Today in stooping:

I don't think I'm going out on a limb when I say that the world is a place of insanity and chaos right now. The climate is spinning out of control, there's a pandemic and half the country is apparently cool with the President openly courting the white supremacist vote. Things are, what's the word? Fucked? So please, help me out here because I no longer know what to think about anything anymore. This is in incredibly poor taste, right?

"Are you for goddamn kidding me?"

-You, aloud, just now

There's probably a joke here about the store
and literal ghouls, but I'm not finding it.

No, I'm not for goddamn kidding you. This is real. Someone actually thought this was an acceptable advertising tactic. It's an ad from a company called costumesupercenter.com. They sell Halloween costumes and are apparently in desperate need of a better marketing team because for real. Black Panther actor Chadwick Boseman's death from colon cancer was only announced on Friday, but I suppose in the plastic Halloween costume industry the suitable mourning period is seventy-two hours because this popped into my inbox today. 

100% polyester. Because If there's one thing
you want in a child's costume, it's flammability. 

You'll also notice the ad warns customers that there is "Limited Availability" when it comes to Black Panther costumes and...I mean, it's is a total bullshit statement, right? Well, obviously, it's an ad, but seriously? Of course there are a finite number of 100% polyester officially licensed, child-sized Black Panther costumes in the universe. I never would have suspected otherwise. But they're emphasizing the point so as to create the sense that if you don't act now, you've let your kid down. 

But I'm getting off track. My main issue here isn't with some shitty company manufacturing false scarcity, or even that they're trying to make parents think that they can or should buy their child's love with twenty dollars worth of highly flammable superhero costume. It's that they're leveraging Chadwick Boseman's death to do it.

"The only thing lower than our prices is the depths to which we'll stoop!"

-Costume Supercenter's slogan*

*well, it might as well be.