From the Editors: October 2025

Pixel-Shot

You guys, it's Spooky Season! But wait. Hasn't it been Spooky Season for like 10 months already?

These days the idea of ghosts, zombies, werewolves, and killer clowns sounds downright wholesome compared to the fresh hell we meet each day, when we pick up our phones and experience the dread-inducing scroll, the onslaught of opinions from everyone we've ever known on every horrible thing that is happening all the time. A recent act of political violence brought so many folks out of the online woodwork – I had a rude social media awakening.

And it isn't just those with whom I disagree who overwhelmed me – it was the people in my very own, self-curated echo chamber. How has it become an unwritten social contract that everyone needs to share their every little thought and opinion on everything? Is that one meme that you had to hit "share" on really going to change the world? Or even someone's mind? Really? Because, let's face it, everyone has self-curated their own echo chambers. Do we really need to be screaming into them all day every day? Who is this serving? Who is this informing? How is this helping?

What it really seems to be doing is eliminating our humanity and eroding any remaining vestige of mutual trust, in each other and in information. It's f**king spooky.

While I (obviously) recognize these times are unprecedented in our lived history – I think back even 30 years ago, before the internet was everywhere. Back when we didn't know every little detail of everyone's lives. Back when someone's politics were private (and probably way less extreme). Back when news was based in factual reporting, not on reels from wellness influencers. Back when caring about the welfare of your neighbor didn't depend on what kind of meme they posted that day. Back when you shared thoughts about the world with your family or close friends, not with your dad's retired coworker that you happen to be Facebook friends with. There always were and always will be loud, hateful people, but to have them all sounding off in one place at one time – it's not natural. It's not normal. And it certainly doesn't feel healthy.

So when I heard about a class being offered at a local high school that taught kids about Erie history while also helping them hone their critical thinking, media literacy, and bullshit detecting skills – I felt like it was a story that had to be told. It also happens to be timely, in that the subject matter is all axe murders, haunted bridges, and alien enemies (the outer-space kind, not the manufactured emergency kind).

Additionally within, there are plenty of stories to read (on actual paper, without a comment section), that focus on our collective well-being – whether that's through attending one or many of the thought-provoking, worldview-expanding Jefferson Educational Society Global Summit events, or when considering the community-focused women on the local ballot next month, or (speaking of mutual trust) by attending a free, locally grown, community harvest meal in Perry Square, side by side, IRL.

What if we all just collectively decided to stop? The memes, the gross comment sections, the oversharing, the hot takes, the weird flexes, the dox culture? What if instead we go back in time? What if we focus our energy on sharing stories over roaring fires, reading articles on paper and thinking our thoughts about them in our own heads, confiding our hopes and fears and frustrations with our present circle of actual human beings, and then physically working to change the world? What if our worldview remained large but our social media reactions to them didn't need to be? Maybe that's just hocus pocus. Or maybe, if we did all just stop, Spooky Season could stay with the ghouls and witches where it belongs.