“Full-size candy bars are the holy grail of Halloween. For many trick-or-treaters, they are seen as the ultimate bounty – a proper, grown-up Snickers or Milky Way with which to mock less-fortunate peers before engorgement. For those giving out the candy, they offer a not-so-subtle way to outdo the neighbors – Halloween as potlatch. The house with the full-size bars is the best house on the block.”
“Though tempting, the practice is wrong-headed. Giving out full-size candy bars misses the point of Halloween. Here’s why,” says the lede to an Atlantic piece by staff writer Ian Bogost, published in 2017 but for some reason given a reprint on the site Thursday, on Halloween 2024.
Bogost’s last three pieces were titled “A Defense of the Leaf Blower: Reassessing America’s most hated appliance,” “A Calculator’s Most Important Button Has Been Removed: This is clearly a mistake,” “Please Don’t Make Me Download Another App: Our phones are being overrun.”
It’s not clear if Bogost is doing this on purpose, like it’s all an act and the majority of readers are in on the joke. We’re going to lean toward no because he’s been writing this shit for a while – and it’s kind of the Atlantic’s entire brand outside of the unquestionably solid political analysis and other matters of actual import – and nobody seems to notice this grating “Here’s why” schtick.