I've noticed that this year a lot of people (including myself) are complaining about the ludicrously small size of the candies most brands are producing for Halloween. Apparently some companies are reducing the size to make it harder to put razor blades or some other urban myth thing inside the candies from what I understand.

Nice.

This neighbor was getting really absurd, she said she buys Halloween candy weeks in advance, because people tamper with the candy IN THE STORE! Crazy paranoids.

Lost a couple of GWAR friends because of this bulllshit. Can't go to the show tonight because their family is legit freaking out about the clown purge.

Good Lord, Homie, get some friends who are legal adults and can go outside without a dystopian village vote from the Council of Fucking Retards.

They are. But most of them are Millenials, and Millenials live with their parents until they're 35.

Oh. I apologize.

I have no idea what to tell you in that situation, and wish you luck finding humans who have wills of their own.

:(

Well, two of them - brother and sister - had to stay home because of the clown purge. Another couldn't make it because he had work the next morning, one couldn't make it due to being on parole, one is a Witness and isn't allowed out on Halloween period, and the last, most important one, was feeling depressed, and before I could get her outside, a bunch of teenagers she doesn't seem to like invited themselves over to her house for a night of pot-mooching, whiskey-stealing, and hetero-sex-having.

Total fucking cock-up. Thanks, clowns.

That sucks Homer, I can't believe a stupid online legend ruined so many Halloweens.

Come to think of it, the clowns ruined Mischief Night, too. Most Important wanted to go out on Mischief Night, but her roommate (of all people) was paranoid about the clowns, and told her she couldn't leave the house.

Hell is wrong with people these days? I thought it was a pretty obvious joke the first time I heard about it, but no, lots of people are taking it seriously.

It wasn't clowns who ruined it, it was internet hysteria.

Homie, I promise in the better world there are people who are fearless towards things that don't exist, and respect their personal autonomy over the screeching bleats of cowards.

You know, outside of America, obviously, but they are there!

In all honesty, it's not really new; moral panics and urban legends and witch crazes are fairly common across human history. If people could see Satanists hanging out in every park during the 1980s, why not see sentient clowns in the 2010s?

My biggest problem - besides the personal issue that killer clowns ruined what might have been the best night of my life - is that this clown purge thing, for me, finally ends the idea that there is a Progressive arc to human social development. We are not living in the best of all prior worlds. Science and technology is not liberating us from the darkness of the past. We are not becoming savvy, sophisticated global citizens. The average man may, in fact, be getting dumber, and at an exponential rate! No matter how much information is available to us, if people lack the basic capacity for skepticism and critical thinking (as modern schools and cultural institutions ensure), then of course this will continue to happen.

I agree Homer. It drives me crazy that with the wealth of knowledge on the internet, that people would rather seek out superstition instead. People google "clown purge" and then can't be bothered to google as to whether or not it's a hoax. Just go to your search and add "hoax" to the end of it.
In the information age, ignorance is a choice.

Any day now, Homie, someone will say to you "you're not a critical thinker, otherwise you'd see the clown purge is real."

You must resist the urge at that time to dress as a clown and kill them all.

Actually, that was my plan (minus the killing everyone). Was going to stash some clown costumes outside, sneak friends out back doors, we all go Juggalo style into the streets.

Unfortunately, by the time I realized that the fear of a non-existent clown threat was a real threat to my community, it was far too late to prepare.

I'd say the lesson here is to go Prepper style and get all the clown gear ready for NEXT year, but of course, with our luck, the internet will just think of something different, and stupider, to throw our way.

Well, fears of clown purges, or any kind of mass murder spree, preys on the basic herd instinct that the many will be called to die to protect the nucleus of worthy humans, so next year make it something good, like a virus.

Invisible clown purge virus.

Then offer a homeopathic inoculation of some sort. Sell it for half the farm at first, then jack the price up 6000% at the peak purge fear. Since people wont leave their house at the first sign of feef-terror, make it something homey, like duct tape and plastic wrap for the windows and doors.

Or just start a rumor that clowns are a secret government code for nuclear exchange with Russia. So long as you give up on having a sane life in a sane society, the state of the actual landscape can be fun and lucrative.