In 2016, you might remember an era that may have been “freaky” to most people: the “Killer” Clowns that would apparently be everywhere. However, I am one of the outliers who thinks that era was kind of fun.
Fueled by a mix of hysteria, social media posts and paranoia, this phenomenon took Aug. 2016 by storm, sparking a wide array of clown sightings around the globe.
The coverage in the media led to a fear-mongering scenario, labeling the clowns as “killers,” even though there haven’t been many confirmed fatalities from them. I feel like the majority of these cases are from people just dressing as clowns and fooling around.
The hysteria that was generated from this was phenomenal. All over social media, videos surfaced that showed what appeared to be clowns hiding in various places, charging at “victims,” breaking into houses and more.
I still remember watching those videos and becoming paranoid that I would find a clown hiding under my mom’s car, but alas, I have not seen one single “killer” clown in my entire life.
In hindsight, I actually found this era to be quite fun. While I may sound like a sociopath when I say that, the era provided some quality entertainment to my young brain.
Despite that, I think it was an important lesson in media literacy and not believing everything you hear in the news. The inclusion of wide-spread social media usage most likely contributed greatly to the hysteria that spread throughout the world.
Very few of these cases actually involved physical assault and mostly consisted of people being chased down a road in the dark. This just furthers my point that it was just a bunch of people fooling around because of FOMO.
Another contributing factor to the panic could be from introverted individuals who experienced very “social” behavior from these clown sightings.
In 2016, the world was also very discombobulated. Tensions were seemingly rising between the U.S. and Russia and North Korea.
North Korea started conducting its missile and nuclear testing and Russia started supposedly interfering with the U.S. election, so the public was very much already becoming alert and worried.
However, I think if the clowns came back either this year or next, I would not be opposed to it. The world is now in a better place with media literacy, (although for Gen Alpha, not so much), and I feel like most people now would just not care enough about the clowns resurfacing.
People who are a part of the Generation Z community have a tendency to do very stupid and silly things. For this reason, I can see current Gen Z’ers inviting the clowns to a rave or a Just Dance party, simply because we wouldn’t be as worried about it as much as we are about a certain presidential election, which personally I would trust a killer clown in office more than I trust Donald Trump.
Perhaps the greatest thing that the clowns brought with their surfacing was a sense of comfort, if one can call it that. They provided laughs, frights (especially around Halloween which is meant to be scary) and best of all, a sense of worry that you can only get from mass hysteria.
Free my boy Clown.