By Abby Gray ’18
A honky red nose, creepy face paint sloppily stroked on, a hideous jumpsuit ordered from Amazon and a curly wig picked up from Halloween Express. These are the essentials of becoming an idiotic teenage boy dressed up like a clown in order to cause a frenzy on the internet and scare the simple minded people behind social media handles. I follow a Twitter account solely dedicated to staged videos of people driving down backroads only to “unexpectedly” run into a clown and scream violently into their iPhone cameras as they drive away.
Although it seems like an epidemic of clown sightings have flooded our interweb obsessed country, the problem, is not actually a dangerous problem. The “problem” is either that some people would go to extreme lengths, like wearing a jumper that looks like a Twister mat to go viral on social media, or life is just really that boring for some people that they have to dress up like a 6-year-old on Halloween and jump out of the woods scaring innocent civilians in order to have enjoyment in their day.
I would like to offer a word of advice. In order to solve this idiocy issue, we need to take the attention and enjoyment out of being any type of clown that doesn’t make animal shaped balloons and put smiles on the faces of about half of the population (the other half is terrified of the clowns that come to toddler birthday parties).
If you see some annoying person dressed up as a clown hiding in the woods near your house, avoid the situation all together and don’t go near it. If it starts chasing you, punch it so hard in the inflatable squeaky nose that it decides clowning around really isn’t worth the little joy and attention it brings. And if you happen to be one of those weird people deciding to take up creepy clowning, all I can say to you is this: please, find a new hobby that guys in Upper Arlington enjoy, like fishing, lacrosse or going on Vineyard Vines shopping sprees.