00:00:00.000happy halloween i don't know about you but i freaking love halloween i do i love it there's
00:00:15.700so much to love i mean i love that other people are giving my kids candy that it's not my
00:00:21.300responsibility to give my kids candy i love how it's one of those holidays that everyone seems
00:00:27.940to enjoy, or at the very least, most people. Because I discovered this week that there is a
00:00:34.140group of conservative, traditional influencers who are posting content being anti-Halloween.
00:00:42.380Anti-Halloween. Yep. It's the work of the devil. Just call it the modern-day satanic panic,
00:00:48.240and you've got a bunch of trad influencers saying that Halloween is evil. Because being
00:00:54.600against something on social media is going to get you all of the attention. Here to talk about it
00:01:01.180today is Sarah Peterson of the In Pursuit of Clean Countertops substack. She's the one that brought
00:01:06.700it to my attention, and we're going to dive into all things Halloween and influence. We're definitely
00:01:12.780going to talk about how social media has made Halloween very one-uppy recently. I do feel like
00:01:19.760people's houses and costumes and Halloween snacks and all of it have gotten a lot more
00:01:25.860quote-unquote Instagram worthy. There is definitely a Halloween pressure to keep up.
00:01:32.540But I've also got to tell you, I've seen some Halloween things on the Instagram that I've
00:01:36.760totally stolen that I love, including that thing where you carve a pumpkin and put a hole in it
00:01:42.920and then put a wine box bladder inside, and you essentially create a wine keg out of a pumpkin
00:01:50.860that is very portable that you can then carry around your neighborhood and share an adult
00:01:55.980beverage with the other adults. Yeah, yeah. I did it. I did it. We carved it last night. We stuck a
00:02:03.320wine bladder in there, and I'm going to be the most Instagrammable bitch in the neighborhood1.00
00:02:08.060with my pumpkin wine keg. I'm still working on my costume. I think that what I'm trying to pull off0.98
00:02:14.820is Strega Nona and Nick is going to be Big Anthony. And we're going to hand out copies of
00:02:20.620Sicilian Inheritance and put that shit on TikTok because everything be content. Everything be0.98
00:02:25.520content. Let's turn Halloween into a way to sell the book of the fall, to just sell the book of
00:02:30.420the fall. I always love having Sarah Peterson on this show. She's my guru when it comes to mom
00:02:36.220influencers. If you don't subscribe to her substack in pursuit of clean countertops,0.65
00:02:40.740you're just missing out on life. So let's get talking while I just start munching on a bunch
00:02:47.820of Halloween candy at 10 o'clock in the morning. Hey, you. Happy Halloween. Happy Halloween.
00:02:53.720Happy Halloween. I loved your substack this week about influencers who are anti-Halloween,
00:03:00.940because as you said, influencers who are anti-anything will get more attention.
00:03:06.220totally 100 totally it's like if if you want attention on social media pick something to be
00:03:11.860against and and and you will you will charm the algorithm my friend i constantly feel like if i
00:03:19.760gave sicilian inheritance an enemy then you know that would have helped that would have helped
00:03:25.980there's still time there's still time my friend hardcover is still available for sale uh so talk
00:03:30.840to me about these anti-halloween influencers who are they what are they saying and god bless
00:03:36.200i mean well you know my area of influencer expertise is the mamas the mamas so yeah i mean
00:03:45.140a lot of them are like you know what you would recognize as trad influencers um and they just
00:03:54.580find halloween antithetical to their christianity their belief in like moral goodness um and they're
00:04:06.020not all like you know wearing prayer dresses or whatever some of them you know are just conservative
00:04:11.840christian influencers um but yeah they have a real like a like a true fear of halloween being
00:04:21.560this portal to like evil spirits and they they literally believe that celebrating halloween is
00:04:30.180like celebrating or worshiping darkness and death and that it's opening yourself up to like the
00:04:37.540devil to do bad things to you um so it's wild and not all of them are like that hardcore anti some
00:04:46.020of them allow like in it quote-unquote innocent costumes um but nothing scary nothing quote-unquote
00:04:55.400devilish nothing dark um and they'll allow trick-or-treating as long as it's not at scary
00:05:01.440houses so it's this real fear of like scary and spooky stuff being actually related to devil
00:05:10.680worship actually related to actual devil worship um which just reminds me kind of of the 80s satanic
00:05:18.080panic in a lot of ways yes which you know honestly if you're on uh conservative christian uh trad mom
00:05:26.580social media which you don't have to be on it the algorithm is gonna serve it to you because the
00:05:30.980algorithm likes it um a lot of things they talk about remind me of the reagan years um and this
00:05:38.340is definitely one of them i ever since you wrote this newsletter uh about the conservative uh mom
00:05:46.260influencers who are terrified of halloween uh now i'm being served them because this is our life
00:05:51.660and but just just just by listening to this uh i'm sure that our audience is going to be served
00:05:57.020them so sorry sorry to everyone yes um but i think it's i do think it's really interesting
00:06:06.500that again the algorithm seems to pick up on conflict every single time right yeah for sure
00:06:15.460and it's almost like the more out there your objection to whatever it is is the more likely
00:06:24.220you're going to get engagement um and i think halloween is a perfect example because there's
00:06:28.660so many of us um you know like me that see this totally earnest and serious condemnation
00:06:37.380of like a really fun, silly, joyful holiday, at least for me. And it just feels completely
00:06:45.380bonkers. Like it feels like these people are just living on a different planet than
00:06:51.080like mainstream celebrators of Halloween. So I think the further out there your anti-stance is,
00:06:59.200you know, the likelihood of the algorithm picking up on your stuff is that much greater.
00:07:03.880absolutely absolutely who are some of these influencers like which ones are really going
00:07:09.000hog wild so i actually wasn't familiar with any of the ones i cited in my piece um they're not
00:07:15.580your use they're not my use no i i was looking for my use um there's someone i follow called
00:07:23.320raising maidens um her first name is randy i don't think i follow them oh she she posted this whole
00:07:32.020thing about how the childless cat ladies are going to exterminate themselves um following taylor
00:07:38.200swift's you know uh support of kamala harris um raising maidens i'm following them right now
00:07:46.160oh my gosh i will tell you that i just added a childless cat lady character to everyone is lying
00:07:53.600to you um in the late in the latest version i couldn't not so that's i also i also added
00:08:01.840an ai generated baby perfect that's gonna be really good i can't know i know i know okay so
00:08:10.520raising maidens so okay so i did not find anything this year but i'm pretty sure in the past she's
00:08:15.840talked about the satanic um influences of halloween and bernardine bluntly is someone
00:08:22.140that i think has talked about being anti-halloween in the past i don't think she's posted anything
00:08:27.060yet this year um so i checked you know all my pretty house little ladies on the prairie
00:08:35.260trad wise pretty house ladies of the prairie yes um that's who i went to first but when i didn't
00:08:41.820find anything from them this year anyway i just went to old tiktok and did a little search and
00:08:47.840found what i needed to find i knew they were there so i just you know you're like i know
00:08:52.460i know you're there yeah exactly because i've observed it yeah like i've observed it for a
00:08:58.100couple years so just had to find some 2024 examples yeah yeah and i mean they're really
00:09:04.780they're racking up the views over there to be honest like it's uh it's it's real it's just
00:09:11.780it's fascinating to me uh that like that that this is the world we live in now it really is
00:09:18.440and i think your um your comparison to the satanic panic is so right on um i've listened to a recent
00:09:25.520you're wrong about episode where they're talking about you remember the whole like razor blades in
00:09:30.680the apples and oh my god i think about razor blades in the apples way too much yes so one of
00:09:37.260the actual real life stories that inspired that panic was this case this horrifying case of a boy
00:09:44.980um having an i think it was arsenic laced pixie stick it's a really really sad story but he was
00:09:52.580murdered by his father his father his father was not well and was like it was he wanted the insurance
00:10:00.920money from the kid's death so so yeah it's horrifying but my point is it wasn't a kid
00:10:08.020going door to door getting a random you know psychopath's uh drug race pixie right right
00:10:14.420right right right so i think so many of these urban legends about halloween if you trace them
00:10:22.320back are rooted in really like prosaic human um real life stories rather than something occult
00:10:29.760a cultist and you know i feel like the actual cults take halloween off they're like you know
00:10:38.300what how it's too on a brand it's like they're new year's eve to be honest they're like this
00:10:43.380is amateur night exactly it's cheesy it's cheesy it's cheesy it's not for us i also you know i
00:10:51.840want to talk really quickly let's take one quick break but when we get back i want to talk about
00:10:55.960how uh influencers actually make me feel bad about my own halloween it's because they they just like
00:11:02.320like everything they just most of them the ones that aren't pushing satanic panic go way over the
00:11:07.440top okay all right we're back there's one thing that i need to talk about that i bet i've been
00:11:20.680seeing on the feeds on the feeds and i'm gonna try to do it tonight because i can't not because
00:11:28.260i've been served it so many times that i must try to do this thing the boo basket thing or whatever
00:11:33.060no no although i do want to talk about boo basket no this is the pumpkin with the wine
00:11:41.820the boxed wine wine bladder inside of it that gets turned into a wine serving mechanism
00:11:47.040i haven't seen this oh my god i've been served this by so many people and i mean actually and
00:11:56.480i've mentioned it to my friends like oh yeah no so instagram sent me that this morning uh yeah
00:12:00.320you carve you carve all of the insides out of the pumpkin right and also there's a lot of
00:12:05.040influencer videos telling you how to perfectly carve insides out of a pumpkin too um so imagine
00:12:11.260helpful tiktok more is this more tiktok well no i've seen well because i don't go i don't go on
00:12:16.480the tiktok so i've seen it on the instagrams so you you carve the pumpkin and then you take the
00:12:22.640wine bladder out of the box and you put it in and you carve a hole and you stick the spout out of
00:12:27.660the hole and then you also give it like jack-o'-lantern eyes sure i this could be a massive
00:12:34.020failure but i'm nick nick astor is going to fetch me a pumpkin right now um and i sent him these
00:12:40.300videos which made him want to die but the whole process makes him want to die but that's that's
00:12:44.880just one of the things that i've been influenced to do because these influencers i mean halloween
00:12:50.120seems to be their full-time job right now and i feel like a massive halloween failure for not
00:12:58.600doing all of these things can you explain the boo basket to our audience i mean i don't know if i
00:13:04.060can um i feel like sarah oh my gosh i'm blanking on sarah wheeler wrote about it for i think
00:13:12.040the cut yes um isn't it just like is it like an easter basket but for halloween basically
00:13:18.880it's an easter basket for halloween like it's yeah it's and again i don't really want another
00:13:25.620holiday where we give kids more presents and also more more crappy presents too right right because0.84
00:13:32.880let's be honest everything in an easter basket is crap most of the time and so yeah these boo0.85
00:13:38.820baskets are like a lot of like plastic toys and just glow sticks glow necklaces like all of the
00:13:48.660things that you don't want in your house after about 10 hours and there's actually peeved parents
00:13:56.320taking to reddit right now to complain that halloween was already a lot i think thanks for
00:14:01.620just putting more on our plate well it's also i feel like it defeats the like the fun of halloween
00:14:08.040as i remember it when i was a kid was the fact that like you have autonomy over your loot like
00:14:16.120you have to go out there and gather the stuff and to be given a basket full of stuff and then
00:14:23.220also go out and get stuff just it just feels like overboard it's not right it's just not right it's
00:14:29.340Is what it is. And, you know, a lot of the criticism is that parents are parents are not really doing this for the kids. Parents are doing this for social media to show that they did it again.
00:14:41.420And there's just this, what we talk about all the time, the performative parenting of, I'm so good, look at this gorgeous boo basket that I made for my children.
00:14:51.140Uh-huh. I feel like there's also a ton of really over-the-top, like, snack trays and, like, Halloween-themed, like, platters that momflencers can go hog wild on.0.64
00:15:04.920Yeah, I need to talk about one of those, too.
00:15:06.920there is a caprese salad where the influencers are using ghost cookie cutters to cut the
00:15:20.420mozzarella yeah and turning them in and i think they're putting using raisins for eyes i forget
00:15:27.620what the eyes are and so they're making ghost caprese salads and i just that broke me that
00:15:35.860broke me and but and yet i still kind of want to do it when nick was like what do you want me to
00:15:40.960get for the halloween party that we're having tomorrow and we're not you know our version of
00:15:44.880a halloween party is because our house is kind of in the middle of the halloween route yeah and
00:15:49.720that means everyone has to pee at some point oh yeah so i keep our house open and stocked with
00:15:55.660adult beverages yeah kid and kid stuff and also for tired for tired kids i'm like why don't you
00:16:01.760go in the basement and watch some america's got talent yeah yeah you're over this so we're like
00:16:09.420that pit stop and i'm like do i need to do this ghost caprese salad for this i don't want to but
00:16:15.360maybe i should that's the thing which just makes me feel like this is something i should be doing
00:16:19.780to be a human in the world i mean you know the answer is you don't have to do it joe free yourself
00:16:24.740of the ghost caprese salad i'm gonna free myself i'm gonna free myself of the ghost caprese salad0.98
00:16:30.740I'm also going to free myself from looking at any of these boo baskets because, yeah, they're just, I just, I mean, I don't want any, all of the stuff that are put into these boo baskets are things that I don't want.0.99