The upcoming Halloween season…

Hello, After Darkers! Dino Drac’s Halloween Countdown begins in a little less than a month, so I wanted to throw you some thoughts on how After Dark will be run from that point on.

My gut instinct is that trying to do daily After Dark updates during the Countdown won’t work out. Between the severe increase in streaming options and all other considerations, tossing up YouTube videos every single day seems like it’ll taper off into pointlessness.

Instead, I’m mulling over a few different ideas — namely these two:

1. Work on a thrice-a-week schedule, with different themes on the particular day. For argument’s sake, say Mondays are for movies, Wednesdays are for surveys and Saturdays are for “talk about whatever” threads.

2. In a variation of the above idea, I’d instead post *three* posts at once, probably on Friday nights. This would include a movie post, a survey post, and a “talk about whatever” thread. You’d then have an entire week to dance between them — meaning you’d have a “chat post” to be used at all times, a survey post to interact with as you see fit, and a movie post (probably with more than one video) to enjoy at your leisure.

I’m strongly leaning towards option 2, for several reasons:

– My feeling is that the “chat threads” will be more fun for you if they each have an entire week to sit on top of After Dark, as opposed to getting buried the very next day. It’s not much different from what you’ve been working with during these “cold months,” except that there will be increased attention on After Dark, so, hopefully, a little more action!

– The daily movie posts of years past were fun, but the truth is that very few people have time to *immediately* watch a movie the day it’s posted. Also, trying to fill 60 slots with valuable videos is challenging. Wouldn’t it be better to make sure the videos are especially cool, and give you more time to absorb and talk about them?

– Survey posts would theoretically see action all week long. We’ve always had a good response to those. I’m really digging the idea of separating the survey and chat posts while still having both be “current.”

All told, if we went with Option 2, I feel like you’d actually have MORE to do here than if we stayed with the original nightly updates. LMK your thoughts!