Culture

Nick Gillespie is the editor in chief of Reason.com and Reason.tv.

Face it: marijuana is legal, crime is down, traffic fatalities are declining and fewer teens are lighting up

If you want to know just how crazy marijuana makes some people, look no further than the race for governor of Colorado, where Democratic incumbent John Hickenlooper is neck and neck with Republican challenger Bob Beauprez. They’re high-profile examples of a growing backlash against pot, even as none of the scare stories about legal weed are coming true. Drug-addled addicts embarking on crime sprees? Not in Denver. Stupefied teens flunking tests in record numbers? Uh-uh. Highway fatalities soaring? Nope.

About the worst you can say so far is that New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wigged out while high. But she does that from time to time when she’s sober as a judge too.

Neither Hickenlooper nor Beauprez has cracked 50% with voters, which makes sense since neither candidate can stomach the fact that 55% of Coloradans voted to legalize recreational pot in 2012. “I’ll say it was reckless” to legalize pot, averred Hickenlooper at a recent debate. Beauprez goes further still. When asked if it’s time to recriminalize marijuana, he said, “Yes, I think we’re at that point … where the consequences that we’ve already discovered from this may be far greater than the liberty … citizens thought they were embracing.”

In fact, sales and tax revenues from legal pot continue to climb, and more people now buy recreational pot than medical marijuana, even though the former is taxed at much higher rates. Pot has kicked about $45 million into tax coffers since it became legal this year and is projected to come in between $60 million and $70 million by year’s end. Murders in the Denver area, where most pot sales take place, are down 42% (so is violent crime overall, though at a lower rate) and property crime is down 11.5%.

There’s more bad news for alarmists: Pot use by teenagers in Colorado declined from 2001, when the state legalized medical marijuana, to 2013, the last full year for which data are available. When medical marijuana was introduced, critics worried that any form of legalized pot would increase usage among kids, but the reverse happened. It remains to be seen if that trend continues in the face of legal recreational pot, but Colorado teens already use dope at lower rates than the national average. So much for the Rocky Mountain High state.

Yet Colorado pols are in good company in harshing on legal weed. The recovering addict and former Congressman Patrick Kennedy heads Safe Alternatives to Marijuana (SAM) and categorically argues, “we cannot promote a comprehensive system of mental-health treatment and marijuana legalization.”

Researchers who find that regular marijuana use among teenagers correlates with mental problems, academic failure and other bad outcomes get plenty of ink, even though such studies fail to show causation. Underperforming students and kids with problems abuse alcohol and smoke cigarettes at higher rates, after all. In any case, even advocates of legalization argue that teens shouldn’t be smoking pot any more than they should be drinking. Given the drug’s pariah status for decades, it’s not surprising that the science is both unsettled and highly politicized.

Will legalizing pot increase access to a drug that law-enforcement officials concede has long been readily available to high schoolers? “Criminalizing cannabis for adults has little if any impact on reducing teens’ access or consumption of the plant,” argues the pro-legalization group NORML, a claim supported by declining teen use during Colorado’s experience with medical marijuana. Certainly pot merchants who are registered with and regulated by the state are more likely to check IDs than your friendly neighborhood black-market dealer.

At least this much seems certain: In a world where adults can openly buy real pot, you’re also less likely to read stories headlined “More People Hospitalized by Bad Batch of Synthetic Marijuana.” And support for legalization isn’t fading. The market-research firm Civic Science finds that 58% of Americans support laws that “would legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana like alcohol.”

That figure obviously doesn’t include either candidate for governor of Colorado. But just like the rest of the country, whoever wins that race will have to learn to live with pot being legal, crime being down, traffic fatalities declining and fewer teens lighting up.

Andrés Martinez is editorial director of Zócalo Public Square, for which he writes the Trade Winds column.

Even though it is our neighbor, our second-largest trading partner, and home to almost 120 million people

My Mexican father applied to colleges in the United States in the late 1940s, and was offered scholarships by the University of Arizona and Western Reserve (now Case Western Reserve) in Cleveland. His father sat him down and drew a line from west to east across a map of the United States and said: “Below this line, they don’t like Mexicans.” It was a fateful moment, all but ensuring Dad would return to Mexico upon graduation. He did not like the cold. He would have loved Tucson.

Dad did enjoy his studies in Cleveland, and got a lot out of the experience, notwithstanding his nearly flunking music composition (not long ago I stumbled across a copy of his transcript). His was a classic liberal arts education, blending economics, history, and literature. Upon graduation, he returned to Mexico, got a job, and enrolled in an evening law school. He went on to have a successful business career, much of which involved connecting Mexico to the United States and (though not as a conscious matter) spreading American values to those who worked with him.

A fascinating new Brookings report on the foreign student population of the United States made me think of Dad’s experience, and what he and the United States got out of the deal. As Neil G. Ruiz, the author of the report, put it over the phone, migrant students build bridges between societies, and over time those bridges carry a lot of economic activity. This means that the United States is, in many cases, educating the future leaders of the world, particularly the future leaders of emerging nations. We currently take in about a fifth of all students worldwide who cross borders to study, though these students still make up less than 4 percent of the entire student population in the U.S.

Ruiz and his team looked not only at countries of origin for the 1,153,459 foreign students enrolled in higher education programs between 2008 and 2012, but their cities of origin and the metropolitan areas they cluster in within the U.S. So, for instance, the data compiled by Brookings shows there were 7,109 students (F-1 visa holders) from Seoul studying in the Los Angeles area during that four-year period. Looking into the future, it’s hard to imagine a more binding tie between the two cities than the presence of all those Korean students in Los Angeles, and their connection to the city long after they graduate.

It isn’t surprising that Asia dominates the census of foreign students in the United States, although I was stunned by just how much. China alone sent 284,173 students in that period. The top 20 hometowns of all foreign students in the United States are in Asia. Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Gulf states boast the fastest-growing contingent of students. Shockingly, the city of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, alone sent more students (17,361) than did the entire country of Mexico (17,171).

Mexico, ranked ninth among countries sending students here, is vastly underrepresented among foreign students when you consider that it is our neighbor, our second-largest trading partner, and home to almost 120 million people. The fact that the country lags behind cities like Riyadh and Taipei in the numbers of students it sends to American universities shows that Mexico and the United States remain “distant neighbors” in some ways, as Alan Riding termed the relationship in his book of that title three decades ago.

It also shows that money talks. In addition to having many families able to pay the high cost of tuition abroad, countries like China and Saudi Arabia offer lavish scholarships to promising kids. The U.S. has a strategic need to attract more students from Mexico and other countries who don’t have this kind of financial backing. But American universities prefer to see foreign students as a profit center. Texas has long been a welcome exception to the rule, offering Mexican nationals with financial need in-state tuition at public universities as a matter of policy. Meanwhile, the Obama administration and its Mexican counterpart have announced initiatives to increase the flow of students across the border to 100,000 in coming years, but the question of who pays for all those students remains an open one.

Our policy discussions about foreign students in this country also disproportionately focus on students focusing on science and technology. Lawmakers, analysts, and businesses are all advocating the creation of an easier path for those pursuing advanced STEM degrees to stay and work here once they obtain their degrees. There is widespread support, echoed by the Brookings report, for a law that would automatically grant these graduates a green card.

That makes a great deal of sense, but we shouldn’t take too utilitarian a view of foreign students in this country, writing off those incapable of writing code or finding their way around a lab. Yes, we want to be the world’s innovation hub, attracting the best and brightest to our great research universities. But we also benefit from having students come here from all over the world to learn our history, as well as our democratic and capitalist values.

And that’s true even—maybe especially so—if they go back home because it was too cold in Cleveland.

A run for the money

Need some motivation to exercise? In China you can now hire a “running mate” – a fit stranger to run with you and help with inspiration.

Instead of a personal trainer, these running partners aren’t professionals. Most of them are students, and they’re simply meant to provide a “little old-fashioned encouragement,” according to the Global Times.

Chen Li, one of the running partners, told the Global Times that some people hire him for safety reasons at night, but others just need help shedding a few pounds. “Mr. Zhang was my first client and he hoped someone could push him to exercise because he is getting fat from long office hours,” Li said.

Running partners reportedly make up to 3,000 yuan ($490) a month from the gig.

Protesters in our city used to have a trusting relationship with the police, but these latest protests reveal a growing chasm

On Sunday, Sept. 28, 2014, we stood among the estimated 80,000 Hong Kong protestors in the Admiralty neighborhood that hosts the government headquarters when tear gas began raining down on us. The effects were immediate: a searing and near-paralyzing burn of our skin, eyes, nasal passages, and lungs that intensified with each attack, which totaled 87 rounds and an unknown number of canisters in nine different locations that night. Discomfort lasted for days afterward.

We are American expatriates who have lived in Hong Kong for years studying policy challenges facing transitional societies, but don’t normally consider ourselves activists. We were out there because we have seen a disturbing erosion in the political freedoms and rights promised to our city since the 1997 handover to China, when it was agreed that Hong Kong would operate under “one country, two systems” for 50 years until 2047. Concern bubbled to the surface in 2003, when the Hong Kong government proposed security legislation that gave it the power to quash “subversion” defined broadly to including legitimate dissidence and free speech. A 2012 effort to introduce national education reform promoting controversial “Chinese patriotism lessons” heightened concern. Both proposals were shelved after massive public protests, which were legal. Now, despite allowing everyone to vote for the Chief Executive in 2017, Beijing has established an ideological litmus test (candidates must “love the country”) and raised the requirements for becoming a candidate such that it effectively allows the Chinese Communist Party to choose the winner. In addition, fears were further raised by the language and timing of a June 2014 “white paper” that made it clear Hong Kong enjoys its autonomy entirely at the Chinese Communist Party’s discretion, sparking this movement that has gone beyond legal protests into occupying roads and other forms of civil disobedience.

Moreover, we were in the streets to acknowledge the growing discontent among Hong Kong residents over a widening economic disparity and the government’s role in creating it. In a city of millionaires and billionaires, where many well-off Mainland visitors happily spend their wealth, one-fifth of Hong Kong’s population currently lives below the poverty line (equivalent to $461 a month). Small business owners and entrepreneurs are finding it increasingly difficult to pay the escalating rent. The uneven distribution of wealth has only been exacerbated by Beijing’s strategy of allowing a few friendly tycoons’ businesses to grow exponentially, thereby consolidating power in a manageable number of “leaders” and stabilizing the political environment.

Our friends and family have been split about whether these protests are the right approach. Those who oppose the protest tend to view the relationship between China and Hong Kong as one of parent and child, do not see real threats to Hong Kong’s autonomy, and focus on the short-term view that Beijing will never give Hong Kong genuine universal suffrage when other parts of China don’t have it. But we reject the parent-child analogy of politics, and hold a longer view that is corroborated by history: citizen protests, even ones that fail, are often necessary for societies to take incremental steps towards more equal and accountable states. We all share a baseline concern for the instability and economic distress brought about by protests, but we differ in choosing to weather the storm or to try to oppose the government directly.

We chose the more direct approach, which is how we ended up with the surreal experience of getting tear-gassed for the first time. Hong Kong protesters have long played by the rules—seeking advanced approval for polite, organized marches. And the police have long enjoyed not only a sterling international reputation for their restraint when controlling crowds, but also a tight-knit and trusting relationship with the people. So we in Hong Kong have relegated tear gas in our collective consciousness to Hollywood or war zones, not thinking it would be possible in one of the safest and most orderly cities in the world.

Until it was. While we got away with minimal injuries, we saw plenty of people who were doubled over in pain on the street crying as others washed out their eyes, or gasping for air. The protestors’ attempts to shield themselves with umbrellas have given rise to the nickname of this protest as the “Umbrella Movement.” Beyond its health effects, the tear gas helped us recognize the chasm that had been growing between the Hong Kong government and its people.

Beneath the shimmering skyscrapers, Hong Kong has prided itself on the rule of law and self-restraint when it comes to using the overwhelming force it possesses. This illusion was destroyed when the police crossed the line into violence: resorting to pepper spray, batons, and tear gas against peaceful protesters. It was further aggravated by an element of unchecked thuggery – organized bands, many with suspected triad connections, attacked protesters in the city’s Mong Kok area on Oct. 3 and 4. The police largely stood by while this happened, in contrast to their earlier willingness to use force against peaceful protestors. Hong Kong residents realized that they had mistaken the orderliness and proceduralism of the Hong Kong government for benevolence.

The way in which the police carried out tear gas attacks on Sept. 28 is even more worrisome. In both Admiralty and Central districts, we saw police hurl gas canisters haphazardly, often into unsuspecting crowds, letting the toxins disperse in the air, attacking without regard to subject or intent. In an ensuing press conference, the police officially justified their decision in the name of public safety, saying they launched the tear gas to prevent stampedes and restore order. From what we have seen in our studies, however, gassing usually causes chaotic stampedes and injury. The only reason there were not massive injuries was the surprising levelheadedness of the protesters. With each attack, the protesters walked calmly away; the uninjured ones then returned under the instruction of organizers once the gas had dissipated. The police have reiterated their justifications. The public response was telling: citizen participation in the protest surged after the tear gas and reports of thuggery.

Tear gas and other forms of violence are, of course, used by police to quell protests all over the world, and some commentators have been correct to point out that the police response could have been much more brutal elsewhere. However, these protests have typically been more peaceful and orderly than elsewhere—we witnessed protesters cleaning the streets in between rounds of tear gas, and when we saw some people throwing water bottles at the riot police, other protesters quickly admonished them. This rarity that has caught the attention of the international community, and the violence happened in a place where the police don’t typically react this way. So the situation felt like a betrayal. The time the decision was made to launch the first canister of tear gas was the moment the trust between state and citizen, and especially between the Hong Kong police and people, was lamentably lost. Whether that trust can be regained is entirely up to the government.

The actions of the administration during this protest do not bode well for the civility of future Hong Kong protests. And indeed, after a brief lull, the situation has escalated perhaps inevitably: in the early morning of Oct. 15 police took action to clear protesters from a road with batons and pepper spray, but also attacked human rights observers wearing identification. And, a video has surfaced of police allegedly beating a handcuffed protestor whom they suspected of throwing water at them. The Hong Kong protesters have shown enormous self-discipline in adhering to the principle of non-violence thus far, but that may not last forever.

It’s highly likely the Umbrella Movement protestors took note of Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement in March to April of this year when students rose to combat a rushed trade agreement with China, fearing that economic dependence would eventually become a political crutch as well. There, too, students went from largely legal protests to occupying the legislature for several weeks. There, too, the police responded with violence (water cannons and batons). There, too, the students remained organized, peaceful, self-governing, and highly considerate. (For example, they designated smoking quotas so as to not discomfort non-smokers and they cleaned the legislative building when they finally left.) To end the protests, the government promised to initiate a review of the trade agreement and to implement greater legislative transparency, which are still being negotiated. We can only hope—though we acknowledge it is sadly unlikely—that Hong Kong’s protests get resolved in a similar way.

Taiwan is, of course, a democratic system that is more accountable to the population, while the Hong Kong government is under no such constraint. Indeed, that is the existential issue behind the protests, and certainly not one that can be resolved with tear gas.

Bon Cheng, M.D., is a senior health policy analyst at the Hong Kong-based Panopticon Foundation, a nonprofit institute that supports the study of societies transitioning to new forms of economic, political, and social organization.

Yvonne Chiu, Ph.D., is a professor of political science at the University of Hong Kong and the director of the Panopticon Foundation.

Bon Cheng and Yvonne Chiu wrote this piece for Zocalo Public Square, a not-for-profit Ideas Exchange that blends live events and humanities journalism.

The Mr. Big actor has some controversial views on Sex and the City

It’s been 10 years since the finale of Sex and the City, and people are still slut-shaming Carrie.

The latest round of name-calling comes from none other than Mr. Big himself, actor Chris Noth, who now stars as Alicia Florrick’s husband Peter on The Good Wife. In an interview with the Australian news outlet news.com.au, Noth opened up about Carrie and Big’s (toxic) relationship:

Big was powerful because he had a lot of money and he seemed to have the upper hand in the relationship, but emotionally he was a wreck.

Actually, no: he was what he was. One of the things I tell people is that he never tried to pretend he was anything other than what he was. It was [Carrie] who tried to pretend he was something he wasn’t. He was always honest about himself — he never cheated on her. The relationship just didn’t work, and he went on to get married while she went on to … how many boyfriends did she have? She was such a whore! [laughs] There’s a misconception that Carrie was a victim of him, and that’s not the case — she was a strong, smart woman.

Lots of confused messaging there. Let’s start off with the “whore” comment.

Sure, Carrie bedded a lot of guys on Sex in the City (as did Samantha, Miranda and even the primmer Charlotte). But so did Barney on How I Met Your Mother, Don on Mad Men, Joey on Friends, Vince on Entourage, Nick on New Girl, Tony on The Sopranos… the list goes on and on. Hell, even Big is said to have had his fair share of conquests. To single Carrie out is simple sexism.

The conversation gets even more confusing when he goes on to call Carrie a “strong, smart woman.” Sounds like a compliment. And yet, he’s not talking about the way Carrie did her job or took care of her friends. Rather, he’s calling her smart while implying that Carrie was the predator and Big was the victim in the relationship. In reality, they were both terrible to each other.

Look, Chris Noth is probably sick of talking about this show and being associated with a character who’s a flaky, shallow cheat. (News.au.com even notes that the interviewer was expressly forbidden from asking about Sex and the City during the interview but did it anyway.) And he’s far from alone in criticizing Sex and the City’s characters against charges of materialism, selfishness and recklessness–accusations hurled by men and women alike. That still doesn’t make his slut-shaming okay, even if it was a joke.

Say what you want about Sex and the City and Carrie as a character, but what was groundbreaking and interesting about the show was that it presented sex from a woman’s perspective without the judgment. Up until then, that hadn’t really been done. It normalized talking about dating and sex for women in a way that had long existed for men. Without SATC, we wouldn’t have Girls or Broad City or maybe even 3o Rock—shows that were free to talk about sex and relationships (though not necessarily in the same way as Carrie and Samantha did) because of the precedent set by the controversial HBO show.

Despite his “whore” comment, Noth does make some interesting points: Carrie was a seriously flawed character. (The New Yorker‘s Emily Nussbaum has written a brilliant analysis of Carrie as the first female anti-hero before male anti-heroes like Walter White and Don Draper were in vogue.) Carrie deluded herself into thinking Big was something that he wasn’t, and that is a big reason why the relationship initially fell apart. It always felt iffy that Carrie ended up with Big in the end: Aiden was the clear “right” choice, though maybe not the “right” choice for her. Carrie’s final boyfriend, The Russian, played by Mikhail Baryshnikov, felt like a villain the writers created simply to make Big look like a halfway-decent person by comparison.

Noth certainly has a knack for making controversial statements. Now we just wonder what his views are on Alicia Florrick‘s sex life.

Feminist gamers are still getting death threats even as comic conventions are adopting anti-sexual harassment policies

Correction appended: Oct. 15, 2014.

After years of women enduring sexual harassment at comic book conventions while dressed up like their favorite characters, fangirls are finally starting to feel comfortable cosplaying. This past weekend, New York Comic Con made great strides in creating a safe environment for women by introducing an anti-sexual harassment campaign.

Though many think of Comic Con as a geeky boys club, women make up 47% of comic book readers and nearly half of convention goers at large cons like those in New York and San Diego. But the rise in attendance by women (and panels and events featuring women) has coincided with an increase in complaints about men who stare, grope or take pictures with female con-goers without their consent.

“In 2013 at New York Comic Con, we had more harassment issues than we’d ever had,” says Lance Festerman, senior vice president of ReedPOP, which oversees New York Comic Con. Festerman’s team realized they not only needed to improve their strategy on how to handle such issues, but that they had an obligation to education visitors as to what was and was not acceptable behavior.

New York Comic Con was not the only convention with problems. In July, over 2,600 women signed a petition created by a group called Geeks for CONsent demanding that San Diego Comic Con—the biggest comic convention in the world, which is heavily attended by women—adopt no tolerance policies. They coined the slogan “cosplay ≠ consent” to emphasize to convention goers that just because women dress up in costumes (and are potentially scantily clad in a uniform that mirrors that of a character) does not mean they want to be ogled or fondled.

Though San Diego Comic Con has yet to change its policies, New York Comic Con organizers decided to make a change this year. They partnered with The Mary Sue, a woman-friendly geek culture site, who in turn crowdsourced feedback on the convention’s proposed guidelines. Once New York Comic Con had determined a strategy, the runners asked comic book artist Amy Reeder to create posters for their campaign and adopted a slogan similar to the one that had spread through social media chatter at San Diego Comic Con: “Cosplay Is Not Consent.” Signs throughout the convention hall read: “Please keep your hands to yourself. If you would like to take a picture with another NYCC fan, always ask first and respect that person’s right to say no.”

The convention also created a module on their mobile app that allowed con-goers to report incidents of sexual harassment to the convention’s security team and receive an immediate digital or in-person response. They had a zero tolerance policy, which meant that fans caught touching, taking pictures of or stalking other con-goers were immediately removed. The result? They cut the number of reported incidents in half, down to eight.

“Any incident is too many, but we made it easier for people to report incidents to us,” says Festerman. “Hopefully the fact that the number of incidents went down either means that the propaganda campaign reminding people to behave like civil adults worked or, even better, people were just humane, good people.”

Comics still have a long way to go when it comes to including women in the actual content they publish. Even now that Thor is a woman and a movie based on a female heroine from the Spider-Man universe is finally underway, women still make up only 29.3% of DC characters and 24.7% of Marvel characters, according to the calculations of FiveThirtyEight. But convention runners believe creating a safe environment at Comic Cons is a good first step: the more female voices that can participate in the conversation, the more representative comics will become.

Could this mean that the nerd boys’ club is kaput? It may be soon in comics. But it certainly is not in gaming, a world where many comic book enthusiasts also reside: nerd icons like Wil Wheaton (more on him later) participate in and comment on both universes.

Though not all gamers enjoy comics and vice versa, as a coworker of mine who attended New York Comic Con put it, “There’s definitely overlap in the Venn diagram.” But while comic book conventions are embracing women, in the gaming world, a small but vicious minority of gamers still perceive women as a threat (even though studies show they make up 48% of digital gamers). This sentiment is embodied by the #GamerGate movement, who claim they want change in the ethics of gaming journalism but in practice have been viciously attacking women who design or critique games. This group claims that women criticizing misogyny in video games will lead to the death of the gamer and that (largely young, white and male) gamers are under attack. (Check out Vox’s excellent explainer on the complicated, ongoing #GamerGate developments.)

The hostility generated by this movement has unfortunately forced many women out of the gaming and gaming journalism industries. Game developer Zoe Quinn has been driven from her house by death threats from an organized campaign of gamers on 4chan, Reddit, YouTube and various IRC channels. Meanwhile, game critic Anita Sarkeesian, who hosts a popular YouTube show called Feminist Frequency, has become the target of vitriol. On Wednesday morning, she cancelled a speech at Utah State University about the portrayal of women in video games because someone sent an e-mail to several school staffers threatening “the deadliest school shooting in American history,” if she were allowed to present. And, prior to that, someone even created a game in which she players can beat her up.

The debate over where women belong in the gaming world has reached a fever pitch, and Amanda Marcotte at Slate suggests that maybe the gaming world can learn something from the comic book world.

But while the comic book world can be (in part) controlled by writers and editors of comic books, those who run comic book conventions and even those in the movie industry, the gaming world has been hijacked by misogynists on the Internet. And nobody controls the Internet trolls.

Just look at geek icon Wil Wheaton’s response to harassment at Comic Con versus harassment in the gaming world. The Star Trek vet tweeted his support for the cosplay ≠ consent movement during San Diego Comic Con: “Be polite. Be respectful. Don’t be a d***.” Wheaton speaks to potential harassers directly: he thinks he might be able to have an impact on people’s actions when they come face-to-face with a woman at Comic Con.

Compare that plea to the way he weighed in on the misogynistic attacks on women in the #GamerGate discussion: “I have never, in my life, been ashamed to call myself a gamer. Until now. These misogynist little s***bags are a disgrace to our community. All of us who care about gaming need to step up and save our community, while there is still something about it that’s worth saving.” Both the Cosplay Is Not Consent movement and Wheaton assume that in real life, people are capable of being decent human beings when pushed to do so. Not so for those who roam anonymously on the Internet: Wheaton appeals not to them but to “those of us who care about gaming” and aren’t “little s***bags.”

Trying to reason with an Internet troll is a herculean task. Sure, uber-famous nerd idols like Joss Whedon can throw their support behind Feminist Frequency. But on the Internet—where nobody clicks links, takes the time to listen to rational arguments or is forced to confront the person they are telling to get raped or die—tweets rarely change minds.

Since the #Gamergate conversation (and much of gaming itself) happens online and not in a face-to-face context, Comic Con cannot necessarily be a roadmap for gamers like Wheaton who want to save the industry from a further descent into ugliness. What we can learn from Comic Con is that the people in charge have to take a stand: whether its writers, convention organizers or big game designers. Right now, the video game industry is being held hostage. It will take big companies being willing to lose (sexist) customers for women to win their place in the gaming world.

Correction: The original version of this story misspelled Wil Wheaton’s name.

Watch 22 of the spookiest thrillers on the Internet

This article originally appeared on Refinery29.com.

It’s movie night, people. It’s dark, it’s chilly, and we’re three weeks out from Halloween. You have an Internet full of streaming spooky thrillers — but how can you possibly pick? Listen, picking the right movie is very important. Like choosing which college to attend or what to name your child, you don’t want to end up with something you’ll regret for the rest of your life.

Don’t freak out yet — you’ve got this. We’ve assembled 22 of the best scary movies currently streaming on Netflix, Hulu, Crackle, and Amazon Prime. We’ve broken them down into a super-simple guide to help you figure out the perfect movie to watch based on your mood, platform, and the crowd you’re watching with.

It’s the first Saturday in October. And, life is short, so make this one count. That means taking off your going-out shoes, and parking it on the couch. Now, you just need to find the perfect sweatpants to change into. You can do this.

The Craft

• What Happens: Four girls dabble in witchcraft and overalls. Hijinks ensue.
• How Scary Is It: If you’re creeped out by snakes, run.
• Why Should I Watch It: You miss chokers and Fairuza Balk.
• Where Can I Find It: Crackle, Amazon Prime.
• Who Do I Watch With: Your lady friends and wine and some more wine.

The Moth Diaries

• What Happens: Sexy new girl comes to boarding school and makes it rain blood. Roommate has trouble adjusting.
• How Scary Is It: Like all vampires, these are way too emo to scare anyone.
• Why Should I Watch It: You’re into vampires but can’t stand Twilight or True Blood.
• Where Can I Find It: Hulu.
• Who Do I Watch With: A friend you might like to be more than a friend. Or a friend you might like to rain blood upon. Either way, this’ll get you in the mood.

Carrie

• What Happens: Best. Prom. Ever.
• How Scary Is It: Mean girls, first periods, AND telekinesis? This one’s not for wimps.
• Why Should I Watch It: You’ve been royally screwed and feel like burning down someone’s house, dropping the mic, and leaving.
• Where Can I Find It: Netflix, Amazon Prime.
• Who Do I Watch With: Your high school BFF (the one who got picked on by Casey R., too).

Rosemary’s Baby

• What Happens: Couple’s new apartment might be next door to Satan worshippers, but it has two bathrooms and a working fireplace, so…
• How Scary Is It: Enough to make you move to the suburbs.
• Why Should I Watch It: You’ve never seen this before and are sick of everyone bugging you about it (but seriously get on this ASAP. What is your problem?).
• Where Can I Find It: Netflix.
• Who Do I Watch With: The understanding that you probably cannot pull of this haircut.

The Human Centipede: First Sequence

• What Happens: Google it.
• How Scary Is It: I mean, did you Google it?
• Why Should I Watch It: Someone double-dog dared you to.
• Where Can I Find It: Netflix, Amazon Prime, and ideally, the smallest screen possible.
• Who Do I Watch With: A barf bag.

American Psycho

• What Happens: Businessman has a real case of the Mondays.
• How Scary Is It: As scary as the face Christian Bale is making here.
• Why Should I Watch It: You’re into sex, drugs, and murdering hookers with chainsaws.
• Where Can I Find It: Netflix.
• Who Do I Watch With: A dude.

(MORE: “Let Her Go!” Or, Every Action Movie Ever)

Antichrist

• What Happens: Couple loses their child and somehow things get worse from there.
• How Scary Is It: Well, there’s really no PG version of genital self-mutilation is there?
• Why Should I Watch It: You’ve seen Lars Von Trier and you know what you’re getting into.
• Where Can I Find It: Hulu, Netflix.
• Who Do I Watch With: Someone who won’t mind when you ask to turn it off and watch I Love Lucy reruns instead.

Candyman

• What Happens: Woman doesn’t believe in ghosts. We don’t want to spoil it for you but she might be wrong.
• How Scary Is It: Good luck sleeping tonight/ever!
• Why Should I Watch It: This scared the bejeesus out of you as a kid but, damn it, you’re a grown-up now. Bring it, Candyman.
• Where Can I Find It: Crackle, Netflix.
• Who Do I Watch With: No one, if you’re such a big, tough, grown-up. (JK, never watch this with less than five people.)

The Gift

• What Happens: Local psychic is pulled into a murder investigation where Keanu Reeves is the prime suspect. Seriously.
• How Scary Is It: Imagine getting startled by a car backfiring outside, over and over again, for two hours.
• Why Should I Watch It: You want to be scared by Cate Blanchett’s killer performance and amused by Katie Holmes’ horrrrrrible southern accent.
• Where Can I Find It: Netflix.
• Who Do I Watch With: Katie Holmes, ideally. Just so you can ask her to translate.

Cropsey

• What Happens: The boogeyman is real, you guys.
• How Scary Is It: The truth of this tale is far more horrific than the fiction.
• Why Should I Watch It: You grew up locking your bedroom window, lest Cropsey come in and kidnap you.
• Where Can I Find It: Crackle, Netflix.
• Who Do I Watch With: Your friend who’s too cool for anything but documentaries.

The Lady Vanishes

• What Happens: The lady vanishes.
• How Scary Is It: Well, it’s not Antichrist, but it’s not Sesame Street either.
• Why Should I Watch It: You’re in a Hitchcock mood.
• Where Can I Find It: Netflix.
• Who Do I Watch With: Your dad, because he’s been bugging you to watch this for, like, ever.

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Scream

• What Happens: Town is terrorized by serial killer who does NOT care for Drew Barrymore movies.
• How Scary Is It: It was written by the same guy who created Dawson’s Creek. It’s about as scary as Dawson’s was serious and important: EXTREMELY.
• Why Should I Watch It: Your mom didn’t let you watch it when it came out but you did anyway, then spent the next four months refusing to answer the phone.
• Where Can I Find It: Netflix.
• Who Do I Watch With: Your mom on speed dial, because she was right — you’re not mature enough to handle this.

The Blair Witch Project

• What Happens: “Filmmakers” “investigate” a “local legend” in this “documentary.”
• How Scary Is It: It was meh back then, but with the passage of time it’s still pretty meh.
• Why Should I Watch It: Back in the day, your friend told you this was real and you’d like to see just what an idiot you were for believing him.
• Where Can I Find It: Netflix, Amazon Prime.
• Who Do I Watch With: That same jerk friend, ideally. Make him pay for the pizza and beer.

Repulsion

• What Happens: Woman spends all weekend in her pajamas, but it’s not as awesome as it sounds.
• How Scary Is It: As scary as the insidious threat of misogyny endemic to contemporary culture. Also, WTF, there are hands coming out of the walls!
• Why Should I Watch It: You’re feeling more psychological-thriller than pop-out-and-scare-you. Also, if you’d like to see Catherine Deneuve manage to look super cute while going cuh-razy.
• Where Can I Find It: Crackle.
• Who Do I Watch With: The film major you’re trying to impress.

Single White Female

• What Happens: Bridget Fonda’s roommate just wants to hang out. Why is she being so weird about it?
• How Scary Is It: It’s tough to beat mid-90s Jennifer Jason Leigh in terms of creepiness.
• Why Should I Watch It: Your roommate sucks and you’re looking for justification to kick her out.
• Where Can I Find It: Hulu, Netflix.
• Who Do I Watch With: Your roommate. Maybe she’ll take the hint. Or she’ll try to kill you. Still, it’s worth a shot.

House on Haunted Hill

• What Happens: Rich guy pits strangers against each other for his own amusement because he doesn’t have a job and his jet ski’s in the shop.
• How Scary Is It: I think the mustache speaks for itself, here.
• Why Should I Watch It: You secretly miss haunted houses.
• Where Can I Find It: Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime.
• Who Do I Watch With: Someone who definitely won’t kill you for $10,000.

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The Silence of the Lambs

• What Happens: Newbie FBI agent is just trying to catch a killer and not get her face eaten off, thankyouverymuch.
• How Scary Is It: The creepy, British cannibal is actually a good guy compared to the film’s real villain.
• Why Should I Watch It: You’re down for some cannibalism as long as it’s classy cannibalism.
• Where Can I Find It: Netflix.
• Who Do I Watch With: Some fava beans, a nice chianti, and the lotion in the basket.

Zodiac

• What Happens: Serial killer taunts the police with cryptic letters and ciphers because it’s not enough to just kill a bunch of people.
• How Scary Is It: Imagine a really, really long episode of Law & Order: SVU.
• Why Should I Watch It: You’re into unsolved mysteries and dudes in flared jeans.
• Where Can I Find It: Netflix.
• Who Do I Watch With: Susan Miller.

V/H/S

• What Happens: Kids find a dead guy and a VHS tape and they’re all, “Holy shit, a VHS tape!”
• How Scary Is It: The scares are cheap but they get the job done.
• Why Should I Watch It: You have a thing for “found footage” and a short attention span.
• Where Can I Find It: Netflix, Amazon Prime.
• Who Do I Watch With: A wide-mesh sweater you can hide inside but still look through.

Children of the Corn

• What Happens: Kids run a successful farming community despite complete lack of bedtimes.
• How Scary Is It: Uh, are you seeing this kid?
• Why Should I Watch It: You’re scared of children IRL.
• Where Can I Find It: Netflix, Amazon Prime.
• Who Do I Watch With: Two forms of birth control.

The Glass House

• What Happens: Kids lose their mom and dad in a car accident, but it’s cool because their godparents have a sick beach house.
• How Scary Is It: As scary as browsing a delia*s catalogue in the dark.
• Why Should I Watch It: You totally forgot about Leelee Sobieski.
• Where Can I Find It: Netflix.
• Who Do I Watch With: A sense of irony.

Funny Games

• What Happens: Teenagers are the worst.
• How Scary Is It: If you have to ask…
• Why Should I Watch It: You are NOT messing around.
• Where Can I Find It: Netflix.
• Who Do I Watch With: The door locked, the lights on, and strong will to live, because this movie will effectively destroy your faith in humanity.

Happy Halloween!