I saw a headline that stopped me mid-scroll over the weekend. It was so delicious and intriguing I had to click on the link. The attention grabbing headline and subsequent story told of a women who had been arrested for hiring a clown to harass her ex at his rec league softball games.

The story had all the elements of a Shakespearean drama…..love, betrayal, revenge and a clown. The story even had the mugshot of the arrested woman.

This is perfect I thought for a deep blog post on relationships gone wrong, bad breakups and new employment opportunities for the clown community. I mean besides kids birthday party’s, and the occasional parade the demand for clowns is pretty low. Not to mention clowns seem to catch an inordinate amount of negativity in general. Let’s face it…..most people really don’t like clowns nor understand why a person would dress up like one and paint their face when a large majority of people are actually frightened by them.

It took me about 2 minutes of additional scrolling or research as I call it, to determine the story was fake. It had originally appeared on a website known for generating false story’s, kinda like The Onion but not as well known. The mugshot was a fake AI generated picture of a rather attractive young woman that I’m sure was a catalyst for generating so much interest in the story.

What I find so fascinating was the amount of people who believed the story and subsequently commented and shared the story causing it to go viral. Of course people had to weigh in like so many people do now days with their expert opinion.

I make it a habit not to read the comments mainly to not waste my time and to keep my naively false hopes alive that we’re not as stupid as we appear online. I can only guess that there was an equal amount of people taking the woman’s side as the man’s side. I mean who amongst us hasn’t let their mind wander to some creative type of harmless revenge against an ex who so wronged us by ending a relationship and what could be more creative than harassment by a clown.

This really could have opened up a whole new avenue of employment for clowns. Besides listing magic tricks and the ability to make dozens of different balloon animals and the singularly unique talent of wedging themselves into impossibly tiny cars and driving them haphazardly in parades they could now also note that they’ve helped many wronged ex’s get over a bad breakup. They could then list all their most effective harassment techniques. The clown in the fake story was hired to harass the ex boyfriend at his softball games by clapping sarcastically at even the most routine plays.

Oh I can see it now, clowns showing up at places of employment critiquing even the smallest of mundane tasks. A clown sitting next to you judging every email sent, every sales pitch rejected, every meeting you attended where you desperately attempted to be heard even if your sole contribution was saying “lets circle back around next week.”

Instead of that small voice in your head that stifles your creativity and reminds you of all your failures going back to middle school, you’d have a real voice reminding you of your failures and that voice comes with overly large shoes, a painted face and maybe a horn to be extra annoying.

So unfortunately the real victims here are the clowns with their faces painted to appear happy but we know it’s a a mask to hide their real sorrow and unhappiness. Not only denied new employment opportunities but used in a fake story so many of us wanted to believe.

I could end here by saying don’t believe what you see on the internet but we already know that and we still get duped…..

Peace and Love,

John