fucking stupid it makes “let’s recreate a stunt from Jackass” seem like a Platonic insight.
Still, though, don’t shoot the clowns.
Who knows what the reaction to that might be?
This article appears in Oct 6-13, 2016.