World Clown Association condemns creepy-ass clowns once and for all
What started as a novel sighting in South Carolina has become a disconcerting global phenomena, and with Halloween around the corner, incidents of creepy clowns show no signs of slowing down.
Following the U.S. and U.K., Australia experienced its first couple of clown-related creep-outs over the weekend and by Monday, a leader of the world's benevolent clowns finally spoke up to help end the madness once and for all.
Randy Christensen is the president World Clown Association and he's straight up dissing the clown sightings, saying no real clown would behave so (intentionally) creepy. "We're full of people that love children, bring smiles and want to help people laugh and bring comic relief," he told AAP according to news.com.au.
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"The people dressing up are trying to scare people, no professional clown would ever take part in anything like that."
Christensen also said that clowns belonging to the association have suffered job cancellations and felt a sense of rising stigma in the wake of the coverage of clown attacks.
Professional clown Megan Anton-Kicincki a.k.a. Gabby the Clown told Vice as much when she said: "I don't want somebody to come up and assault me … I just want to do some kids shows and have fun and face paint and make balloons, you know? I don't want to risk going out and possibly getting assaulted by some imbecile who feels the need to be a vigilante."
The condemnation could not have come sooner. Australian YouTube pranksters Jalals recently published a new video to their channel, in which they terrorise innocent people (and one poor dog) with a particularly sinister clown costume. Scaring people senseless -- what a hearty chuckle. Intimidating pedestrians with weapons -- hilarious, apparently.
Police in the Australian states of Victoria, South Australia and Queensland have warned their social media followers they won't be tolerate any funny business, whether from creepy clowns themselves or would-be clown "purgers" or bashers.
Take a group of men in Sydney's Parramatta who say they came across a clown while driving on Saturday night, and naturally, decided to some physical violence would make for a "funny" video.
FFS. Are we living in some kind of dystopian A Clockwork Orange reality now? Not into it. Stop it immediately.
Jerico Mandybur is the editor of Mashable Australia. Previously, she worked as a digital editor at SBS, Oyster Mag, MTV and ASOS. Tweet her at @jerico_m.
