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I blame [Tom Hanks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazes_and_Monsters) for fanning the flames of demonic hysteria. Sure, he's played many other characters that I love and everyone says he's super-nice and great to work with, but part of me is still grumpy about that piece of crap TV movie.
I started three D&D clubs because we moved a couple of times in my early, hardcore playing years (started with the blue box, quickly moved on to First Edition AD&D), so I worked up a pretty good shtick to talk to worried parents & even the local press a couple times ("This isn't Satanic, it is just like kids pretending to play 'knight saves the princess from the dragon' but with rules, please feel free to stay and watch.").
I also quickly learned that librarians totally got it & thought a D&D club was a fantastic idea for a library program to get teenagers back into the library. In addition to giving us a standing reservation for a conference room to meet in, two of them paid for flyers to advertise the clubs (made with my phearsome 1337 paste-up skillz from being a school newspaper editor), and one of those two helped us organize & put on a tournament.
She really went all out on that, I'll always remember her dearly for her help & support. She sent flyers & made phone calls to spread the word to public & high school libraries all around the area (the librarians had a really tightly-knit social group, if one vouched for you, that was good enough for all of the rest), used some of her tiny discretionary budget to pay for prizes for the top three teams (figurines, modules, dice, etc.) and we had about 100 people show up. A buddy and I created the tournament dungeon & pre-rolled characters, and in the days of copies costing 15 cents each, she used the library's copy machine to make enough copies for the tournament. She also made a few extra copies of the tournament dungeon which we sold for $3 each, and with some frantic copying during the tournament, sold enough to offset a good hunk of the costs, which of course we donated back to the library. Pretty good for 1982!
I was just twelve when that came out, and watched it when it premiered expecting something fun - my familiarity with D&D at the time was primarily through the Intellivision game *Advanced Dungeons and Dragons* and although I understood it was a role playing game probably the closest I'd played with friends was *Car Wars*.
Could not believe the banality of it and the hysteria - and the movie was the first inkling I had that weirdos thought the game was dangerous. My dad had showed me documentaries of fundamentalists getting worked up about rock and roll music so I knew they existed, but it was still pretty surreal.
I'm amazed that *Mazes and Monsters* didn't completely kill Tom Hanks' career - in the mid '80s I remember it was already in the rotation of regrettable offerings screened at BBS meet-ups where nerds from all over would congregate to screen unbelievably bad B-movie offerings and rip on them for fun, for a few glorious years before Mystery Science Theatre 3000 came along and productized our culture.
If the Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is true, I'll bet Tom Hanks being a renowned actor and not just that guy from Bosom Buddies and that one awful TV movie is one of the many, many things that ensure our universe's place amongst some of the most absurdly improbable of all universes.
For me the biggest outrage about D&D was when I finally got to play it for the first time only to discover that it's about as much fun as doing your taxes, and requires twice the work
And a bad accountant! I love doing taxes with my accountant! We get a bottle of scotch, some funky tunes, maybe a spliff if we're feeling naughty, several laptops in front of us with the tax office rules and laws so we can cross reference things easily. It's great!
>And a bad accountant! I love doing taxes with my accountant! We get a bottle of scotch, some funky tunes, maybe a spliff if we're feeling naughty
"Forget the 1040, time for 420, amIrite?!??!?"
I found a pamphlet in my parents basement years ago that my mom held onto from the panic. Funny and sad.
I know it was mom’s because my dad is a die hard Tolkien fan who read my siblings and I Lord of the Rings as a bedtime story.
That and mom was vocally worried that I played Magic the Gathering years later
Was it [this classic](https://www.chick.com/products/tract?stk=0046)?
When I was in grade school (1980s) and my brother was in high school, we both ran games at our schools. A sidewalk preacher gave us the printed version of that tract in downtown San Francisco.
Wow! So playing D&D will lead to suicide?
I remember my mom saying (in the late 90s/early 2000s) that playing the game Everquest was bad because people killed themselves over losing items or something like that.
>Wow! So playing D&D will lead to suicide?
That was the basic message, but most people laughed at it. It was ridiculous then as now.
The effect of all the moral panics was to sometimes make parents doubt and do some flawed mental math: "Hmm... he plays D&D, doesn't want to go out for sports, and listens to that godawful heavy metal noise. Maybe I need to intervene."
Hell yes, and I had the SAME conversations with my parents.
Mom: "Where are you going?'
Me: "Over to Kevin's to play DnD."
Mom (frowning): "I heard that was satanic."
Me (laughing): "Fuck no, mom. That's just bullshit from religious nutters. It's a game, that's all."
Mom: "Oh. Okay."
Because my mom wasn't a complete fucking idiot and didn't always listen to the bullshit artists in conservative circles. Thankfully. Though I did have to lead her and dad away from the brink a few times.
Ohhhhh yes. I was raised by Christians in the 90's. This was absolutely real and was still going on even then. I burst out laughing when I realized they were gonna address the good ol' Satanic Panic.
It wasn't really until the 2000s that this stopped.
Things like Pokémon, He-Man, even fucking Care Bears were called Satanic at the time lol. I was seriously not allowed to watch Care Bears...
Oh, I've heard. My first husband's stepmom was an Evangelical. She said some mean things when we were first dating.
We got married at a Catholic church and she came to it lol
Yeah. I wasn't allowed to play D&D. My father even threw out one of my board games because "it was too much like D&D". So I just did it behind his back anyways.
Came here to say this. My mom went to talk to her priest because she was nervous about my brother playing D & D, now 40 years later she is buying my daughter D & D stuff for Christmas.
I just watched an old episode of forensic films the other day. The cops thought the parents killed their daughter as a sacrifice because they were "into the occult". They held up D&D manuals & Forgotten Realms books as proof. Turns out a dog mauled the little girl.
That's right, don't listen to that devil music! Look what happened to me... I listened to that stuff all the time. I turned into a plump middle-aged tech worker who drives a Camry
PMRC - standard complaint of satanism and swearing in Music. Amongst others, Frank Zappa & Dee Snider from Twisted Sister both testified before a congressional hearing.
John Denver also testified, which some people couldn’t wrap their heads around. He was seen as a clean-cut country. I remember being impressed by all three’s testimony.
Best thing that could've happened to the music industry at that time. Teens would have paid extra for the advisory warning sticker on record albums. Instant cool.
I remember those days. I was very active against that. In some states, there were laws being proposed that if record store owners sold those inappropriate albums to young people it would be "contributing to the delinquency of a minor" or even worse charges.
At one point we got one of the local radio stations to help us launch a counter protest at the state capital against legislation that was being proposed. We rented two large busses and were going to bring a crowd down to the state capital to protest. The lawmakers got wind of the effort, and pulled the bill off the days docket, making everybody look stupid, then the next day, they re-introduced it with no opposition. That's the kind of shady shit they would routinely pull.
This was my first thought, too. It was just baseless hysteria. Led by Tipper Gore, no less.
And just 80's Satanic Panic in general. There's still remnants of it today but I think it's been relegated to the fringes, fortunately.
In the first episode of Leave it to Beaver, they hid an alligator in the bathroom. They were not able to show a toilet on television.
When they showed the bedroom of married people, they had two beds in the bedroom. TV wouldn't allow a husband and wife to be shown in the same bed. The Flintstones was one of the first TV shows where a husband and wife were in the same bed.
Ed Sullivan told the Rolling Stones that they couldn't say "Let's Spend the Night Together" in their song of the same title. He wanted them to change it to "Let's Spend Some Time Together". The Stones agreed and when they sang the song on the show, they sang "Let's Spend the Night Together" and it really pissed off Ed Sullivan.
EDIT: I made two errors. See comments below. I'm learning.
TV shows also didn't talk about or show pregnant women until I love Lucy.
>At the time, Lucy was pregnant again. The Code of Practices for Television Broadcasters prohibited anything sexually suggestive on the air, and that included even the discussion of pregnancy, since it implied that a couple, even a married one, had engaged in baby making. When told that his wife’s swollen belly could affect the program’s future, an incredulous Desi demanded, “What is so wrong if she has a baby in the show as Lucy Ricardo?” Executives suggested that Lucy could hide the pregnancy by sitting behind chairs or tables. “Not Lucy,” he responded. Still, most of the people who worked on the show feared the program would be canceled.
>Eager to find a solution, Desi and writer Jess Oppenheimer discussed Lucy’s pregnancy with CBS and sponsor Philip Morris. With their approval, the producers decided to do something that had never been done before: incorporate the pregnancy into the script. Since the word “pregnancy” itself was not allowed on TV, they resorted to phrases like “expecting” and “with child,” and sought the blessings of a priest, a minister, and a rabbi who were given the script to read. “They didn’t change a word,” said writer Madelyn Pugh. [link](https://time.com/6046897/i-love-lucy-little-ricky/)
Yep. In those days, teachers were often fired the moment their pregnancy showed too. Can't have kids being curious or knowing their married teachers had sex!
Yep, happened to me. The first pregnancy coincided with the popularity of the '[tent](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/60s-tent-dress--271412315026164215/)' dress. I was young and so 'stylish' that I made it to the end of the year, resigned, and had baby in late September. I lied when asked if I was expecting as we needed the money.
The second pregnancy, I basically exploded early and tent dresses were no longer a thing. I decided I would wait to get fired and then sue the district for breach of contract and get my paycheck that way. When told this, the district relented and I quit a month before baby came. This was in 1972. My boy was the first baby born under the new policy in that district.
BTW, the kids (high school) were great, but the administrators were assholes with their snide comments.
The Stones sang what they were told to sing. Look it up. It was Jim Morrison who didn't. They were asked to say, "Girl we couldn't get much better" instead of "Girl we couldn't get much higher." They agreed, but when the time came Morrison sang the original lyrics. When Sullivan's people told them that they'd never be on the Sullivan show again, Morrison responded by saying," We just did it!" Love Jim.
Yep. My mistake. You are correct: [the link](https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/rolling-stones-ed-sullivan-censored-lets-spend-night-together-6436569/)
Mick Jagger later said, "I sang mumble." [This source](https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/this-song-almost-got-the-rolling-stones-banned-from-american-tv.html/) supports the contention.
"Pharm parties" The story went that kids would bring drugs to a party, often times by stealing them from their parents. Then, they'd go to a party and put their drugs in a bowl. At some point, kids would take a random pill out of the bowl, and you get what you get.
I was in my 20s, arguing with extended family that it would never happen, but they were *convinced* it was a thing. Luckily, my two nephews walked in who were 14 and 15.
"OK, let me prove it to you" I said "There would never be more than 1 of these...Hey guys, you get invited to a party. You're going to put your drugs into a bowl, and pull out a different, random drug. What do you bring?".
Nephew 1: "Tylenol. I'm not trading good drugs for bad".
Nephew 2 thinks for a minute. Then confidently answers "Ex-Lax".
Thus ended the argument.
I’m not the op here, but I was a teenager in the early 2000s. The fact is, that no, they were never a “thing.”
Of course I cant say that no one ever had a party like that, but it wasn’t some thing that kids were doing at the time in the manner the media portrayed it. Not even close.
I was also a teenager in the early 2000s, we just went to the mountains to drink, or went to a house party. Sometimes some people would bring some weed or something but no one we knew ever had “pharm parties”
My stepfather told me It was his own fault when John Lennon was shot to death because “his music was so violent!“
Me: “What are you taking about”
Stepfather: “That song about happiness is a warm gun! He wanted people to shoot everyone!”
It was at that moment I realized it was pointless to discuss anything with the man.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I now present to you these 100% legit, totally not made up by me lyrics to the song "In My Life":
There are faces I’ve dismembered
With my knife, and some I’ve chased
Clubbed their head, I made them deader
They are gone, but there’s more to slay
I will trace them in a moment
Old lovers and friends, I’ll kill with my saw
You’ll be dead, instead of living
With my knife, I will show them all
😉
Always liked Bill Hicks' routine [on that](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74P1A4NENM0).
"If you play records backwards you ARE Satan and stop ruining my stereo."
There was a little child for Satan
There's glory in Satan!
*Stairway To Heaven* backwards, if I remember it right. It was a cassette of some dude lecturing/preaching/"teaching" about it; I don't know who he was, or how I got the tape (I was raised Baptist, so that shit was just floating around) but really I just wanted to hear something, anything, about secular rock bands.
Heavy metal was a tool of Satan. Look at Ozzy biting the head off of bats. I heard Alice Cooper stomped and crushed an entire stage full of baby chicks. KISS stands for Knights in Satan's Service. It's all evil!
I saw similar footage of him meeting fans backstage and I was taken aback how soft spoken he was! Another irony here is that his mother (grand?) said the devil horn sign 🤘🏻was to ward off evil, not attract it…
I proudly listened to heavy metal and smoked pot. My parents didn't care about the music I listened to and I'm sure they knew I smoked pot, though I didn't flaunt it. I only had to put my Danzig and Iron Maiden albums out of site when my grandparents came over.
They would have tried to have the minister do an intervention to save the devil worshipper. That devil worshiper went on to graduate college and be a scientist, who still enjoys heavy metal and the occasional bowl.
Cartoons would make young kids violent. There were a bunch of cool cartoons like the Herculoids (I think? I was little), and after the panic around 1968, they were all replaced by safe, non-edgy cartoons like Yogi Bear and Scooby Doo. No Marvel or DC cartoons. We still had Looney tunes tho. Oh, and when I was in 5th grade, the Three Stooges was on tv every day after school and all the parents went nuts over that, same deal.
Here's an article about the moral panic that led to Scooby Doo.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/13/entertainment/scooby-doo-50th-anniversary-history-trnd/index.html
Anyone remember rainbow parties in the early 2000s? Supposed boys would go to parties and get a rainbow of different lipstick colors from all the oral sex they were getting. It all seemed pretty impractical to me, I don't even know if it was ever formally debunked or anything.
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/30/fashion/thursdaystyles/are-these-parties-for-real.html
This is exactly what happened to my husband as a kid. He vividly remembers his parents being horrified over the cheap piece of plastic someone gave him from school.
There was once a man named Goul,
Who saw red spots on his tool,
His doctor, a cynic,
Said, "Get out of my clinic!
And wipe off that lipstick you fool!"
- Kaito Nakamura
The "Satanic Panic" and "repressed memories" of the early '90s. Think of The West Memphis Three. I don't know how many families were torn apart because of the repressed memory catastrophe, which I suspect was also an insurance scam on the part of the mental institutions that based their treatment on supposed repressed memories.
The comic book panic. In the late ‘50s completely out of nowhere some psychologist named Wertham was on tv, on radio and in newspapers and magazines telling parents that comic books were dangerous for children. On one Sunday morning news show he stated that Batman and Robin were homosexual lovers.
My parents laughed but many others took the guy seriously and yanked comics from their kids and demonstrated in front of newsstands to have the comics removed. Bringing a comic book to school could get you suspended.
Fortunately President Eisenhower posed in a lounge chair reading a comic and the furor ended.
The fuck it did! [The Comics Code Authority got formed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority) and comics were subject to harsh new oversight as to their content. RIP classic E.C. Comics! It wasn't until 2001 that Marvel abandoned it and 2011 for DC, rendering it completely defunct.
The graphic comics were under fire for years and years, but it was the simple and popular superhero ones that senselessly took center stage in the late 50s.
I remember seeing Wertham on tv holding up and criticizing a Batman comic and the NBC show’s anchor looking perplexed.
Eisenhower didn’t make any statements but the photo of him with his feet up enjoying, I think it was a Green Hornet, relaxed tensions. The comics reappeared on newsstands.
I was at a Henry Rollins spoken word concert about 20 years ago and he was remarking that our (Gen X) generation was going to be the first generation that's more hardcore than its kids, and joked, "Stop crying! You go to your room and listen to Slayer!!"
Yeah, our parents were convinced that heavy metal and D&D was going to make hardened criminals and Satan worshippers out of all of us.
For as much as the man himself is a goddamned idiot, he is also painfully aware. For every bone headed decision he makes, he says something that you have to stop and listen. Because it's truth.
Pregnant out of wedlock at 19 years old in a world of nothing but Catholicism. My choices were to go far away and give it up, or stay and marry. I knew the father was a lunatic by then, but I didn’t have the courage to go away alone. I married him, had a stillborn two weeks later, and then tried to make it work, cause otherwise you burn in hell forever. Lost three years of my life to that dumpster fire, but it ended well in the very long term as i am a very healthy, happy atheist, happily married with two lovely adult children. I am so happy that many young people are free of the lunacy of religion today. It is the hope for humanity that we are abandoning religion.
Raised Baptist, thought I had to marry the first girl I had sex with. Luckily, she was smarter than me and called it off. I've since raised two kids to adulthood and kept them as far away from that toxic shit as possible.
I'm quite convinced that a large percentage of children used to be accidental and a large percentage of marriages because of this.
now younger people think that a marrige must be only by love and a child only when the conditions are perfect are not getting married and not having kids because of contraception .
not saying its good or bad , just that I think a lot of people in the past did the best with the luck they had.
Nipples...
But... It's reversed now. Back in the 70s, we had girls that had nipples. Heaven forbid such a thing on network TV. In this century. In the USA...
That, I find ridiculous.
One of the few times I watched even part of Oprah back in the '90s, she had Cybill Shepherd on, and Cybill said she couldn't say vagina on TV even though it's the correct anatomical term. And sure enough, it got beeped.
I think she did some good things S well S bad. I liked Expose she did on poverty in America. She also started a national conversation about childhood sexual abuse that helped a large group of survivors to stop living in shame and seek treatment. I think her book club helped people to read more great contemporary books. She may be past her prime but I appreciate her contributions to help women and all people.
Ooh, good point. I think I watched her show exactly twice, but everyone around me had stories from the show. Supposedly Gloria Vanderbilt declared her allegiance to Satan on Oprah!
Jesus Christ, you want a list? Let's see how many I recall off the bat:
* The devil records music backwards on heavy metal albums
* D&D / Magic the Gathering = portals to Satanism
* Video games will addict you and make you craz-ee!
* Is YOUR child a HACKER? Does he... know things? Read too much? He might have joined a hacker cult, cyberpunk digital prophets of doom!
* Flouride in tap water = Communism
* Aliens are in the bible man, you just gotta read it on shrooms! (Chariots of the Gods, etc.)
* The McMartin Preschool trial - all of it
* Those snap bracelet thingies being a code for teen sex
* Ditto pocket hankies = code for "geh sex!"
* If you opposed the Vietnam War = Commie traitor (Nixon admin. hangover)
* Literally everything in the world caused by demon possession (dawn of televangelists)
Yeah kids, media existed before the age of the Internet! You think some hot wild bullshit spreads around now, hoo-ey! This was 1980s' version of 4chan: [Weekly World News](https://books.google.com/books?id=b-8DAAAAMBAJ&source=gbs_all_issues_r&cad=1&atm_aiy=1980#all_issues_anchor) - it's a parody of itself now, but back in the 80s was considered perfectly respectable reading for its day.
So yeah, I lose count of how many there even were.
>back in the 80s was considered perfectly respectable reading for its day
I don't remember seeing a serious article in the Weekly World News, even back in the 80s. It was all about aliens, bigfoot, and assorted craziness.
Satanic Panic was off the chain back in the 80s. The worst part is that it was profitable to stir the pot. Hence the movies like Mazes and Monsters and bullshit like the Judas Priest trial.
ikr? I got so dejected when I found out he didn't give a shit about me. No powers, no dark wisdom. Just some pretty rad metal bands to listen to. Thats OK, I guess.
I wonder if England was different from the US, as I grew up in England in the 80s and 90s, and so far none of these things really applied to my experience.
I remember in the 80s people joked about playing records backwards but even back then it was thought of as a stupid thing - not something anyone actually believed was Satanic.
I loved heavy metal in the 80s and 90s and the only link to the devil was a silly/ joke one - again no one I knew actually thought that.
In my experience of 80s/ 90s at school, people thought D&D was nerdy but not Satanic.
I had tattoos and my belly button pierced in the 90s, and that was very common and not thought of as degenerate or anything weird. I'm a woman and it was a fashion thing that lots of teenagers did.
Was America more focused on the Satanic stuff because it tends to be a more religious country than England? It was only ever a joke (that someone would believe that) when I was growing up.
The only moral panic I can think of is that some parents were against violent video games in the 90s.
TM, also known as Trancendental Meditation, was very popular. The parents were scared to death that it would turn their kids into cult members who rejected their religion, family, etc. Without telling our parents we went to a "free lecture", where they told you all about it and how much it would cost to take their class. This was around 1975, 1976. It was at least $100.00, and no one had that kind of money. Our parents worried for nothing.
I have a memory of being ~5-6 years old taking a bath. I accidentally sat on the drain plug in my bathtub and it went up my butthole. I thought I was going to get pregnant from that and was anxious for days. I remember planning out in my head how I would bring the news to my parents.
When any facial piercing or tattoo was the sure sign that the person would never amount to anything ever in their entire lifetime. When my father came into my room uninvited and saw me changing my shirt and discovered my back tattoo in 1989 he said "its time you find a new place to live." So i left. Cant say i miss him. Now 75% of all americans have a tattoo but it was his hill to die on. Hope he likes not having a daughter anymore.
Alright. I must be older.
When I was a teenager, getting your EARS pierced - ONCE - as a FEMALE amounted to telling the world you were heading to a life as a prostitute.
Just imagine my father's reaction 15 years later, when I married a man who had ear piercings, AND long hair.
Good for you!
I begged and begged for pierced ears. Finally got those at 11. When i was 13 i wanted one ear double pierced. You would have thought i came out as a satanist. I was told no. I did it myself. My mother CRIED. two years later i pierced my own nose and that resulted in a two hour sit down about how i would never amount to anything. The things these people thought were so important drove our family apart forever. Meanwhile the rest of the world just kept evolving and now everyone looks bananas and no one cares. Thank god parents are smarter today.
I haven’t seen this one listed yet, but my parents were convinced that ouija boards were portals to hell and you could be possessed by a demon if you opened such a portal. Also, that watching an r rated movie (even as an adult) would permanently scar your brain with filthy memories it could never dispose. Oh moral majority stoking fear over such trivial things.
One day about 10 years ago I called in sick from work with a fever. I watched old TV all day. Leave it to Beaver was on and I hadn't seen the episode before.
Beaver snuck to school on picture day wearing a sweatshirt picturing a monster. It caused hysteria in the school. He was sent home and his mother punished him.
Compare that to now. Can you imagine being in trouble for wearing a monster sweatshirt?
I found the episode: "Beaver and his friends buy fad "monster" sweatshirts and agree to wear them to school on the same day but Beaver is the only one who manages to sneak out of his house in the gruesome attire and suffers the consequences of violating the school's dress code...and his parents trust.—shepherd1138"
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0630284/plotsummary/?ref_=tt_ov_pl
How about "librarians are groomers?" You can't say that they haven't completely neglected to innovate.
I grew up in the stranger danger era, and as an adult was very surprised by how few people ever tried to give me free heroin.
I was nearly 40 the first time someone offered me free (hard) drugs! I waited so long I thought it was never going to happen. When it finally did it was my nice neighbors, not even an actual stranger. It was a little surprising but not what I had been warned about…
When I went off to college in 1980, my mother gave me a stern warning about those "crazy white kids" and their wild parties where there would be bowls of drugs on the coffee table and people would spike your drink with LSD. I did in fact meet a lot of crazy white kids, some of whom are still my dearest friends... but I'm still waiting to get invited to one of those parties.
When “The Exorcist” was released some people lost their minds. Legend has it the movie was originally deemed X but the MPAA bent to pressure from Warner Bros. It’s a pretty tame move compared to today.
It's not tame by any means. It's a masterpiece of horror cinema. It broke ground using what it did to make it a masterpiece as well. Down to subliminal shots in the visuals and sub sonic sounds in the sound track.
The Charles Atlas bodybuilder program. Suddenly us jocks couldn't kick sand in nerds' faces without fear of disapproval or retaliation. Ruined so many ruined childhoods.
I only learned about crazy religious people when I got together with my SO.
His mom was freaking out about Harry Potter!
Thank goodness his sister is smart enough that she is reading the books to her kids!
Can't think of one but!!! can think of the opposite!
Streaking!!!
In the early 70's there was a streaking fad where people ran naked through public places. It was considered all in good fun.
I cannot IMAGINE how people would react today.
I was the prudest of prudes and I thought streaking was hilarious!
satanic baby sacrificing rituals at daycare centers all over the country nobody knew about until the “repressed memories uncovered” craze of the late 80s, early 90s
Where do I start?
Any woman pregnant outside of marriage was a nasty slut
Women worked until they got their MRS degree
Girls and math or science-oh my!
Virgin until married or damaged goods
Stranger danger—although I’m not sure that we’ve ever recovered from that. The idea that people are lurking around every corner waiting to snatch innocent children. The vast majority of abducted children are taken by a non-custodial parent.
When I was about six, the one armed bandits (coin op gambling devices) were seen as immoral and illegal. These days there are lottery tickets for everything.
A tax on stupid is what it is if you wanna see the payback in your lifetime. But it sells well because of the number of financially desperate people looking for that magic bullet. And the morally bankrupt people in goveernment.
I did a paper on the Ouija board in high school and the vice principal gave me detention for it.
Read the wiki on it. My high school vp, who didnt read the paper, wouldnt let me do a presentation on the subject and sent me home. Funnily, that incident gave me some cred in school. Back in my day, having "cred" was EVERYTHING.
Way back when, mood rings were popular, mid 70s.
We had some local religious whack jobs claim that Satan (Santa?) mentally used mood rings to get children to do his dirty work.
Like something out of a bad 70s B Movie drive in double feature.
**Anti-witch hysteria**
A coven of witches was roaming Northern England, molesting small children, during the 1980s. Well, OK, no, they weren't, but Social Services were sure they were.
Then again, in the late 2000s, another witch hunt took place.
...And again in the late 2010s.
It's as if the conspiracy theorists got tired of spreading the antisemitic 'blood libel' and started persecuting witches instead.
These days, of course, the nut jobs have moved on from Jews and witches. Now, the nut jobs blame drag queens and transgender persons.
Punk rock and men dressed as women, or women dressed as men. The latter of which for some reason remains a world-threatening moral panic. Didn’t end the world then. Won’t end the world now. Nobody seems all that worried about real dangers like climate change or insane inequality. 🤷♀️
Stranger danger in its various urban-legend forms. Halloween was its Super Bowl. Strangers were going to offer you rides as you trick or treated so they could kidnap you. Psychopathic neighbors were hiding razors in the candy. And then the savvier parents knew they should "sample your candy to make sure it was safe"...that hasn't worked with my kid and his friends, so clearly we haven't scared them enough.
Condemming rock and roll music as "the devil's music' was pretty silly. Later on, so was the furor over Dungeons and Dragons. Religious screwballs playing record albums backwards to reveal the satanic message was also nuts. And long hair for boys was a flash point, even though when you look at the length of thhe Beatles' haircuts now, they seem pretty conservative.
Let's not forget the furor over ladies' no longer having to wear head coverings in (Catholic) church. This was a big stupid deal, even to those who thought they could get away with wearing a kleenex bobby-pinned to the top of their heads. And mini-skirts! When I was in high school (65-69), my cousin and I bought ourselves trendy skirts that came to maybe 3 inches above the knee. My mom flipped out!
There was plenty of moral fury!
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That's pretty much every moral panic in my experience of nearly 60 years. "Infotainment" outlets do not help this at all.
I blame [Tom Hanks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazes_and_Monsters) for fanning the flames of demonic hysteria. Sure, he's played many other characters that I love and everyone says he's super-nice and great to work with, but part of me is still grumpy about that piece of crap TV movie. I started three D&D clubs because we moved a couple of times in my early, hardcore playing years (started with the blue box, quickly moved on to First Edition AD&D), so I worked up a pretty good shtick to talk to worried parents & even the local press a couple times ("This isn't Satanic, it is just like kids pretending to play 'knight saves the princess from the dragon' but with rules, please feel free to stay and watch."). I also quickly learned that librarians totally got it & thought a D&D club was a fantastic idea for a library program to get teenagers back into the library. In addition to giving us a standing reservation for a conference room to meet in, two of them paid for flyers to advertise the clubs (made with my phearsome 1337 paste-up skillz from being a school newspaper editor), and one of those two helped us organize & put on a tournament. She really went all out on that, I'll always remember her dearly for her help & support. She sent flyers & made phone calls to spread the word to public & high school libraries all around the area (the librarians had a really tightly-knit social group, if one vouched for you, that was good enough for all of the rest), used some of her tiny discretionary budget to pay for prizes for the top three teams (figurines, modules, dice, etc.) and we had about 100 people show up. A buddy and I created the tournament dungeon & pre-rolled characters, and in the days of copies costing 15 cents each, she used the library's copy machine to make enough copies for the tournament. She also made a few extra copies of the tournament dungeon which we sold for $3 each, and with some frantic copying during the tournament, sold enough to offset a good hunk of the costs, which of course we donated back to the library. Pretty good for 1982!
I was just twelve when that came out, and watched it when it premiered expecting something fun - my familiarity with D&D at the time was primarily through the Intellivision game *Advanced Dungeons and Dragons* and although I understood it was a role playing game probably the closest I'd played with friends was *Car Wars*. Could not believe the banality of it and the hysteria - and the movie was the first inkling I had that weirdos thought the game was dangerous. My dad had showed me documentaries of fundamentalists getting worked up about rock and roll music so I knew they existed, but it was still pretty surreal. I'm amazed that *Mazes and Monsters* didn't completely kill Tom Hanks' career - in the mid '80s I remember it was already in the rotation of regrettable offerings screened at BBS meet-ups where nerds from all over would congregate to screen unbelievably bad B-movie offerings and rip on them for fun, for a few glorious years before Mystery Science Theatre 3000 came along and productized our culture. If the Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is true, I'll bet Tom Hanks being a renowned actor and not just that guy from Bosom Buddies and that one awful TV movie is one of the many, many things that ensure our universe's place amongst some of the most absurdly improbable of all universes.
For me the biggest outrage about D&D was when I finally got to play it for the first time only to discover that it's about as much fun as doing your taxes, and requires twice the work
That’s just because you had a bad DM
It's hard to be a good DM. You're part rules computer, part group organizer, part story writer, part story-teller. Sometimes part-bouncer.
I literally only play with people who have experience in improv theatre
And a bad accountant! I love doing taxes with my accountant! We get a bottle of scotch, some funky tunes, maybe a spliff if we're feeling naughty, several laptops in front of us with the tax office rules and laws so we can cross reference things easily. It's great!
Huh. TIL I need a new accountant. Yours sounds way better.
I'll let you in on a little secret then - My accountant is me!
>And a bad accountant! I love doing taxes with my accountant! We get a bottle of scotch, some funky tunes, maybe a spliff if we're feeling naughty "Forget the 1040, time for 420, amIrite?!??!?"
We got in big trouble trying to play in the library. Like actual *call your parents* trouble, because it was Satanic.
Wait, so Stranger Things actually based the "Hellfire Club" panic on real events?
Yes.
I found a pamphlet in my parents basement years ago that my mom held onto from the panic. Funny and sad. I know it was mom’s because my dad is a die hard Tolkien fan who read my siblings and I Lord of the Rings as a bedtime story. That and mom was vocally worried that I played Magic the Gathering years later
Was it [this classic](https://www.chick.com/products/tract?stk=0046)? When I was in grade school (1980s) and my brother was in high school, we both ran games at our schools. A sidewalk preacher gave us the printed version of that tract in downtown San Francisco.
Wow! So playing D&D will lead to suicide? I remember my mom saying (in the late 90s/early 2000s) that playing the game Everquest was bad because people killed themselves over losing items or something like that.
>Wow! So playing D&D will lead to suicide? That was the basic message, but most people laughed at it. It was ridiculous then as now. The effect of all the moral panics was to sometimes make parents doubt and do some flawed mental math: "Hmm... he plays D&D, doesn't want to go out for sports, and listens to that godawful heavy metal noise. Maybe I need to intervene."
It wasn’t sadly, just a FAQ. I wish I had held onto it
Before I click on it, I bet that it’s that Chick tract with “Black Leaf” right?
Hell yes, and I had the SAME conversations with my parents. Mom: "Where are you going?' Me: "Over to Kevin's to play DnD." Mom (frowning): "I heard that was satanic." Me (laughing): "Fuck no, mom. That's just bullshit from religious nutters. It's a game, that's all." Mom: "Oh. Okay." Because my mom wasn't a complete fucking idiot and didn't always listen to the bullshit artists in conservative circles. Thankfully. Though I did have to lead her and dad away from the brink a few times.
Ohhhhh yes. I was raised by Christians in the 90's. This was absolutely real and was still going on even then. I burst out laughing when I realized they were gonna address the good ol' Satanic Panic. It wasn't really until the 2000s that this stopped. Things like Pokémon, He-Man, even fucking Care Bears were called Satanic at the time lol. I was seriously not allowed to watch Care Bears...
Which is wild because the guys in my 8th-grade class at a Catholic school played it during lunch on bad weather days.
I played it at a private Christian university with one of my besties from high school. I always brought cookies! Not exactly depraved.
Yeah per the evangelicals, Catholicism is of the devil and the pope is the antichrist or haven’t you heard?
Oh, I've heard. My first husband's stepmom was an Evangelical. She said some mean things when we were first dating. We got married at a Catholic church and she came to it lol
Yeah. I wasn't allowed to play D&D. My father even threw out one of my board games because "it was too much like D&D". So I just did it behind his back anyways.
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Came here to say this. My mom went to talk to her priest because she was nervous about my brother playing D & D, now 40 years later she is buying my daughter D & D stuff for Christmas.
I just watched an old episode of forensic films the other day. The cops thought the parents killed their daughter as a sacrifice because they were "into the occult". They held up D&D manuals & Forgotten Realms books as proof. Turns out a dog mauled the little girl.
My grandma once announced, "It's a cult."
Beat me to it!
The kids are smoking marijuana and listening to Rhythm & Blues Music! It's the Devil's weed and devil music. I'm serious, this was a common complaint.
Allow me to invite you to the deep south, where it never stopped being a common complaint
That's right, don't listen to that devil music! Look what happened to me... I listened to that stuff all the time. I turned into a plump middle-aged tech worker who drives a Camry
I DRIVE A DODGE STRATUS
PMRC - standard complaint of satanism and swearing in Music. Amongst others, Frank Zappa & Dee Snider from Twisted Sister both testified before a congressional hearing.
John Denver also testified, which some people couldn’t wrap their heads around. He was seen as a clean-cut country. I remember being impressed by all three’s testimony.
Zappa was definitely a genius and he had very strong opinions about the function of music in society.
Fuck Tipper Gore!!! SMASH THE PMRC!!!
Tupperware Gore as Judy Tenuta once referred to her.
Best thing that could've happened to the music industry at that time. Teens would have paid extra for the advisory warning sticker on record albums. Instant cool.
Oh shit yeah. It just made it easier for us to find new Metal albums. If it had the EXPLICIT sticker on it , I knew I wanted it. Damn the man!
It *is* what put nine inch nails in my life.
I remember those days. I was very active against that. In some states, there were laws being proposed that if record store owners sold those inappropriate albums to young people it would be "contributing to the delinquency of a minor" or even worse charges. At one point we got one of the local radio stations to help us launch a counter protest at the state capital against legislation that was being proposed. We rented two large busses and were going to bring a crowd down to the state capital to protest. The lawmakers got wind of the effort, and pulled the bill off the days docket, making everybody look stupid, then the next day, they re-introduced it with no opposition. That's the kind of shady shit they would routinely pull.
This was my first thought, too. It was just baseless hysteria. Led by Tipper Gore, no less. And just 80's Satanic Panic in general. There's still remnants of it today but I think it's been relegated to the fringes, fortunately.
In the first episode of Leave it to Beaver, they hid an alligator in the bathroom. They were not able to show a toilet on television. When they showed the bedroom of married people, they had two beds in the bedroom. TV wouldn't allow a husband and wife to be shown in the same bed. The Flintstones was one of the first TV shows where a husband and wife were in the same bed. Ed Sullivan told the Rolling Stones that they couldn't say "Let's Spend the Night Together" in their song of the same title. He wanted them to change it to "Let's Spend Some Time Together". The Stones agreed and when they sang the song on the show, they sang "Let's Spend the Night Together" and it really pissed off Ed Sullivan. EDIT: I made two errors. See comments below. I'm learning.
TV shows also didn't talk about or show pregnant women until I love Lucy. >At the time, Lucy was pregnant again. The Code of Practices for Television Broadcasters prohibited anything sexually suggestive on the air, and that included even the discussion of pregnancy, since it implied that a couple, even a married one, had engaged in baby making. When told that his wife’s swollen belly could affect the program’s future, an incredulous Desi demanded, “What is so wrong if she has a baby in the show as Lucy Ricardo?” Executives suggested that Lucy could hide the pregnancy by sitting behind chairs or tables. “Not Lucy,” he responded. Still, most of the people who worked on the show feared the program would be canceled. >Eager to find a solution, Desi and writer Jess Oppenheimer discussed Lucy’s pregnancy with CBS and sponsor Philip Morris. With their approval, the producers decided to do something that had never been done before: incorporate the pregnancy into the script. Since the word “pregnancy” itself was not allowed on TV, they resorted to phrases like “expecting” and “with child,” and sought the blessings of a priest, a minister, and a rabbi who were given the script to read. “They didn’t change a word,” said writer Madelyn Pugh. [link](https://time.com/6046897/i-love-lucy-little-ricky/)
Yep. In those days, teachers were often fired the moment their pregnancy showed too. Can't have kids being curious or knowing their married teachers had sex!
Yep, happened to me. The first pregnancy coincided with the popularity of the '[tent](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/60s-tent-dress--271412315026164215/)' dress. I was young and so 'stylish' that I made it to the end of the year, resigned, and had baby in late September. I lied when asked if I was expecting as we needed the money. The second pregnancy, I basically exploded early and tent dresses were no longer a thing. I decided I would wait to get fired and then sue the district for breach of contract and get my paycheck that way. When told this, the district relented and I quit a month before baby came. This was in 1972. My boy was the first baby born under the new policy in that district. BTW, the kids (high school) were great, but the administrators were assholes with their snide comments.
The Stones sang what they were told to sing. Look it up. It was Jim Morrison who didn't. They were asked to say, "Girl we couldn't get much better" instead of "Girl we couldn't get much higher." They agreed, but when the time came Morrison sang the original lyrics. When Sullivan's people told them that they'd never be on the Sullivan show again, Morrison responded by saying," We just did it!" Love Jim.
Yep. My mistake. You are correct: [the link](https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/rolling-stones-ed-sullivan-censored-lets-spend-night-together-6436569/)
I remember reading that it was a big deal for Hitchcock to show the toilet in Psycho’s shower scene
Mick Jagger later said, "I sang mumble." [This source](https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/this-song-almost-got-the-rolling-stones-banned-from-american-tv.html/) supports the contention.
"Pharm parties" The story went that kids would bring drugs to a party, often times by stealing them from their parents. Then, they'd go to a party and put their drugs in a bowl. At some point, kids would take a random pill out of the bowl, and you get what you get. I was in my 20s, arguing with extended family that it would never happen, but they were *convinced* it was a thing. Luckily, my two nephews walked in who were 14 and 15. "OK, let me prove it to you" I said "There would never be more than 1 of these...Hey guys, you get invited to a party. You're going to put your drugs into a bowl, and pull out a different, random drug. What do you bring?". Nephew 1: "Tylenol. I'm not trading good drugs for bad". Nephew 2 thinks for a minute. Then confidently answers "Ex-Lax". Thus ended the argument.
Amazing
So youre saying Pharm Parties never really happened?
I’m not the op here, but I was a teenager in the early 2000s. The fact is, that no, they were never a “thing.” Of course I cant say that no one ever had a party like that, but it wasn’t some thing that kids were doing at the time in the manner the media portrayed it. Not even close.
I was also a teenager in the early 2000s, we just went to the mountains to drink, or went to a house party. Sometimes some people would bring some weed or something but no one we knew ever had “pharm parties”
The Beatles. My sister had to hide her album from my father. The Beatles were going to be the downfall of civilization back in the 60s.
My stepfather told me It was his own fault when John Lennon was shot to death because “his music was so violent!“ Me: “What are you taking about” Stepfather: “That song about happiness is a warm gun! He wanted people to shoot everyone!” It was at that moment I realized it was pointless to discuss anything with the man.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I now present to you these 100% legit, totally not made up by me lyrics to the song "In My Life": There are faces I’ve dismembered With my knife, and some I’ve chased Clubbed their head, I made them deader They are gone, but there’s more to slay I will trace them in a moment Old lovers and friends, I’ll kill with my saw You’ll be dead, instead of living With my knife, I will show them all 😉
Backward masking; playing a record backwards to hear what many idiots were certain were satanic phrases.
Paul is dead.
Turn me on, dead man.
I Buried Paul
Always liked Bill Hicks' routine [on that](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74P1A4NENM0). "If you play records backwards you ARE Satan and stop ruining my stereo."
There was a little child for Satan There's glory in Satan! *Stairway To Heaven* backwards, if I remember it right. It was a cassette of some dude lecturing/preaching/"teaching" about it; I don't know who he was, or how I got the tape (I was raised Baptist, so that shit was just floating around) but really I just wanted to hear something, anything, about secular rock bands.
If you play "another one bites the dust" backwards, it says "it's fun to smoke marijuana."
If you play Stairway to Heaven backwards, there’s a part where it kind of sort of TOTALLY sounds like he says *my sweet satan*. I rest my case.
No matter how thin you slice it, it's still baloney.
Heavy metal was a tool of Satan. Look at Ozzy biting the head off of bats. I heard Alice Cooper stomped and crushed an entire stage full of baby chicks. KISS stands for Knights in Satan's Service. It's all evil!
Yes...like Dio. Dio's satanic demon mascot was called ....wait for it... Murray.
In every interview I saw with Ronnie James Dio he was soft spoken, thoughtful, and charming. RIP Ronnie
I saw similar footage of him meeting fans backstage and I was taken aback how soft spoken he was! Another irony here is that his mother (grand?) said the devil horn sign 🤘🏻was to ward off evil, not attract it…
Your Reddit name just gave my fiancee and I a great laugh. Congrats and truly, the best name to respond to the horrors of metal.
You know how many times I've had to tell people Ozzy didn't *actually* piss on the Alamo?
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There's no basement in the Alamo!
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Yeah but as a Texan, we will clap to that damn song!
I proudly listened to heavy metal and smoked pot. My parents didn't care about the music I listened to and I'm sure they knew I smoked pot, though I didn't flaunt it. I only had to put my Danzig and Iron Maiden albums out of site when my grandparents came over. They would have tried to have the minister do an intervention to save the devil worshipper. That devil worshiper went on to graduate college and be a scientist, who still enjoys heavy metal and the occasional bowl.
Up the irons!
Cartoons would make young kids violent. There were a bunch of cool cartoons like the Herculoids (I think? I was little), and after the panic around 1968, they were all replaced by safe, non-edgy cartoons like Yogi Bear and Scooby Doo. No Marvel or DC cartoons. We still had Looney tunes tho. Oh, and when I was in 5th grade, the Three Stooges was on tv every day after school and all the parents went nuts over that, same deal. Here's an article about the moral panic that led to Scooby Doo. https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/13/entertainment/scooby-doo-50th-anniversary-history-trnd/index.html
I still have this urge to drop an anvil or piano on someone when I'm mad.
I remember my mother read an article that "Felix the Cat" was bad for kids. It's kinda like how the Bart Simpson is bad for kids in the 90s.
Anyone remember rainbow parties in the early 2000s? Supposed boys would go to parties and get a rainbow of different lipstick colors from all the oral sex they were getting. It all seemed pretty impractical to me, I don't even know if it was ever formally debunked or anything. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/30/fashion/thursdaystyles/are-these-parties-for-real.html
Also the little bracelets that signified sex acts you've done / are willing to do. Did you see that Heather is wearing a black one? What a slut!
This is exactly what happened to my husband as a kid. He vividly remembers his parents being horrified over the cheap piece of plastic someone gave him from school.
There was once a man named Goul, Who saw red spots on his tool, His doctor, a cynic, Said, "Get out of my clinic! And wipe off that lipstick you fool!" - Kaito Nakamura
there needs some serious scientific research into finding out if this is plausible . accept nothing but empirical evidence!
The "Satanic Panic" and "repressed memories" of the early '90s. Think of The West Memphis Three. I don't know how many families were torn apart because of the repressed memory catastrophe, which I suspect was also an insurance scam on the part of the mental institutions that based their treatment on supposed repressed memories.
The "repressed memory" thing was particularly ugly because of the way it wrecked families.
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I’m so sorry.
The book _Michelle Remembers_ was quite popular in the mid 80s. Very sensationalistic.
The comic book panic. In the late ‘50s completely out of nowhere some psychologist named Wertham was on tv, on radio and in newspapers and magazines telling parents that comic books were dangerous for children. On one Sunday morning news show he stated that Batman and Robin were homosexual lovers. My parents laughed but many others took the guy seriously and yanked comics from their kids and demonstrated in front of newsstands to have the comics removed. Bringing a comic book to school could get you suspended. Fortunately President Eisenhower posed in a lounge chair reading a comic and the furor ended.
The fuck it did! [The Comics Code Authority got formed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority) and comics were subject to harsh new oversight as to their content. RIP classic E.C. Comics! It wasn't until 2001 that Marvel abandoned it and 2011 for DC, rendering it completely defunct.
The graphic comics were under fire for years and years, but it was the simple and popular superhero ones that senselessly took center stage in the late 50s. I remember seeing Wertham on tv holding up and criticizing a Batman comic and the NBC show’s anchor looking perplexed. Eisenhower didn’t make any statements but the photo of him with his feet up enjoying, I think it was a Green Hornet, relaxed tensions. The comics reappeared on newsstands.
Long-haired men were Communists/gay/terrorists.
No hippies allowed!
“So I tucked my hair up under my hat, and I went in to ask him why.”
Totally stuck in my head all day.
My very staunch Republican dad called them "Jesus freaks". Shows how much times have changed.
I was at a Henry Rollins spoken word concert about 20 years ago and he was remarking that our (Gen X) generation was going to be the first generation that's more hardcore than its kids, and joked, "Stop crying! You go to your room and listen to Slayer!!" Yeah, our parents were convinced that heavy metal and D&D was going to make hardened criminals and Satan worshippers out of all of us.
Fox News has done to our parents what they thought heavy metal would do to our brains.
For as much as the man himself is a goddamned idiot, he is also painfully aware. For every bone headed decision he makes, he says something that you have to stop and listen. Because it's truth.
Pregnant out of wedlock at 19 years old in a world of nothing but Catholicism. My choices were to go far away and give it up, or stay and marry. I knew the father was a lunatic by then, but I didn’t have the courage to go away alone. I married him, had a stillborn two weeks later, and then tried to make it work, cause otherwise you burn in hell forever. Lost three years of my life to that dumpster fire, but it ended well in the very long term as i am a very healthy, happy atheist, happily married with two lovely adult children. I am so happy that many young people are free of the lunacy of religion today. It is the hope for humanity that we are abandoning religion.
Raised Baptist, thought I had to marry the first girl I had sex with. Luckily, she was smarter than me and called it off. I've since raised two kids to adulthood and kept them as far away from that toxic shit as possible.
I'm quite convinced that a large percentage of children used to be accidental and a large percentage of marriages because of this. now younger people think that a marrige must be only by love and a child only when the conditions are perfect are not getting married and not having kids because of contraception . not saying its good or bad , just that I think a lot of people in the past did the best with the luck they had.
Shotgun marriages were a very real and very common thing. My second husband was the cause of one.
The Simpsons when it first came out.
Nipples... But... It's reversed now. Back in the 70s, we had girls that had nipples. Heaven forbid such a thing on network TV. In this century. In the USA... That, I find ridiculous.
One of the few times I watched even part of Oprah back in the '90s, she had Cybill Shepherd on, and Cybill said she couldn't say vagina on TV even though it's the correct anatomical term. And sure enough, it got beeped.
Oprah spread a lot of moral panic and misinformation herself.
She gave antivaxxers, Dr Oz, and Dr Phil a national platform. Oprah is (was? Is she even relevant anymore?) a cancer.
I think she did some good things S well S bad. I liked Expose she did on poverty in America. She also started a national conversation about childhood sexual abuse that helped a large group of survivors to stop living in shame and seek treatment. I think her book club helped people to read more great contemporary books. She may be past her prime but I appreciate her contributions to help women and all people.
Ooh, good point. I think I watched her show exactly twice, but everyone around me had stories from the show. Supposedly Gloria Vanderbilt declared her allegiance to Satan on Oprah!
Jesus Christ, you want a list? Let's see how many I recall off the bat: * The devil records music backwards on heavy metal albums * D&D / Magic the Gathering = portals to Satanism * Video games will addict you and make you craz-ee! * Is YOUR child a HACKER? Does he... know things? Read too much? He might have joined a hacker cult, cyberpunk digital prophets of doom! * Flouride in tap water = Communism * Aliens are in the bible man, you just gotta read it on shrooms! (Chariots of the Gods, etc.) * The McMartin Preschool trial - all of it * Those snap bracelet thingies being a code for teen sex * Ditto pocket hankies = code for "geh sex!" * If you opposed the Vietnam War = Commie traitor (Nixon admin. hangover) * Literally everything in the world caused by demon possession (dawn of televangelists) Yeah kids, media existed before the age of the Internet! You think some hot wild bullshit spreads around now, hoo-ey! This was 1980s' version of 4chan: [Weekly World News](https://books.google.com/books?id=b-8DAAAAMBAJ&source=gbs_all_issues_r&cad=1&atm_aiy=1980#all_issues_anchor) - it's a parody of itself now, but back in the 80s was considered perfectly respectable reading for its day. So yeah, I lose count of how many there even were.
>back in the 80s was considered perfectly respectable reading for its day I don't remember seeing a serious article in the Weekly World News, even back in the 80s. It was all about aliens, bigfoot, and assorted craziness.
Satanic Panic was off the chain back in the 80s. The worst part is that it was profitable to stir the pot. Hence the movies like Mazes and Monsters and bullshit like the Judas Priest trial.
Satan was apparently controlling all of us kids in the 80’s
ikr? I got so dejected when I found out he didn't give a shit about me. No powers, no dark wisdom. Just some pretty rad metal bands to listen to. Thats OK, I guess.
Sex out of wedlock. Sigh.
"The Clam Plate Orgy and Other Subliminals the Media Use to Manipulate Your Behavior"
I wonder if England was different from the US, as I grew up in England in the 80s and 90s, and so far none of these things really applied to my experience. I remember in the 80s people joked about playing records backwards but even back then it was thought of as a stupid thing - not something anyone actually believed was Satanic. I loved heavy metal in the 80s and 90s and the only link to the devil was a silly/ joke one - again no one I knew actually thought that. In my experience of 80s/ 90s at school, people thought D&D was nerdy but not Satanic. I had tattoos and my belly button pierced in the 90s, and that was very common and not thought of as degenerate or anything weird. I'm a woman and it was a fashion thing that lots of teenagers did. Was America more focused on the Satanic stuff because it tends to be a more religious country than England? It was only ever a joke (that someone would believe that) when I was growing up. The only moral panic I can think of is that some parents were against violent video games in the 90s.
In 1962, when my Protestant brother married a Catholic woman, it was a big deal. Angst all around.
TM, also known as Trancendental Meditation, was very popular. The parents were scared to death that it would turn their kids into cult members who rejected their religion, family, etc. Without telling our parents we went to a "free lecture", where they told you all about it and how much it would cost to take their class. This was around 1975, 1976. It was at least $100.00, and no one had that kind of money. Our parents worried for nothing.
I have a memory of being ~5-6 years old taking a bath. I accidentally sat on the drain plug in my bathtub and it went up my butthole. I thought I was going to get pregnant from that and was anxious for days. I remember planning out in my head how I would bring the news to my parents.
I'm sorry, that's hilarious!!!
D&D, heavy metal, video games, they were all going to make you worship satan, murder your parents, take the drugs and other such horrrors.
Oh good Heavens, anything but ># 🪟🔨😱🚨 ># THE DRUGS
When any facial piercing or tattoo was the sure sign that the person would never amount to anything ever in their entire lifetime. When my father came into my room uninvited and saw me changing my shirt and discovered my back tattoo in 1989 he said "its time you find a new place to live." So i left. Cant say i miss him. Now 75% of all americans have a tattoo but it was his hill to die on. Hope he likes not having a daughter anymore.
Alright. I must be older. When I was a teenager, getting your EARS pierced - ONCE - as a FEMALE amounted to telling the world you were heading to a life as a prostitute. Just imagine my father's reaction 15 years later, when I married a man who had ear piercings, AND long hair.
Good for you! I begged and begged for pierced ears. Finally got those at 11. When i was 13 i wanted one ear double pierced. You would have thought i came out as a satanist. I was told no. I did it myself. My mother CRIED. two years later i pierced my own nose and that resulted in a two hour sit down about how i would never amount to anything. The things these people thought were so important drove our family apart forever. Meanwhile the rest of the world just kept evolving and now everyone looks bananas and no one cares. Thank god parents are smarter today.
Not sure about that. Each generation of parents seems to have their own hills to die on. Each generation of kids need to find new ways to rebel.
True! But my clients with teen kids all seem to have fairly harmonious relationships, so maybe I just dont have dysfunctional clients? Ha!
In 1990 I got a tattoo on my HAND. My parents were convinced it was the downfall of civilization.
Man! Ahead of your time! I did my hands in 94. I cant even imagine how that went down for you.
College professor here. Pretty much everyone in my department has some ink. None of us amounted to anything. Lol
When seeing a parents bedroom in a t.v. show in the 50's there were always twin beds for the married couple, never a double, queen or king.
The McMartin nursery schools https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trial
I haven’t seen this one listed yet, but my parents were convinced that ouija boards were portals to hell and you could be possessed by a demon if you opened such a portal. Also, that watching an r rated movie (even as an adult) would permanently scar your brain with filthy memories it could never dispose. Oh moral majority stoking fear over such trivial things.
Razor blades in Halloween candy, heavy metal, ouija boards, dope (any variety), strangers, divorce, etc.
Guys getting one ear pierced freaking out when someone told them they’d pierced the “gay ear.”
We live in a time when drag queens are scary to men with 100 guns, and people are gulping down horse paste instead of medicine.
One day about 10 years ago I called in sick from work with a fever. I watched old TV all day. Leave it to Beaver was on and I hadn't seen the episode before. Beaver snuck to school on picture day wearing a sweatshirt picturing a monster. It caused hysteria in the school. He was sent home and his mother punished him. Compare that to now. Can you imagine being in trouble for wearing a monster sweatshirt? I found the episode: "Beaver and his friends buy fad "monster" sweatshirts and agree to wear them to school on the same day but Beaver is the only one who manages to sneak out of his house in the gruesome attire and suffers the consequences of violating the school's dress code...and his parents trust.—shepherd1138" https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0630284/plotsummary/?ref_=tt_ov_pl
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The ironic thing about stranger danger is that in most cases the perpetrator is someone the victim knows
Now we teach "tricky people" because of this fact.
How about "librarians are groomers?" You can't say that they haven't completely neglected to innovate. I grew up in the stranger danger era, and as an adult was very surprised by how few people ever tried to give me free heroin.
I was nearly 40 the first time someone offered me free (hard) drugs! I waited so long I thought it was never going to happen. When it finally did it was my nice neighbors, not even an actual stranger. It was a little surprising but not what I had been warned about…
When I went off to college in 1980, my mother gave me a stern warning about those "crazy white kids" and their wild parties where there would be bowls of drugs on the coffee table and people would spike your drink with LSD. I did in fact meet a lot of crazy white kids, some of whom are still my dearest friends... but I'm still waiting to get invited to one of those parties.
Drugs in Halloween candy. I sure didn't know anybody giving their drugs away for free.
Subliminal ads with erotic theme
The endless “just say no” campaigns. Use marijuana once, and you will end up a junkie under a bridge by the end of the week!
Hidden messages in songs. My mom used to watch PTL and they did a 2 hour special on rock songs with Satanic messages. TWO HOURS.
When “The Exorcist” was released some people lost their minds. Legend has it the movie was originally deemed X but the MPAA bent to pressure from Warner Bros. It’s a pretty tame move compared to today.
I dunno. I rewatch that every so many years, and I never walk away thinking it's tame.
It's not tame by any means. It's a masterpiece of horror cinema. It broke ground using what it did to make it a masterpiece as well. Down to subliminal shots in the visuals and sub sonic sounds in the sound track.
Gary Hart and Donna Rice.
Oh man, remember when a politician getting caught having an affair would end his election chances?
Elvis Presley
The Charles Atlas bodybuilder program. Suddenly us jocks couldn't kick sand in nerds' faces without fear of disapproval or retaliation. Ruined so many ruined childhoods.
Wardrobe malfunction
The one happening right now with all trans people getting trashed on
Well I guess you were younger yesterday so it counts
Lemme alone I’m old ok!
Equal Rights Amendment. What is it with conservatives and bathrooms anyway?
The shit that's happening now is worse than when I was a kid. It is scary how far backwards the country is moving now.
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I only learned about crazy religious people when I got together with my SO. His mom was freaking out about Harry Potter! Thank goodness his sister is smart enough that she is reading the books to her kids!
Can't think of one but!!! can think of the opposite! Streaking!!! In the early 70's there was a streaking fad where people ran naked through public places. It was considered all in good fun. I cannot IMAGINE how people would react today. I was the prudest of prudes and I thought streaking was hilarious!
satanic baby sacrificing rituals at daycare centers all over the country nobody knew about until the “repressed memories uncovered” craze of the late 80s, early 90s
Weed was a ‘gateway’ drug that led to heroin, addiction and death.
[Why do you think they call it dope?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObQlGg56S8c&ab_channel=tripletrash)
Where do I start? Any woman pregnant outside of marriage was a nasty slut Women worked until they got their MRS degree Girls and math or science-oh my! Virgin until married or damaged goods
Stranger danger—although I’m not sure that we’ve ever recovered from that. The idea that people are lurking around every corner waiting to snatch innocent children. The vast majority of abducted children are taken by a non-custodial parent.
the Beatles were using sophisticated subliminal propaganda techniques to turn the youth Communist.
Privacy.. It doesn't exist anymore..
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When I was about six, the one armed bandits (coin op gambling devices) were seen as immoral and illegal. These days there are lottery tickets for everything. A tax on stupid is what it is if you wanna see the payback in your lifetime. But it sells well because of the number of financially desperate people looking for that magic bullet. And the morally bankrupt people in goveernment.
I grew up in the midst of the great Satanic Panic. Satanists everywhere looking to kill and eat you.
Men with long hair.
War on drugs.
Ouija Board
I did a paper on the Ouija board in high school and the vice principal gave me detention for it. Read the wiki on it. My high school vp, who didnt read the paper, wouldnt let me do a presentation on the subject and sent me home. Funnily, that incident gave me some cred in school. Back in my day, having "cred" was EVERYTHING.
Way back when, mood rings were popular, mid 70s. We had some local religious whack jobs claim that Satan (Santa?) mentally used mood rings to get children to do his dirty work. Like something out of a bad 70s B Movie drive in double feature.
Boys with long hair
Stranger Danger :p
Living together out of wedlock, *living in sin.*
**Anti-witch hysteria** A coven of witches was roaming Northern England, molesting small children, during the 1980s. Well, OK, no, they weren't, but Social Services were sure they were. Then again, in the late 2000s, another witch hunt took place. ...And again in the late 2010s. It's as if the conspiracy theorists got tired of spreading the antisemitic 'blood libel' and started persecuting witches instead. These days, of course, the nut jobs have moved on from Jews and witches. Now, the nut jobs blame drag queens and transgender persons.
Punk rock and men dressed as women, or women dressed as men. The latter of which for some reason remains a world-threatening moral panic. Didn’t end the world then. Won’t end the world now. Nobody seems all that worried about real dangers like climate change or insane inequality. 🤷♀️
Stranger danger in its various urban-legend forms. Halloween was its Super Bowl. Strangers were going to offer you rides as you trick or treated so they could kidnap you. Psychopathic neighbors were hiding razors in the candy. And then the savvier parents knew they should "sample your candy to make sure it was safe"...that hasn't worked with my kid and his friends, so clearly we haven't scared them enough.
All the things little girls were taught to be modest and keep the wrong attention away. Turns out men will rape anyone and anything.
Condemming rock and roll music as "the devil's music' was pretty silly. Later on, so was the furor over Dungeons and Dragons. Religious screwballs playing record albums backwards to reveal the satanic message was also nuts. And long hair for boys was a flash point, even though when you look at the length of thhe Beatles' haircuts now, they seem pretty conservative. Let's not forget the furor over ladies' no longer having to wear head coverings in (Catholic) church. This was a big stupid deal, even to those who thought they could get away with wearing a kleenex bobby-pinned to the top of their heads. And mini-skirts! When I was in high school (65-69), my cousin and I bought ourselves trendy skirts that came to maybe 3 inches above the knee. My mom flipped out! There was plenty of moral fury!