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What happened to the idea that D&D led to Satanism and suicide? This was a big deal back in the 1980s. You never hear about it anymore, and yet I haven't heard
by pjscott 16y ago
What happened to the idea that D&D led to Satanism and suicide? This was a big deal back in the 1980s. You never hear about it anymore, and yet I haven't heard any of the old scaremongers actually admitting that they were wrong. Ditto for Satanic ritual abuse, which used to scare people out of their wits.
- philwelch 16y agoIt's called a "moral panic", and they happen all the time. There have been moral panics about rock music, comic books, teenage sex parties, fictitious drugs, and video games.
- uxp 16y agoIf anyone wants to waste an afternoon developing a raging headache, I highly recommend reading some of the Wikipedia articles in the Moral Panic category.
- hugh3 16y agoIs there not, however, such a thing as a Moral Panic Panic? For instance, if I manage to round up a dozen mouth-breathing parents to join my group Concerned Parents Against ASCII Porn On Twitter and it'll immediately be picked up by thousands of new outlets. There'll be a hundred front-page articles about the "New Puritanism" by next Sunday. Bingo, we have a moral panic panic, and there's a moral panic panic to go with every moral panic, usually on a much larger scale. My real point here is to point out that the moral panic about Dungeons and Dragons was probably never more than a very small number of people making a small amount of noise, amplified by a media hungry for controversial stories about stupid people. PS. 8======D ----* (.)(.) pew pew pew
- wlievens 16y agoIt was more than a fringe phenomenon. There was even a movie based on this train of thought, starring a now fairly respectable actor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazes_and_Monsters http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazes_and_Monsters Like the book on which it is based, the film treats the playing of roleplaying games as indicative of deep neurotic needs. At least one protagonist is (or at least appears to be) suffering from schizophrenia (or some analogous condition) and in the end, the attainment of mature adulthood by others players is accompanied by the abandonment of role-playing games.
- johngalt 16y agoThey moved on to the next scapegoat. Generally whatever they didn't do as a kid, and is now practiced by small numbers of smart introverted kids.