To Inform My Audience About the Creepy Clown Craze Around America

Jeffrey Huang

Informative Speech

General Purpose: to Inform

Specific Purpose: to inform my audience about the creepy clown craze around America

Central Idea: understanding the clown craze, the history of clown pranks, and how being a clown is bad right now.

Introduction:

1. Attention Getter: How many of you are scared of clowns?
2. Reveal Topic: The creepy clown craze is going around and spreading all over the country.
3. Establish Credibility: Clowns have been a part of society for a long time and they are supposed to be fun and bring laughter.
4. Relevancy Statement: Clowns are running around America scaring kids and getting lots of attention in the past few months.
5. Central Idea: Figuring out how the whole clown craze started, the history of these clown pranks, and how this is effecting clowns around America.

Body:

First Main Point: How it started

Internal preview: We are going to start by talking about how this whole clown craze started and whats going on with it.

1. The first wave of clown panic started in late august. In South Carolina residents were calling about how a clown was trying to get kids to go into the woods. Residents started taking matters into their own hands and started firing shots into the woods.

1. Since the start of the clown craze according to NY times there has been 12 arrests in multiple states. Residents are literally asking cops if they can shoot clowns on site. The arrests are usually made for disorderly conduct. Schools in several states have been put under lockdown and a girl in Georgia was arrested in school for bringing a knife to defend herself according to the associated press. At penn state students flooded the streets to go “clown hunting”. The clown pranks are more dangerous than it seems, at the end of September a clown was stabbed to death after a confrontation according to the associated press.

Second Main Point: The history of this clown craze

Internal preview: This isn’t the first time something like this has happened.

1. As recently as 2014 a similar clown craze broke out on social media and spread to France, but the roots of people dressing up as clowns are a lot older than social media. In 1981 in neighborhoods around Boston police received over 20 calls about clowns scaring children. A few weeks later residents in Kansas city flooded police with 60-70 calls about a “Demon Clown” scaring children. Police didn’t find a threat and assumed they were prank calls.

1. This all happened a year after John Wayne Gacy was charged with the murder of 33 people. Gacy was a serial killer that dressed like a clown. Therefore there was a lot of pre-existing fear around a killer clown. Over the next 25 years appearances kept happening. But what makes people scared of clowns are people like Gacy or movies like “poltergeist” and “It”.

Third Main Point: How it is effecting the clown community.

Internal preview: I don’t think clown school is anybody’s ideal career but now isn’t the time.

1. A lot of police statements have made clear that these aren’t real clowns they are people dressed as clowns. Now I know this sounds stupid but it is really important for the professional clowning community and yes that is a real thing. Pam Moody who is the president of the world clown association stated “it brings clowning a bad life as a profession”

1. The whole clown thing is in a bad spot membership of the world clown association which is the worlds biggest trade group of clowns dropped from 3500 in 2004 to 2500 in 2014. And since the sightings clowns are afraid to make public appearances.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, we have looked at the recent clown crazes, the history and how its effecting the clown community.

Closer:

So, if America would stop clowning around and scaring people these real clowns could make a living.