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Greetings all, and welcome to the first of many posts on this site. Since this blog’s aim is to discuss internet trends in terms of the level of social, mental and physical harm they can potentially cause, it seems fitting to cover arguably the most prominent trend this year: The ‘Creepy Clown Attacks’.\u00a0<\/em>Although it seems that this trend died out in November, I feel that it deserves a recap, just\u00a0because of how ridiculous it was.<\/p>\n The entire ordeal began in South Carolina during August, highlighted by a number of intensely worrying reports of people dressed as clowns luring children into forests according to the US’s Time Magazine<\/a>. What seems most shocking to me is people appear to be far less focused on these reports, despite the dark\u00a0and frightening actions they describe. Thankfully, luring children into the woods did not seem to become part of the main trend, and people became more focused on the clowns themselves, at which point the word spread, and in a flash, morons across both America and the UK sprung to their feet with the intention of using this new spread of ‘creepy clown sighting’ panic for their own thrills. I strongly question the morality of those who get kicks out of scaring strangers at 2AM and being associated with forest-dwelling child snatchers, but maybe I’m the weird one.<\/p>\n If you’re anything like me, when you hear a term\u00a0like ‘Creepy clown attack’, you are likely to feel concern for\u00a0the victim, the person who isn’t\u00a0<\/em>roaming the streets\u00a0dressed as a clown. However, throughout\u00a0September and October, a number of videos surfaced on Facebook and Twitter, showing the opposite of what you might expect. People were chasing and attacking clowns! You could certainly argue that many of these clowns had it coming, after all they very likely knew what they were getting into when they opted to don the outfit and stalk strangers in the dark. ‘FacebookViral’ uploaded an example<\/a> of what is likely a person with prior knowledge of the\u00a0recent clown drama, trying to scare an individual at night.<\/p>\n is the phone ringing? No, my phone is not ringing<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Now I certainly won’t disagree with the notion that if you go out looking for a fight, you’ll likely find one, and i find it hard to feel any amount of sympathy for those who use the recent clown-panic\u00a0to\u00a0haunt others. However, we should all feel sympathetic for the\u00a0actual\u00a0<\/em>clown community, as it has been viciously tainted by this current clown situation. \u00a0BBC News published an interview<\/a> with a working professional clown, who discusses the impact of the ‘Creepy Clown Attacks\/Sightings’ on those who depend on the positive representation of clowns\u00a0to earn a living. \u00a0‘Fudgie the clown’ explained “I am not getting the phone calls. And it’s not only me. My clown friends too. I’m checking with them: ‘is the phone ringing? No, my phone is not ringing’.”<\/p>\n I think I speak for many when I say that a craze so ridiculous as this\u00a0should not result in unemployment. If hardworking individuals\u00a0are losing their jobs and livelihoods as a result of such pointlessness, they are being socially and societally harmed. Fortunately, the clown trend faded away in November, possibly due to the realisation that Halloween had come and gone. Despite this, the ‘Creepy Clowns’ are an excellent example of just how easily dares, jokes and trends spread through the internet can get immensely out of hand. Let’s\u00a0show our brightly dressed, wig wearing friends some respect.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Clown Epidemic: A Reflection Greetings all, and welcome to the first of many posts on this site. Since this blog’s aim is to discuss internet trends in terms of the level of social, mental and physical harm they can potentially cause, it seems fitting to cover arguably the most prominent trend this year: The ‘Creepy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[24,23,12,5,19],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/scottriley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/scottriley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/scottriley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/scottriley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/scottriley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/scottriley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":340,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/scottriley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions\/340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/scottriley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/scottriley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/scottriley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}