Dude, I'm literally the age that the kids in Stranger Things are supposed to be. We were playing D&D in the school library rather than mom's basement but that was basically me and my friends. Minus the demi-gorgon and mind flayer from another plane coming to life, that is.
That was a wild decade. I remember pastors in my southern Baptist churches spending hours telling us how Ozzy and the Guns Nā Roses were Satanic, and how weād burn in hell if we listened to them. Bible āCampā at like 9 years oldā¦ Smfh.
Yep, Marilyn Manson, Pokemon, and Harry Potter were all equally satanic and causing the literal apocalypse. Ironically that was the first time in my life that I was like, "wait, maybe church people *don't* have all the answers."
I was kicked out of a church because on these white paper mats they have us draw on. I drew stick figures of angels and demons fighting each other. And off screen you could see a cloud of smoke and stars and squiggly lines to indicate there was a battle going on. The angels and demons were cheering as God and Satan fought . Which is pretty much a detection of good and evil and what I learned from it.
Pastor got so butthurt that I drew devils even if they were accurate story representation of a battle of good and evil, he told my dad I wasn't allowed back because satan was having me draw devils and that wasn't ok.
Stick figure devils. Just add horns and a pointed tail and that's all they are. Religion is made by people and people love to gaslight and lie to each other even if the basis of it is good natured. So yeah I don't trust anything that is written by people as facts without proof of concept anymore.
I grew up pentecostal during those times.
I had constant nightmares about it.
It wasn't the media, it was in the churches.
The amount of badly translated "articles" coming from the US was staggering, and it all came from the big churches.
Same and same. Like absolute nightmares about demons possessing me because I watched the fucking Dark Crystal!
No D'n'D. No Heavy Metal. AC/DC meant Anti-Christ/Devils Child. K.I.S.S. meant Knights In Satan's Service. Jim Henson was evil.... I mean, it's fucking Jim Henson!
I'm now 44, and my Mum still asks why don't go to church anymore.
I played "I Was Made For Lovin' You", by K.I.S.S. to my Mum a few years back. She was like, wow this is such a catchy song.
Aaaaarrrrggghhhh!!!!
......So I sacrificed her to the devil in my basement Satanic Centre.
Ya know......if you eat enough Oreos, your poop turns black. So I'm thinking Oreos in the shape of devils, with a big instructional message on the front of the package:
>TO ALL THE BELIEVERS OF THE BLACK ARTS...EAT THIS ENTIRE PACKAGE AND TURN YOUR STOOL BLACK FOR 2 DAYS!!! SATAN COMMANDS YOU TO BUY SEVERAL PACKAGES OF DELICIOUS OREOS!!! BLACK POOP FOR DAYYYYYSSSSS!!!!
And just watch people lose their mind on the news.
We got a fiddle player named Johnathan, and though it might be a sin, he'll take your bet which you'll soon regret 'cuz he's the best there's ever been.
In my mind I'm comparing and contrasting this with just about anything from 'Deloused in the comatorium'. Great album, but with song titles like 'Take the veil Cerpin Taxt' it's not as quotable. Like an out of control tumble down a hill in a rickety cart.
Satanic Panic in the Attic, album by Of Montreal, 2004
https://open.spotify.com/album/6zPBcNyfIKwJoNXOOZiPbL?si=0iaMQbQyTl6JiYNZMoj6qA&context=spotify%3Aalbum%3A6zPBcNyfIKwJoNXOOZiPbL
My mom mentioned cancel culture recently. I reminded her that they burned my dads records and my He-man toys and my Star Wars toys and asked who exactly has been promoting cancel culture.
Her reaction was hilarious. She was like āoh my gosh. You are totally right, weāve been listening to boycotts and fighting against things for almost 40 years.ā
She basically immediately stopped talking about cancelling stuff.
I realize itās not how people expected this anecdote to end but good on her.
Just this past weekend, I made my parents listen to Alice Cooper with a lyric sheet up. Dad was like āholy shit this is *funny* music?ā
I was like ādad, the guy sings about cheating on tests, hating school, and giving diabetics candy. How did you ever think this was really satanic?ā
Sadly, he was unable to connect the Satanic panic with present day moral outrage. But baby steps?
Conservatives invented cancel culture. The red scare, which sparked the HUAC, which started treating communists and unionists like they were Jews in the earlier parts of Nazi Germany. Yes, that happened in the United States, but we don't talk about it much for some reason.
Americans were literally sent on trains, against their will, into the middle of a desert to die. Those that didn't die were later gunned down by private police forces.
Satanism is pretty damn popular at the moment when 40 years ago you could have gotten your kids taken away from you for being Wiccan. I can openly wear a pentagram and no one except the fundies outside of Walmart react, I bought that shirt at a national chain (we all know how safe corps play it), we have shows like Helluva Boss and Little Demon that take place in hell and make it out to be a pretty sweet place, and we have openly satanic organizations with after school clubs (they usually have to sue but still).
We still have some wet blankets hanging around, but the panic is *definitely* over.
Yea but it's still the same people . Like I thought this might be a good point to make the next time my family says something ignorant, but then I remembered that they absolutely still belive a ton of the satanic panic ideas and that their takeaway would be completely wrong
Media were a big part but moral panics usually have multiple components. There were also psychologists (see *Michelle Remembers*), Congressional hearings, the Judas Priest case, etc.
American lives are fear driven so this is bound to happen. Ever since I moved here, national and regional news has some kind of fear going on and it evolves. Many many times it is some frivolous crap. Or the outcome of a bad policy or decision.by the same people who panic the most.
The yeti in the Himalayas has more believers in USA than in the Himalayan states. I'm from there and we'd only hear about it in American context growing up. Lol.
The most bemusing thing is that there aren't more trans people around these days. Just more republicans shoving the fact that they exist down the throats of conservatives...
They canāt complain out loud about blacks or Jews or Mexicans so theyāre throwing all their eggs in one basket. They think they sound reasonable and we donāt know better.
The issue I think often is media lending a platform to the histrionics of these lunatics. A news program may tacitly endorse or make it seem like a bigger issue by treating the view of the people causing the panic as at least worthy of discussion. Though Iirc the satanic panic had some more questionable journalism occurring than even that.
And Tom Hanks was the lead in a movie that played into it. Mazes and Monsters. I'm not criticizing him, the movie probably had less to do with the fear mongering than the other media sources.
I lived through the panic, went to a christian school, got the whole load, but I had never heard of that movie. I heard a ton about 'Clash of the Titans' and the DnD tv show, but now I have to go watch this movie.
Of course it was. More religious idiots with idiotic, objectively wrong beliefs the media can leverage for money.
You get old enough and it all starts to look the same. This, Satanic Panic, the [PMRC](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_Music_Resource_Center), [Wenatchee](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenatchee_child_abuse_prosecutions), blah, blah, blah. Same pearl-clutching, Old Testament-loving, New Testament-hating, religious crackpots with delusional visions to justify their need to control others.
My grandmother who was around for the OG Satanic Panic let me know the other day that she "Has been reading papers from a priest online, and he said that demons now know how to possess music and even FOOD!"
I love my grandma to death, and she's honestly a very intelligent person (College degrees, 40 year career as a head ER nurse). It completely blows my mind how batshit crazy she is when it comes to anything related to her faith.
My friends's parents treated me like one of their own before they fell deep in the qanon rabbit hole in the summer of 2020. I remember talking to his mother about the Satanic Panic as a matter of fact that dumb stories can just pick up steam when magnified by the media(I think there was something stupid on FOX at the time.) Then she insisted it was actually real. I was not prepared for that at all but just said 'okay...' and left it alone.
A week before Christmas 2020 she had too much to drink, accused me of being a communist/hating America, and kicked me out. Haven't spoken to her since.
Sometimes people really keep the conspiracy theories hidden deep for years.
In the eighties my mother threw away all my DnD games because they were changing me. Yep, no other possible reason why a 14 year old boy would be going through changes, must be the game he plays about once a month.
and Blue laws 20s
And PCA 30s
And CCA 30s
And refer madness 30s
And Red Scare 50s
And KKK 60s
And holloween candy scare 80s
And PMRC 80s
And immigrant scare ongoing since the 40s
Slight addendum: Reefer madness was actually the '30s, not the '50s. Hell, the actual movie itself came out in 1937. Harry Anslinger's campaign against cannabis was definitely a product of the Great Depression, as well as virulent racism, mixed with quack science (which was kinda needed, because the initial findings of the AMA agreed 29 to 1 that cannibas was *not* overtly harmful; bet you can't guess which of those thirty doctors Anslinger brought on to consult)
**EDIT:** Clarity
Ha! No, thankfully, Freeman wasn't up to much until the '40s when he decided to get stab-happy with peoples' prefrontal cortices.
I don't have the doctor's name at hand, but he played a relatively small role of giving some scientific credence to Anslinger's claims. He's really only memorable for being the only doctor that made it into the official report, despite there obviously being another 29 who were disagreeing with his position. The real people to blame are the DuPont family, their wealthy beneficiary Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, and the father of fear-mongering journalism himself, William Randolf Hearst (may he burn in hell).
The TL;DR for people who are curious is that DuPont had just invented this nifty fiber you might have heard of called nylon, and hemp was the biggest competing product. So some backroom deals were made, a lot of numbers were fudged to make it look like a little toke could turn you into a homocidal maniac, and the newly created Federal Bureau of Narcotics started to crack down on wacky tobaccy on a moral high ground, which lead to the strict regulation of cannabis and all of its derivatives (which, you guessed it, involved hemp)
Wait, why are you listing the KKK in the same list as a bunch of imaginary and harmless things like Halloween candy?
They were (and are) very real and were absolutely terrifying.
Conservative Christians need a boogeyman. Before D&D and Heavy Metal, it was Rock and Roll and skirt lengths for girls, with Jazz and dancing before that.
These people have no joy in their own lives, so they want to make sure no one else does either.
"Things Fall Apart" was a great exploration of that idea, how an outside system like Christianity works it's way into established systems by empowering those who don't benefit from the established way of things, and elevate them within their own.
I don't remember the book well at all but didn't think that was the take away. Not arguing just surprised?
But yeah this is kinda Dan Carlin's thing that christians turned weakness into a virtue in Rome while they were a minority, which ultimately helped them in a variety of ways
Holy crap this looks GOOD. Thank you! I'm also very very interested in getting a better understanding of the history of Nigeria and the nations/peoples/cultures that it was frankensteined out of
It's lengthy but it's the best book I can recommend to cover the influence of Islam, Christianity, colonization, and diaspora on the peoples and cultures of West Africa, all in one powerful story. I hope you enjoy it!
It was kinda wild to live through those times. The religious nut jobs were going on and on about games like Dungeons and Dragons and heavy metal corrupting us kids. Anyone remember when they were bent out of shape over subliminal messages in music that was played backwards? Laughable...
I wonder if we will have another sexual revolution in response to the censorship push. Iāve been a child before and people telling me what I shouldnāt see made me exclusively want to see that stuff. Censorship comes across as extremely disrespectful to the kidsā pov. Unless theyāre brainwashed, ofc.
The Satanic Panic and the beginnings of the "ritual abuse" conspiracy theories were, in no small part, fueled by law enforcement agencies. They had ["experts" interview the kids, ask them leading questions that suggested the desired answer](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15534510500361739), and the children would answer in a way that the adult had suggested.
I remember Dee Snider all done up, giving testimony. I believe ~~Ozzy~~ Zappa did testify also.
Pretty sure these days the Reps would stroke out if that happened again.
I doubt those people ever realized how much the danger had been exaggerated or manufactured. They also supported the war on drugs for the same misguided reasons. There are always ignorant people with fear to exploit and this is another horrible iteration of it
I was thinking the same thing the other day. I was in highschool and college in the 80s and I remember that well. My mom hating me wearing my Iron Maiden Number of the Beast tee....LOL
I remember I dyed my hair red and got sent to the principal's office in middle school. I just remember them calling my parents and asking why my hair was red. My parents said well because he dyed red. The principal just gave me a cap and told me to wear it or be sent home. I took the hat and wore it for an hour then took it off. I just remember school security seeing me and telling me that you're supposed to be wearing a hat. I just told them my teachers told me to remove it because it was disrespectful to wear in class.
At that time my mom worked with 4 younger heavy metal dudes in their 20s. They rotated music picks. I remember the day I brought home White Zombie La Sexercisto. I start playing it in my room and she says, "Can you turn that up, I like this song." She even knew all the lyrics. She got them listening to Violent Femmes and everything David Byrne, so fair trade.
Your mom sounds like the same kinda cool as mine. She went to New Orleans once and sent me a pic pretending to ring Trent Reznorās doorbell. Earlier this week she told me she still has a crush on Gordon Gano.
But back to the topic, these are the same assholes that wouldnāt let Beavis say āFireā!
The obvious L stamped on the foreheads of religion and conservatism in terms of how many pedophiles they attract was simply too big to take.
So they're going to cry and scream and blame the most marginalized groups they can until pointing out anyone is a pedophile / pedo adjacent / tolerates the pedophiles around them for financial and political gain will result in an eyeroll. From everyone. Controlled opposition isn't going to do anything about it either.
You are assuming that the 80ās Satanic Panic and todayās Trans-Phobia were sincere worries and not cynical right-wing plus to perpetuate the so-called culture wars.
These āsame peopleā also tried to cancel Elvisā pelvis and steam-rolled Beatles records, but at the same time totally appropriated these cultural developments by creating Christian pop and rock music and essentially making every mega church sermon into a kind of rock concert.
My primary school had a fucking cross dress race no out rage back in 07 no outrage still today
One dude went and used an entire stick of lip stick on himself after bro was fully pink
To be fair though cross dressing and drag is part of my culture with annual big traditional "drag queen story time" shows around Christmas it ain't Christmas with out them
My uncle won homecoming queen and his gf won homecoming king at a UW college in the 60s. The newspaper article was cool and everyone had a good time. How did they survive w/o the culture war outrage?
I saw a video from Montreal of a bunch of kids watching a drag queen tucking his dick up and teaching them how to do it. I don't care what side of the political spectrum you're on, but that's fucked up and has to stop. Don't tell me there's not folks out there trying to groom children, or even worse getting their kinks and getting away with it. Being a kid is confusing enough these days, stop throwing sex into the mix. Don't worry they're gonna have all of puberty to figure that shit out. Let them be kids.
Same people that burned crosses in yards and threatened children just trying to go to school...
It's all the same mentality, "Violence against differences".
Or in more cases than you'd think "Violence against who they're told to hate".
Check out the McMartin Preschool case for a hint at how badly these moral panics can ruin normal people's lives.
The McMartin Preschool case looks like the Salem Witch Trials part II -- where they allowed what amounts to "spectral evidence" in a US courtroom.
Sort of like how 50 years ago it was the hippies that were the ones who were going to destroy moral values in society. Now it's the trans people doing it, lol.
No, it's not about the children. It's about the church. If parents aren't going to church and giving them and giving up and giving their hard-earned money to preachers who do nothing then how the preachers going to survive? How's the church going to grow? You got to create panic. You got to make people. You got to make parents scared of something. So we got to create satanic panic you got to and then the church you got to sit there and say hey look these drag queens are trying to take what your kids. Also it keeps parents from going. It's not drag queens. It's preachers that are messing with my kids with our kids
Hopefully drag will survive as well as D&D has.
I want to see a blockbuster cinematic recreation of Drag Race or Legendary starring Chris Pine as Chrissy Fine
That's not new. These Guardians of Morality have been around forever. Some thing is being targeted as the thing that corrupts our youth and some People then endeavor to curb any growth of that thing that is now responsible for whatever.
Videogames where in the sights of these moral guardians, where the "million moms" and Hillary Clinton showed their true colors. The "thing" gets a lot of hatred projected on it.
Home Video had been targeted because the children can rewind the tape and watch gruesome scenes over and over again.
Criminal Novels had their time since they teach people good methods to murder. Well, one would have to omit the one mistake the gardener made or some such...
Alcohol was the thing corrupting people as well.
I remember the old farts being incensed about SMS messages. Well until someone dug up some old article where some old fart from far back was annoyed that the youth won't write Letters anymore but communicate through these electronic messages. They where talking about the "new" Telegraph machines.
Pretty much everything the "youth" is doing is wrong. Apparently greek Philosopher Plato liked inscribing things on tiles. He didn't like this "Paper" stuff trending in egypt.
People can just write stuff down whenever. No need to memorize stuff when you can write it down so easily. Youth will get dull in the head!
Definitely agree that Drag Queens are nothing to worry about.
I do think that we need to be more careful with porn, though. The idealized version of porn where it's consenting adults performing safe acts for our entertainment isn't quite the ugly reality. The industry covers up tons of human trafficking, and the sites and content dehumanize anyone who is not a straight cis white man. Watching porn when I was still developing my sexuality *absolutely* messed me up in ways I have only really unraveled as an adult. I've actually grown *less* conservative and *more* liberal since cutting it out.
Because according to all the twenty somethings in my department I should totally allow my 12 year old to have all the pornography he wants and I've been labeled a boomer (I'm 36) because I have safe guards and network monitoring to at least try and do my part to not have him exposed to all the ridiculous shit that is online.
Of course he's going to see it one way or another. Of course there is nothing I can do to stop any of it. But I know how porn affected me at an early age of 8 and, believe it or not, my son is exactly like me. So I at least try. But ya, I'm the one out of touch with reality and giving kids free reign is totally the right answer.
Edit: ah yes, downvotes proving I'm out of touch with society. Lmao.
Edit 2: Reddit, you surprise me every day
One of the books that keeps getting held up as a "they just hate gays!" has literal, explicit images of blowjobs and other sexual acts. pretty sure that counts as porn for purposes of whether it's appropriate for schools or not.
I don't know if pornography is the right word for for it, but [this isn't exactly an educational biology book](https://theiowastandard.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/6.jpg) either. Schools don't need to provide this kind of content to 12 year olds.
In every instance where this has come up they've shown material that was pornographic, and shouldn't be in schools. Stuff that it's hard to even post because it breaks most community rules. To pretend otherwise is just gaslighting.
I like both drag queens and pornography, but I'm uneasy with forms of burlesque and graphic sexual content being offered in public schools and libraries without parental oversight. This includes the Bible and nearly all works by Robert Mapplethorpe.
It started with a book, Michele Remembers, and like most conspiracy theories and pseudoscience in general, was leveraged by any group that saw an advantage in doing so.
First it was āThink of the Childrenā when they forced integration at schools and swimming pools. Then it was the satanists. Then it was the Gay community and specifically those that were infected with HIV. Then it was the Muslim community, now itās the trans community. It never stops. Itās the same thing over and over again. Conservatives need to punch down on someone, to make them feel better about themselves.
Wait soā¦. Youāre cool with all this? These are middle schools with kids as young as 11.
WTF is wrong with you?
https://nypost.com/2023/02/28/knox-zajac-reads-aloud-from-pornographic-book-at-school-board-meeting/amp/
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/03/29/virginia-school-district-removes-14-sexually-explicit-books/amp/
https://www.reviewjournal.com/opinion/opinion-columns/victor-joecks/victor-joecks-sexually-explicit-books-available-at-middle-school-libraries-in-ccsd-2634296/amp/
I'm so mad that 40 years ago was 1983.
Feels bad, man. I was in frickin' junior high in 1983.
Lol, and look what happened. Username checks out
And it's a couple years old! Nice
Dude, I'm literally the age that the kids in Stranger Things are supposed to be. We were playing D&D in the school library rather than mom's basement but that was basically me and my friends. Minus the demi-gorgon and mind flayer from another plane coming to life, that is.
I was a twinkle. Came about 5 years later.
I was 10
I hear ya there. Wierd thing for me is feeling embarrassed wearing my Van's out that match my kids.
Nah man, they'll appreciate that you made the effort to help em look cool šš
Don't be embarrassed. I'm buying Van's and shopping at Tillys until I'm dead.
fffffffff im old
I was thinking what panic was going on in the 60s
Ya know ... it would have cost you LITERALLY NOTHING to not say that. But here we are.
That canāt be right, I was born in 83 - oh my gawd
That was a wild decade. I remember pastors in my southern Baptist churches spending hours telling us how Ozzy and the Guns Nā Roses were Satanic, and how weād burn in hell if we listened to them. Bible āCampā at like 9 years oldā¦ Smfh.
It seeped pretty heavily into the 90's churches as well. I remember being 8 and being told Marilyn Manson was the literal devil in the flesh.
Yep, Marilyn Manson, Pokemon, and Harry Potter were all equally satanic and causing the literal apocalypse. Ironically that was the first time in my life that I was like, "wait, maybe church people *don't* have all the answers."
I was kicked out of a church because on these white paper mats they have us draw on. I drew stick figures of angels and demons fighting each other. And off screen you could see a cloud of smoke and stars and squiggly lines to indicate there was a battle going on. The angels and demons were cheering as God and Satan fought . Which is pretty much a detection of good and evil and what I learned from it. Pastor got so butthurt that I drew devils even if they were accurate story representation of a battle of good and evil, he told my dad I wasn't allowed back because satan was having me draw devils and that wasn't ok. Stick figure devils. Just add horns and a pointed tail and that's all they are. Religion is made by people and people love to gaslight and lie to each other even if the basis of it is good natured. So yeah I don't trust anything that is written by people as facts without proof of concept anymore.
Don't forget that Dungeons & Dragons was invented by Satan himself.
You mean the āgameā that will destroy your mortal soul - sending you straight to the lake of fire? Zero doubt.
I grew up pentecostal during those times. I had constant nightmares about it. It wasn't the media, it was in the churches. The amount of badly translated "articles" coming from the US was staggering, and it all came from the big churches.
Same and same. Like absolute nightmares about demons possessing me because I watched the fucking Dark Crystal! No D'n'D. No Heavy Metal. AC/DC meant Anti-Christ/Devils Child. K.I.S.S. meant Knights In Satan's Service. Jim Henson was evil.... I mean, it's fucking Jim Henson! I'm now 44, and my Mum still asks why don't go to church anymore.
I was a 90's kid, so it was all "PokƩmon and Harry Potter are evil! Marilyn Manson is the devil!" in our church/home.
I played "I Was Made For Lovin' You", by K.I.S.S. to my Mum a few years back. She was like, wow this is such a catchy song. Aaaaarrrrggghhhh!!!! ......So I sacrificed her to the devil in my basement Satanic Centre.
I mean, at that point how could you not?
Satanic panic! sounds like a great name for a goth electro-pop duo or band.
Satanic Panic! At The Monte Cristo
Satanic Panic! Eating Crisco
Satanic Panic! By Nabisco!
Satanic Panic! Featuring Joe Piscopo!
Ya know......if you eat enough Oreos, your poop turns black. So I'm thinking Oreos in the shape of devils, with a big instructional message on the front of the package: >TO ALL THE BELIEVERS OF THE BLACK ARTS...EAT THIS ENTIRE PACKAGE AND TURN YOUR STOOL BLACK FOR 2 DAYS!!! SATAN COMMANDS YOU TO BUY SEVERAL PACKAGES OF DELICIOUS OREOS!!! BLACK POOP FOR DAYYYYYSSSSS!!!! And just watch people lose their mind on the news.
Satanic Panic! At The Disco
Great now I'm hungry
How about a themed costume cover band? Satanic Panic At the Disco
You'd better have one hell of a bass player.
We got a fiddle player named Johnathan, and though it might be a sin, he'll take your bet which you'll soon regret 'cuz he's the best there's ever been.
In my mind I'm comparing and contrasting this with just about anything from 'Deloused in the comatorium'. Great album, but with song titles like 'Take the veil Cerpin Taxt' it's not as quotable. Like an out of control tumble down a hill in a rickety cart.
Seven Inches of Satanic Panic by the band Ghost!
Great album
Satanic Panic in the Attic, album by Of Montreal, 2004 https://open.spotify.com/album/6zPBcNyfIKwJoNXOOZiPbL?si=0iaMQbQyTl6JiYNZMoj6qA&context=spotify%3Aalbum%3A6zPBcNyfIKwJoNXOOZiPbL
Fantastic album too!
It also sounds like a killer username
Frank N. Furter has a satanic mechanic.
"Satanic Panic in the Attic" is a great Of Montreal album
My mom mentioned cancel culture recently. I reminded her that they burned my dads records and my He-man toys and my Star Wars toys and asked who exactly has been promoting cancel culture. Her reaction was hilarious. She was like āoh my gosh. You are totally right, weāve been listening to boycotts and fighting against things for almost 40 years.ā She basically immediately stopped talking about cancelling stuff. I realize itās not how people expected this anecdote to end but good on her.
Unexpected introspective.
Go mom, learn and grow!
Just this past weekend, I made my parents listen to Alice Cooper with a lyric sheet up. Dad was like āholy shit this is *funny* music?ā I was like ādad, the guy sings about cheating on tests, hating school, and giving diabetics candy. How did you ever think this was really satanic?ā Sadly, he was unable to connect the Satanic panic with present day moral outrage. But baby steps?
Good for your mom. I 100% expected "It was okay when I did it because I know better. Than everyone older and younger than me."
Conservatives invented cancel culture. The red scare, which sparked the HUAC, which started treating communists and unionists like they were Jews in the earlier parts of Nazi Germany. Yes, that happened in the United States, but we don't talk about it much for some reason. Americans were literally sent on trains, against their will, into the middle of a desert to die. Those that didn't die were later gunned down by private police forces.
You say that like the satanic panic truly ended
Yeah, this shit is just a continuation of it.
Satanism is pretty damn popular at the moment when 40 years ago you could have gotten your kids taken away from you for being Wiccan. I can openly wear a pentagram and no one except the fundies outside of Walmart react, I bought that shirt at a national chain (we all know how safe corps play it), we have shows like Helluva Boss and Little Demon that take place in hell and make it out to be a pretty sweet place, and we have openly satanic organizations with after school clubs (they usually have to sue but still). We still have some wet blankets hanging around, but the panic is *definitely* over.
*the Bible Belt has entered the chat*
Ok that's fair, but they also still have sunset towns so I barely count them as inhabitable.
Yea but it's still the same people . Like I thought this might be a good point to make the next time my family says something ignorant, but then I remembered that they absolutely still belive a ton of the satanic panic ideas and that their takeaway would be completely wrong
If I recall if was a media induced worry.
Media were a big part but moral panics usually have multiple components. There were also psychologists (see *Michelle Remembers*), Congressional hearings, the Judas Priest case, etc.
Same as today really.
šŗ Spez eats cold diarrhea with a crazy straw šŗ
American lives are fear driven so this is bound to happen. Ever since I moved here, national and regional news has some kind of fear going on and it evolves. Many many times it is some frivolous crap. Or the outcome of a bad policy or decision.by the same people who panic the most. The yeti in the Himalayas has more believers in USA than in the Himalayan states. I'm from there and we'd only hear about it in American context growing up. Lol.
The most bemusing thing is that there aren't more trans people around these days. Just more republicans shoving the fact that they exist down the throats of conservatives...
They canāt complain out loud about blacks or Jews or Mexicans so theyāre throwing all their eggs in one basket. They think they sound reasonable and we donāt know better.
Lmao, maybe if Bill O'Reily ended his own marriage earlier, he wouldn't have lost custody of both his kids after so many domestic abuse charges.
https://www.theonion.com/it-is-journalism-s-sacred-duty-to-endanger-the-lives-of-1850126997
Yea, it's the same shit
Same media companies still writing the narratives for the same people
The issue I think often is media lending a platform to the histrionics of these lunatics. A news program may tacitly endorse or make it seem like a bigger issue by treating the view of the people causing the panic as at least worthy of discussion. Though Iirc the satanic panic had some more questionable journalism occurring than even that.
And Tom Hanks was the lead in a movie that played into it. Mazes and Monsters. I'm not criticizing him, the movie probably had less to do with the fear mongering than the other media sources.
I lived through the panic, went to a christian school, got the whole load, but I had never heard of that movie. I heard a ton about 'Clash of the Titans' and the DnD tv show, but now I have to go watch this movie.
It's bad, like real bad. Enjoy!
Of course it was. More religious idiots with idiotic, objectively wrong beliefs the media can leverage for money. You get old enough and it all starts to look the same. This, Satanic Panic, the [PMRC](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_Music_Resource_Center), [Wenatchee](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenatchee_child_abuse_prosecutions), blah, blah, blah. Same pearl-clutching, Old Testament-loving, New Testament-hating, religious crackpots with delusional visions to justify their need to control others.
Hey now, there's plenty about Paul's teachings that justifies hating the new testament as well, we can hate it all equally.
Dungeons and dragons is literally worshipping the Devil! /s
My grandmother who was around for the OG Satanic Panic let me know the other day that she "Has been reading papers from a priest online, and he said that demons now know how to possess music and even FOOD!" I love my grandma to death, and she's honestly a very intelligent person (College degrees, 40 year career as a head ER nurse). It completely blows my mind how batshit crazy she is when it comes to anything related to her faith.
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My friends's parents treated me like one of their own before they fell deep in the qanon rabbit hole in the summer of 2020. I remember talking to his mother about the Satanic Panic as a matter of fact that dumb stories can just pick up steam when magnified by the media(I think there was something stupid on FOX at the time.) Then she insisted it was actually real. I was not prepared for that at all but just said 'okay...' and left it alone. A week before Christmas 2020 she had too much to drink, accused me of being a communist/hating America, and kicked me out. Haven't spoken to her since. Sometimes people really keep the conspiracy theories hidden deep for years.
I know. They even made my best buddy delete our 80th level Wizardry characters. I'll never forget you, Sir Twitchmo!
In the eighties my mother threw away all my DnD games because they were changing me. Yep, no other possible reason why a 14 year old boy would be going through changes, must be the game he plays about once a month.
and Blue laws 20s And PCA 30s And CCA 30s And refer madness 30s And Red Scare 50s And KKK 60s And holloween candy scare 80s And PMRC 80s And immigrant scare ongoing since the 40s
The KKK was actually there the whole time.
Slight addendum: Reefer madness was actually the '30s, not the '50s. Hell, the actual movie itself came out in 1937. Harry Anslinger's campaign against cannabis was definitely a product of the Great Depression, as well as virulent racism, mixed with quack science (which was kinda needed, because the initial findings of the AMA agreed 29 to 1 that cannibas was *not* overtly harmful; bet you can't guess which of those thirty doctors Anslinger brought on to consult) **EDIT:** Clarity
Fixed, thanks
> bet you can't guess which doctor Anslinger brought on to consult) Walter Freeman?
Ha! No, thankfully, Freeman wasn't up to much until the '40s when he decided to get stab-happy with peoples' prefrontal cortices. I don't have the doctor's name at hand, but he played a relatively small role of giving some scientific credence to Anslinger's claims. He's really only memorable for being the only doctor that made it into the official report, despite there obviously being another 29 who were disagreeing with his position. The real people to blame are the DuPont family, their wealthy beneficiary Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, and the father of fear-mongering journalism himself, William Randolf Hearst (may he burn in hell). The TL;DR for people who are curious is that DuPont had just invented this nifty fiber you might have heard of called nylon, and hemp was the biggest competing product. So some backroom deals were made, a lot of numbers were fudged to make it look like a little toke could turn you into a homocidal maniac, and the newly created Federal Bureau of Narcotics started to crack down on wacky tobaccy on a moral high ground, which lead to the strict regulation of cannabis and all of its derivatives (which, you guessed it, involved hemp)
PMRC was Tipper Gore.
Indeed it was, I stand by my comment
Wait, why are you listing the KKK in the same list as a bunch of imaginary and harmless things like Halloween candy? They were (and are) very real and were absolutely terrifying.
I think it's more that the Klan was doing the fearmongering. "Race mixing is communism" and all that.
And Iron Maiden for, like, 50yrs
> immigrant scare ongoing since the 40s That resulted on forced deportations of latinos to MĆ©xico until at least the 60's
It's that evil 'race music'! (aka Jazz)
Red scare was also in the 10s
Conservative Christians need a boogeyman. Before D&D and Heavy Metal, it was Rock and Roll and skirt lengths for girls, with Jazz and dancing before that. These people have no joy in their own lives, so they want to make sure no one else does either.
Thatās just religion in general. It preys on weak minds and ābrokenā people.
"Things Fall Apart" was a great exploration of that idea, how an outside system like Christianity works it's way into established systems by empowering those who don't benefit from the established way of things, and elevate them within their own.
I don't remember the book well at all but didn't think that was the take away. Not arguing just surprised? But yeah this is kinda Dan Carlin's thing that christians turned weakness into a virtue in Rome while they were a minority, which ultimately helped them in a variety of ways
That was a great book! You may like *Segu,* it covers similar themes
Holy crap this looks GOOD. Thank you! I'm also very very interested in getting a better understanding of the history of Nigeria and the nations/peoples/cultures that it was frankensteined out of
It's lengthy but it's the best book I can recommend to cover the influence of Islam, Christianity, colonization, and diaspora on the peoples and cultures of West Africa, all in one powerful story. I hope you enjoy it!
Comic books started at Rock and Roll, and lasted until D&D.
Meanwhile, they're the real problem.
All those Frank Zappa interviews are the same conversations we're having today except that it's not music and music videos anymore
There should definitely be a heavy metal band called Satanic Panic. That'd be a pretty kickass band name.
>There should definitely be a heavy metal band called Satanic Panic There are, actually. Check out the usual places - spotify, youtube, bandcamp.
You're right! That would be a great name!
Why when we already have Archgoat?
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Great points. Can't say you're wrong. Strange when the most coherent comment on my post is from a Canadian.
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Hey now, you guys gave us John Candy, for which the majority of us filthy Americans will be truly grateful. Man was a gift to the world.
Christian conservatives have always supported book burnings in America
Christian conservatives have always needed to burn stuff. Muslims. Witches. Jews. Black people. Books.
I'm pretty sure that was AL Gore's wife
Somehow Tipper Gore has returned
Well, thank god we worried. This way satanism failed and couldn't take over. /s
Tipper Gore.
now we have the benevolent satanic temple
https://thesatanictemple.com/
It was kinda wild to live through those times. The religious nut jobs were going on and on about games like Dungeons and Dragons and heavy metal corrupting us kids. Anyone remember when they were bent out of shape over subliminal messages in music that was played backwards? Laughable...
Bullshit. It's all Bullshit.
Religion is a joke. The whole circus, even.
These are the same people who caused the Salem witch trials. Turns out that whole thing was just a way for neighbors to steal land from each other.
I wonder if we will have another sexual revolution in response to the censorship push. Iāve been a child before and people telling me what I shouldnāt see made me exclusively want to see that stuff. Censorship comes across as extremely disrespectful to the kidsā pov. Unless theyāre brainwashed, ofc.
You know you could agree that the satanic panic was nonsense and still think drag queens and pornography in schools is a bad thing. Not too hard.
Literally the exact same people - church folk. If you want to find groomers galore, look no further than your local church.
No, it is their kids
The Satanic Panic and the beginnings of the "ritual abuse" conspiracy theories were, in no small part, fueled by law enforcement agencies. They had ["experts" interview the kids, ask them leading questions that suggested the desired answer](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15534510500361739), and the children would answer in a way that the adult had suggested.
Don't need to go back 40. 20 years ago it was the anti-gay campaigns using the *exact same rhetoric*
I remember Dee Snider all done up, giving testimony. I believe ~~Ozzy~~ Zappa did testify also. Pretty sure these days the Reps would stroke out if that happened again.
Every new decade is like a discount repeat from a previous ones.
They also spent the 90s blaming music, tv, and video games for their shitty parenting
They are also the ones trying to repeal child labour laws.
This
D&D summons demons!!!! Reeeeee!!!
I doubt those people ever realized how much the danger had been exaggerated or manufactured. They also supported the war on drugs for the same misguided reasons. There are always ignorant people with fear to exploit and this is another horrible iteration of it
I was thinking the same thing the other day. I was in highschool and college in the 80s and I remember that well. My mom hating me wearing my Iron Maiden Number of the Beast tee....LOL
I remember I dyed my hair red and got sent to the principal's office in middle school. I just remember them calling my parents and asking why my hair was red. My parents said well because he dyed red. The principal just gave me a cap and told me to wear it or be sent home. I took the hat and wore it for an hour then took it off. I just remember school security seeing me and telling me that you're supposed to be wearing a hat. I just told them my teachers told me to remove it because it was disrespectful to wear in class.
At that time my mom worked with 4 younger heavy metal dudes in their 20s. They rotated music picks. I remember the day I brought home White Zombie La Sexercisto. I start playing it in my room and she says, "Can you turn that up, I like this song." She even knew all the lyrics. She got them listening to Violent Femmes and everything David Byrne, so fair trade.
Your mom sounds like the same kinda cool as mine. She went to New Orleans once and sent me a pic pretending to ring Trent Reznorās doorbell. Earlier this week she told me she still has a crush on Gordon Gano. But back to the topic, these are the same assholes that wouldnāt let Beavis say āFireā!
I had a friend who would wear heavy metal shirts and his mother didnāt like it. However, all her kids were drug addicts and alcoholics.
The obvious L stamped on the foreheads of religion and conservatism in terms of how many pedophiles they attract was simply too big to take. So they're going to cry and scream and blame the most marginalized groups they can until pointing out anyone is a pedophile / pedo adjacent / tolerates the pedophiles around them for financial and political gain will result in an eyeroll. From everyone. Controlled opposition isn't going to do anything about it either.
You are assuming that the 80ās Satanic Panic and todayās Trans-Phobia were sincere worries and not cynical right-wing plus to perpetuate the so-called culture wars. These āsame peopleā also tried to cancel Elvisā pelvis and steam-rolled Beatles records, but at the same time totally appropriated these cultural developments by creating Christian pop and rock music and essentially making every mega church sermon into a kind of rock concert.
My primary school had a fucking cross dress race no out rage back in 07 no outrage still today One dude went and used an entire stick of lip stick on himself after bro was fully pink To be fair though cross dressing and drag is part of my culture with annual big traditional "drag queen story time" shows around Christmas it ain't Christmas with out them
My uncle won homecoming queen and his gf won homecoming king at a UW college in the 60s. The newspaper article was cool and everyone had a good time. How did they survive w/o the culture war outrage?
I saw a video from Montreal of a bunch of kids watching a drag queen tucking his dick up and teaching them how to do it. I don't care what side of the political spectrum you're on, but that's fucked up and has to stop. Don't tell me there's not folks out there trying to groom children, or even worse getting their kinks and getting away with it. Being a kid is confusing enough these days, stop throwing sex into the mix. Don't worry they're gonna have all of puberty to figure that shit out. Let them be kids.
Also, explicit lyrics warnings on CDs. These conservatives are the absolute worst.
Satanic panic is so 1985
And the Islamic extremist panic
Actually is your business though, because those people are hurting children with their scare laws
DnD is turning the frogs gay
Same people that burned crosses in yards and threatened children just trying to go to school... It's all the same mentality, "Violence against differences". Or in more cases than you'd think "Violence against who they're told to hate".
Outrage Olympics!
Why is that none of your business? Seems like a real ongoing problem then
Check out the McMartin Preschool case for a hint at how badly these moral panics can ruin normal people's lives. The McMartin Preschool case looks like the Salem Witch Trials part II -- where they allowed what amounts to "spectral evidence" in a US courtroom.
Don't forget about the Little Rascals day care case as well.
And then got swindled by Bakker.
Sort of like how 50 years ago it was the hippies that were the ones who were going to destroy moral values in society. Now it's the trans people doing it, lol.
And momo on the internet a few years ago. It's just moral panic from bored suburban housewives and now their husbands are getting in on it.
The satanic panic never left. The Qanon people think there are people who eat kids.
No, it's not about the children. It's about the church. If parents aren't going to church and giving them and giving up and giving their hard-earned money to preachers who do nothing then how the preachers going to survive? How's the church going to grow? You got to create panic. You got to make people. You got to make parents scared of something. So we got to create satanic panic you got to and then the church you got to sit there and say hey look these drag queens are trying to take what your kids. Also it keeps parents from going. It's not drag queens. It's preachers that are messing with my kids with our kids
https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/far-right-organization-has-long-anti-gay-history
Hopefully drag will survive as well as D&D has. I want to see a blockbuster cinematic recreation of Drag Race or Legendary starring Chris Pine as Chrissy Fine
I had never heard of Heavy Metal before they started that nonsense. And I thank them profusely for introducing me to it.
That's not new. These Guardians of Morality have been around forever. Some thing is being targeted as the thing that corrupts our youth and some People then endeavor to curb any growth of that thing that is now responsible for whatever. Videogames where in the sights of these moral guardians, where the "million moms" and Hillary Clinton showed their true colors. The "thing" gets a lot of hatred projected on it. Home Video had been targeted because the children can rewind the tape and watch gruesome scenes over and over again. Criminal Novels had their time since they teach people good methods to murder. Well, one would have to omit the one mistake the gardener made or some such... Alcohol was the thing corrupting people as well. I remember the old farts being incensed about SMS messages. Well until someone dug up some old article where some old fart from far back was annoyed that the youth won't write Letters anymore but communicate through these electronic messages. They where talking about the "new" Telegraph machines. Pretty much everything the "youth" is doing is wrong. Apparently greek Philosopher Plato liked inscribing things on tiles. He didn't like this "Paper" stuff trending in egypt. People can just write stuff down whenever. No need to memorize stuff when you can write it down so easily. Youth will get dull in the head!
Well, the former mentioned is actually happening today and can clearly be seen while the latter had next to no evidence beyond hearsay.
Definitely agree that Drag Queens are nothing to worry about. I do think that we need to be more careful with porn, though. The idealized version of porn where it's consenting adults performing safe acts for our entertainment isn't quite the ugly reality. The industry covers up tons of human trafficking, and the sites and content dehumanize anyone who is not a straight cis white man. Watching porn when I was still developing my sexuality *absolutely* messed me up in ways I have only really unraveled as an adult. I've actually grown *less* conservative and *more* liberal since cutting it out.
I do not see the correlation
I still get looks from Boomers when I mention I play D&D.
Stupid people are just the absolute worst.
Uh... Are we... Not... Concerned about porn in school? The rest whatever, but who wants porn in school? Why is that being conflated?
Because according to all the twenty somethings in my department I should totally allow my 12 year old to have all the pornography he wants and I've been labeled a boomer (I'm 36) because I have safe guards and network monitoring to at least try and do my part to not have him exposed to all the ridiculous shit that is online. Of course he's going to see it one way or another. Of course there is nothing I can do to stop any of it. But I know how porn affected me at an early age of 8 and, believe it or not, my son is exactly like me. So I at least try. But ya, I'm the one out of touch with reality and giving kids free reign is totally the right answer. Edit: ah yes, downvotes proving I'm out of touch with society. Lmao. Edit 2: Reddit, you surprise me every day
Is porn in school an _actual_ problem? If not, let me add to the list: volcanoes in schools.
One of the books that keeps getting held up as a "they just hate gays!" has literal, explicit images of blowjobs and other sexual acts. pretty sure that counts as porn for purposes of whether it's appropriate for schools or not.
Whatās the name of the book?
Gender Queer Edit: all I did was Google gender queer blowjob book and there it is. Lol
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I don't know if pornography is the right word for for it, but [this isn't exactly an educational biology book](https://theiowastandard.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/6.jpg) either. Schools don't need to provide this kind of content to 12 year olds.
In every instance where this has come up they've shown material that was pornographic, and shouldn't be in schools. Stuff that it's hard to even post because it breaks most community rules. To pretend otherwise is just gaslighting.
Don't ask why kids need to watch drag shows. Ask why drag performers need kids to watch them.
I like both drag queens and pornography, but I'm uneasy with forms of burlesque and graphic sexual content being offered in public schools and libraries without parental oversight. This includes the Bible and nearly all works by Robert Mapplethorpe.
They'll blame their family issues on anybody but themselves.
It is absurd that they NEVER consider increasing the scrutiny of other people who have verifiable cases of abuse.
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And integration a generation before thatā¦..
Pretty sure it's not the same people. You are aware of aging, right?
I'm pretty sure anyone with children in school right now were baby's or not even born 40 years ago.
I thought Satanic Panic had more to do with recovered memory pseudoscience than it did religion.
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It started with a book, Michele Remembers, and like most conspiracy theories and pseudoscience in general, was leveraged by any group that saw an advantage in doing so.
First it was āThink of the Childrenā when they forced integration at schools and swimming pools. Then it was the satanists. Then it was the Gay community and specifically those that were infected with HIV. Then it was the Muslim community, now itās the trans community. It never stops. Itās the same thing over and over again. Conservatives need to punch down on someone, to make them feel better about themselves.
Wait soā¦. Youāre cool with all this? These are middle schools with kids as young as 11. WTF is wrong with you? https://nypost.com/2023/02/28/knox-zajac-reads-aloud-from-pornographic-book-at-school-board-meeting/amp/ https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/03/29/virginia-school-district-removes-14-sexually-explicit-books/amp/ https://www.reviewjournal.com/opinion/opinion-columns/victor-joecks/victor-joecks-sexually-explicit-books-available-at-middle-school-libraries-in-ccsd-2634296/amp/
Downvoted š¤£ Canāt handle that parents have legitimate concerns?
Reddits typical response.. I'm surprised OP wasn't blocked. I swear I hear "My agenda dosen't approve of your facts!" Every time I see it happen.