Will Huffman
Editor-in-Chief
November 9th, 2018
We saw that your freakshow of a son just updated his social media profile picture to an artist’s rendition of a Wendigo he found online. A quick peek through his previous images reveals this to indeed be a trend. These illustrations could be serving as a sign that your boy has been introduced to Wendigos through hanging out with the wrong crowd at school.
Fear not, however. Equally disconcerting all illustrations of the supernatural varmint are not, potentially ranging all the way from innocent spooky fun to hard evidence that your child has been hoofing around with some real bozo kids. Let’s take a look at each image, ranking them in ascending order of creepiness.
Okay, yeah. See, this is probably fine. It’s pretty cartoonish and it looks like this portrayal of the evil spirit of lore is supposed to be cute for some reason, which I don’t really get. But this is just sort of how some kids express themselves on the internet I think. It looks like a character from a trading card game or whatever that maybe your son and his friends play. I don’t know, it’s fine.
I wouldn’t worry about it. This isn’t exactly the most spine-tingling depiction of the legendary beast that your son could have picked to serve as a visual representation of his inner self. Perhaps he’s just expressing an admirable interest in folklore while paying homage to the rich heritage of both America and Canada’s First Nations people. Maybe his buddies are kind of well-versed in those cultures, who knows.
Are you aware that certain Native American tribes’ tale of the creation of a Wendigo presents a ghastly scenario in which a person, during desperate times, consumes the flesh of another human and is forever cursed to wander as a beast unable to feel quenched of thirst or sated of hunger? It serves as a fascinating cautionary tale indicative of the time-honored storytelling tapestry preserved among many of our indigenous cultures even today.
Huh, okay. I just looked at the picture again. This one actually is kind of scary.
Uh oh. This one looks pretty creepy too. Hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but there’s a significant chance your boy is mixed up with the kind of crowd that meets after school to throw scrap metal into the river, no doubt smoking cigarillos and wearing leather jackets the whole damn afternoon.
He’s almost certainly got some doobie of a friend with a perpetual shit-eating grin plastered across his face—named Trenton or whatever—who, while igniting your apricot-flavored cigarillo for you, would suddenly pretend like he’s going to burn your face with his lighter, and you would be able to tell he was probably at least sort of trying to do it for real. Your alarmingly fragile son had better be keeping four eyes on that dumbass for the entire duration of the tire bonfire, or whatever heinous business the kids are almost certainly getting into this weekend.
Your son’s social media image is exactly the kind of unsettling nonsense that little pricks like Trenton think is cool, and you need to talk to your kid about it, like, yesterday.
Yeah, I hate this. You need to get to the bottom of your weirdo kid’s fascination with this horrible bullshit. Make him understand that a Wendigo is a figure the Algonquian people stressed be avoided at all costs, much like whoever the hell it is your child is spending his unrelenting free time with.
As a parent it’s your responsibility to have the talk with him. If he’s hearing about the Wendigo from a classmate then it’s likely he’s getting unreliable, conflicting and downright dangerous information.
Find out if he knows there exist contradictory accounts when it comes to Wendigo mythology, such as the variation that paints the great beast as, like, an unrelenting gust of wind that comes along—trying hard to not scroll back up lest I catch another glimpse of that rascal—but as the story goes, a person might be walking alone in the wilderness and a violent gale would kick up and start dragging the dude along the ground until they disintegrate or something.
I read that version in a book once and—oh, forget it! If it’s right there I’m just going to keep looking at it.
Next!
Yep, just about as fucked as I was expecting. Only the most loathsome of bastards would find this an appropriate avatar for his social media presence. Your little golden boy is most certainly going down a dark road with those he chooses as confidants.
There is little doubt they all get together and watch every single video about Wendigos that can be found on YouTube, commenting “first” on each and every one of them regardless of how many previous comments are plainly visible. Do not ask me why, but I imagine these boys’ idea of acting rebellious involves cruising around town playing the stereo at a reasonable volume, bopping their heads to a bunch of tunes that all confoundingly sound exactly like the opening title music from Saturday Night Live. It is imperative that you keep your child away from whatever this squawking sub-genre of jazz is called.
Never under any circumstances allow your boy and his gang unchaperoned access to your extensive collection of Chupacabra movies on DVD. Because the boxes have that “recyclable” icon etched into the plastic, these punks will undoubtedly discard the DVD cases before organizing the discs for you within the confines of a Hello Kitty CD case. Your DVDs will now also be arranged in reverse-alphabetical order in accordance with the first name of each film crew’s best boy. This tragic presentation of your discs will also be intermittently interrupted by one or another of the ragamuffins' weird jazz albums. Disgraceful!
Listen, we’ve tried to be of help here. But it ultimately falls to you as a parent to limit all the unnerving Wendigo stuff to, say, an hour a day or something. Sorry, but until this problem is addressed, your son is getting a big UNSUBSCRIBE from us.
