Clown Sights: Are they real or staged?

MVNU students recently discovered a new way to cure their boredom – clown hunting.

There were reports earlier this week, via Twitter, that a clown was seen in the Grove, throwing campus into a frenzy. A group of more than 50 students set out on a late-night “clown chase.”

No pictures were taken of the clown during the Wednesday sighting and the campus-wide search left students empty handed.

Many now believe the claims were fabricated.

What started in the middle of South Carolina with a child witnessing a creepy clown emerging from the woods in August has now become a nationwide epidemic. Now there have been reports of weapon-yielding civilians in clown masks all across the United States.

Schools – including MVNU – have sent out emails or letters warning students and parents to be on the lookout for clowns. This week, even the White House addressed the topic in a news conference.

I think it’s ridiculously fake. While authorities are taking any possible threats seriously and have made arrests in some cases, even they say they are getting impatient with what looks in most cases to be a scam or prank.

In approximately 99.9 percent of the “clown sighting” videos, the videographers are filming themselves or a friend along some dirt road and then, all of a sudden, a clown “just so happens” to appear and start chasing them.

The “perfect timing” and “coincidental sightings” cause me, and many others, to believe these situations are staged.

Some people are living in fear of these clowns that are supposedly running rampant, while others have predicted that it is a guerilla-marketing tactic gone wrong for a remake of the film “It.”

But, in all actuality, it’s mostly bored teenagers and college students jumping on the most recent viral bandwagon in exchange for their 1,000 retweets and 20 seconds of social media fame.