I like to take a break from Facebook once a year

I like to take a break from Facebook once a year.

There are only so many insightful posts a man can read about politics and the dead celebrity of the week before he starts to think his friends are morons.

October may have to be the month for my Facebook fast. My news feed has been peppered with adults in Halloween costumes. So far I’ve seen a middle-aged Strawberry Shortcake, an overweight kitty-cat and a Batman with a belly.

The only time my grandfathers wore costumes was when the U.S. Marine Corps handed them out.

Not us. Nope. When the clock strikes October, the race is on to see who can fit into a pirate suit and post it on Facebook first.

Americans will spend $2.8 billion on Halloween-wear this year, with $1.4 billion of that amount on adult costumes, as 75 million alleged grown-ups will dress up for the holiday, according to the National Retail Federation.

According to the NRF, a record two-thirds of Americans will buy costumes, and adults have gone super-creative, with the Top 5 in order being: witch, animal, Batman character, pirate, zombie.

Aside from frat parties to meet women and office parties to feign group cohesion, and we can’t forget nerd culture — those people who live for Renaissance Faire season and 40 or 50 comic book conferences a year — why are we doing this?

I’m an armchair psychologist.

For women, it’s continuing the fairy tale thing, or at the very least another occasion to compete and launch insults behind each other’s backs. Whatever the reason, women will play dress-up and troll Facebook for likes every Halloween. Rawrrrrr! Go get ‘em, sexy!
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Some men, who lack wit and boldness, take Halloween as an opportunity to walk on the wild side, but naturally it’s behind a mask.

Then there’s Crazy Eddie. Every group of friends has a Crazy Eddie. You can count on him to wear something crazy for Halloween, and it’s usually offensive to liberals. Crazy Eddie will dress up like a terrorist, stick his girlfriend in a burqa, post a picture online and the Buzzfeed crowd will call it “the worst thing on the Internet” that day.

When liberal men dress up for Halloween, it’s ironic and political, so there goes all the fun.

But enough of my armchair analysis. In search of analysis from professionals, I phones what I thought was the Psychology Department at Cal State Long Beach and spoke with Dr. Mahmoud Wagdy.

“People are looking for any occasion for celebration,” Wagdy said. “People are looking for anything that makes them happy and changes the routine of everyday life.”

This seemed like a legitimate answer until I asked Wagdy for his title, and discovered he is a professor of electrical engineering. Apparently I dialed the wrong number.

“But I read a lot about psychology and I know it very well,” he assured.

And he won’t be in costume this Halloween: “I don’t need anything to make me more happy,” he said.

Me neither. I think I’ll just dress up as a middle-aged writer. That’s scary enough.

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