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The panic always seemed like a bunch of smug people looking down on others about how "they could lose touch with reality while playing D&D." It was a condescend

by LanceH 5y ago

The panic always seemed like a bunch of smug people looking down on others about how "they could lose touch with reality while playing D&D." It was a condescending moral high ground they stood on where they didn't think other people could handle themselves and should be denied the opportunity to do things on their own. You see the same attitude in a lot of "think of the children" restrictions on whatever. Even in discussions about what should be allowed on facebook, some people apparently shouldn't be allowed to be wrong on facebook. I would like to also point out: * We haven't caught all those satanists who were holding ritual sacrifices in the 80's * Apparently now, repressed memories of trauma are staying repressed and we aren't uncovering them as well anymore * We haven't caught those damn clowns in the forest who were stealing children * Vaping apparently hasn't killed everyone who touched one * The prius's out there seem to have stopped accelerating unintentionally

arbitrage 5y ago
I played DnD when I was a kid around this time, I remember the satanic panic very well. I thought it sounded so cool, that I thought I was playing the game wrong ... there was far less satan worshipping than I had been led to believe. Since this was before the era of Internet in the home, I went to the library, and the librarian helped me look through the microfiche archives. We tracked down the original reported incidences that were most likely to be referenced by the people driving the panic reporting. I distinctly recall discussing with her "that's it? wow, they're blowing this all way out of proportion." She nodded in agreement.
- labster 5y ago
  Most of the kewl satanic rules were in the splatbooks, like the dark ritual to lower your THAC0. That’s probably why you missed it. Also, Tomb of Horrors. Pretty sure that’s what inspired the Chick Tract.
BaseballPhysics 5y ago
> The panic always seemed like a bunch of smug people looking down on others This is far far too simplistic a take, and frankly understates what was going on at the time while failing to appreciate the actions and motivations of those involved. The D&D scare was part of the broader satanic panic collective delusion, which you mention here, that led to literal, real-life witch hunts that ruined lives. The Martensville panic in Saskatchewan, Canada, is a perfect example of this: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/outintheopen/fighting-falsehoods-1.5056457/satanic-cult-scandal-that-rocked-a-small-saskatchewan-town-in-92-continues-to-haunt-the-falsely-accused-1.5074956 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/outintheopen/fighting-falsehoods-1.... To this day these exact same hoaxes are found in things like QAnon. Many of the folks who are obsessed with this kind of thing genuinely believe that there's people engaging in satanic ritual abuse. There are folks who get emotionally distraught when they talk about things like pizzagate because they really believe it. Yes, there's no shortage of grifters and so forth. But many folks taken in by this stuff are genuine and well-meaning, and to just paint them all as "smug" not only does those folks a disservice, it fails as a constructive starting point for figuring how to deal with these types of issues.
- alx__ 5y ago
  Yeah the "satanic panic" era was part of an attempt by churches groups to "take us back to an era of good people". Sound familiar? Church leaders get "worried" about their people. But really its about the loss of power, control, and influence. So they target various things in society they deem evil and weaponize their congregants. To this day, my mom still thinks D&D is satanic worship. Even though I have explained the game, and shown her the setup.
  - AniseAbyss 5y ago
    I would not lay the blame entirely at church leaders. The media loves their child sex abuse scandals, missing children and pedos. They are good for ratings.
  - BaseballPhysics 5y ago
    And, again, this is an incredibly simplistic take that, frankly, smells of motivated reasoning based on your personal distaste for organized religion. The Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic) on the topic does a nice job of laying out the foundations of the panic: > The underpinnings for the contemporary moral panic were found in a rise of five factors in the years leading up to the 1980s: the establishment of fundamentalist Christianity and the founding and political activism of the religious organization which was named the Moral Majority; the rise of the anti-cult movement which accused abusive cults of kidnapping and brainwashing children and teens; the appearance of the Church of Satan and other explicitly Satanist groups which added a kernel of truth to the existence of Satanic cults; the development of the social work or child protection field, and its struggle to have child sexual abuse recognized as a social problem and a serious crime; and the popularization of post-traumatic stress disorder, repressed memory, and the corresponding survivor movement.[16] It was a deeply multifaceted phenomenon. To assume it was just a bunch of nefarious church leaders deliberately stoking a hoax in order to gain power is deeply reductive and once again misleading about both the causes of, and solutions for, these types of moral panics. There's some excellent books and podcasts about the topic that dig into the hoax, including a fantastic CBC series about the Martensville panic which is worth listening to if only to get a better understanding of what people went through at the time. This is important! Recognizing the many and varied root causes that lead to phenomena like the satanic panic help us better understand modern movements like QAnon, and critically, how to deal with them, both at the individual and at the broader societal level.
weaksauce 5y ago
> * The prius's out there seem to have stopped accelerating unintentionally https://www.cbsnews.com/news/toyota-unintended-acceleration-has-killed-89/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/toyota-unintended-acceleration-... well they did have a big recall push to fix about 3.5 million toyotas so that's probably why. if the problem was with the car cpu bit flipping like the one report said was possible it's possible that those cpus were just defective and more susceptible to that error. either way the issue got aged out by attrition.
- LanceH 5y ago
  The put a hook in to hold the floor mat. If that was the problem, the throttle was still being pressed and the brakes weren't being applied, contrary to the media's hysterical reporting.
  - weaksauce 5y ago
    I'm not sure I buy that explanation fully. one of the guys driving was a CHP officer and the acceleration was stuck wide open... the mat could have been a contributing factor but there were software issues that could have caused it too. The witnesses said the car was surging in acceleration immediately prior to the accident. there were also some components changed in the accelerator assembly too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx2diBKXN_Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx2diBKXN_Y https://embeddedgurus.com/barr-code/2013/10/an-update-on-toyota-and-unintended-acceleration/ https://embeddedgurus.com/barr-code/2013/10/an-update-on-toy...
    - LanceH 5y ago
      Try https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/us-department-transportation-releases-results-nhtsa-nasa-study-unintended-acceleration https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/us-department-t... The large majority of these are either someone getting the throttle stuck with junk in the floor space (including the mat), or someone hitting the wrong pedal. I'm not saying that nothing ever broke and there was never a stuck throttle or two. But it is portrayed in the media as the cars pressing the throttle on their own, and the brakes suddenly not working (though they work in the wrecked car afterward). The media goes right along with this hysteria and plays it all like it is true. A very large percentage of these "stuck throttles" with "brakes that don't work" are people pressing the wrong pedal. It's that damn simple. With the Audi 5000 in the 80's (same hysteria) it was possible because the pedals were shaped a bit different. This also led to requiring the brake to be pushed when shifting from park.
ben7799 5y ago
It seems like a lot of the people who thought the D&D players could lose touch with reality had already lost touch with reality. It's just there were so many of them going to their churches that it was normalized.
aftbit 5y ago
Don't forget the satanic child abusers hiding in tunnels under kern county. https://meaww.com/kern-county-child-abuse-ring-witch-hunt-documentary-satanic-rituals https://meaww.com/kern-county-child-abuse-ring-witch-hunt-do...
- LanceH 5y ago
  ah, sweet spot between the repressed memories of abuse and satan worship.
zabzonk 5y ago
> We haven't caught all those satanists who were holding ritual sacrifices in the 80's But how else do you explain self-driving cars?
glonq 5y ago
we haven't even caught the democrat pizza basement pedo club yet. /s
saithier 5y ago
To be fair, it's not really like Prius's out there accelerate regardless of intention.

by LanceH 5y ago

arbitrage 5y ago

I played DnD when I was a kid around this time, I remember the satanic panic very well. I thought it sounded so cool, that I thought I was playing the game wrong ... there was far less satan worshipping than I had been led to believe. Since this was before the era of Internet in the home, I went to the library, and the librarian helped me look through the microfiche archives. We tracked down the original reported incidences that were most likely to be referenced by the people driving the panic reporting. I distinctly recall discussing with her "that's it? wow, they're blowing this all way out of proportion." She nodded in agreement.

labster 5y ago
Most of the kewl satanic rules were in the splatbooks, like the dark ritual to lower your THAC0. That’s probably why you missed it. Also, Tomb of Horrors. Pretty sure that’s what inspired the Chick Tract.

BaseballPhysics 5y ago

> The panic always seemed like a bunch of smug people looking down on others This is far far too simplistic a take, and frankly understates what was going on at the time while failing to appreciate the actions and motivations of those involved. The D&D scare was part of the broader satanic panic collective delusion, which you mention here, that led to literal, real-life witch hunts that ruined lives. The Martensville panic in Saskatchewan, Canada, is a perfect example of this: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/outintheopen/fighting-falsehoods-1.5056457/satanic-cult-scandal-that-rocked-a-small-saskatchewan-town-in-92-continues-to-haunt-the-falsely-accused-1.5074956 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/outintheopen/fighting-falsehoods-1.... To this day these exact same hoaxes are found in things like QAnon. Many of the folks who are obsessed with this kind of thing genuinely believe that there's people engaging in satanic ritual abuse. There are folks who get emotionally distraught when they talk about things like pizzagate because they really believe it. Yes, there's no shortage of grifters and so forth. But many folks taken in by this stuff are genuine and well-meaning, and to just paint them all as "smug" not only does those folks a disservice, it fails as a constructive starting point for figuring how to deal with these types of issues.

alx__ 5y ago
Yeah the "satanic panic" era was part of an attempt by churches groups to "take us back to an era of good people". Sound familiar? Church leaders get "worried" about their people. But really its about the loss of power, control, and influence. So they target various things in society they deem evil and weaponize their congregants. To this day, my mom still thinks D&D is satanic worship. Even though I have explained the game, and shown her the setup.
- AniseAbyss 5y ago
  I would not lay the blame entirely at church leaders. The media loves their child sex abuse scandals, missing children and pedos. They are good for ratings.
- BaseballPhysics 5y ago
  And, again, this is an incredibly simplistic take that, frankly, smells of motivated reasoning based on your personal distaste for organized religion. The Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic) on the topic does a nice job of laying out the foundations of the panic: > The underpinnings for the contemporary moral panic were found in a rise of five factors in the years leading up to the 1980s: the establishment of fundamentalist Christianity and the founding and political activism of the religious organization which was named the Moral Majority; the rise of the anti-cult movement which accused abusive cults of kidnapping and brainwashing children and teens; the appearance of the Church of Satan and other explicitly Satanist groups which added a kernel of truth to the existence of Satanic cults; the development of the social work or child protection field, and its struggle to have child sexual abuse recognized as a social problem and a serious crime; and the popularization of post-traumatic stress disorder, repressed memory, and the corresponding survivor movement.[16] It was a deeply multifaceted phenomenon. To assume it was just a bunch of nefarious church leaders deliberately stoking a hoax in order to gain power is deeply reductive and once again misleading about both the causes of, and solutions for, these types of moral panics. There's some excellent books and podcasts about the topic that dig into the hoax, including a fantastic CBC series about the Martensville panic which is worth listening to if only to get a better understanding of what people went through at the time. This is important! Recognizing the many and varied root causes that lead to phenomena like the satanic panic help us better understand modern movements like QAnon, and critically, how to deal with them, both at the individual and at the broader societal level.

weaksauce 5y ago

> * The prius's out there seem to have stopped accelerating unintentionally https://www.cbsnews.com/news/toyota-unintended-acceleration-has-killed-89/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/toyota-unintended-acceleration-... well they did have a big recall push to fix about 3.5 million toyotas so that's probably why. if the problem was with the car cpu bit flipping like the one report said was possible it's possible that those cpus were just defective and more susceptible to that error. either way the issue got aged out by attrition.

LanceH 5y ago
The put a hook in to hold the floor mat. If that was the problem, the throttle was still being pressed and the brakes weren't being applied, contrary to the media's hysterical reporting.
- weaksauce 5y ago
  I'm not sure I buy that explanation fully. one of the guys driving was a CHP officer and the acceleration was stuck wide open... the mat could have been a contributing factor but there were software issues that could have caused it too. The witnesses said the car was surging in acceleration immediately prior to the accident. there were also some components changed in the accelerator assembly too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx2diBKXN_Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx2diBKXN_Y https://embeddedgurus.com/barr-code/2013/10/an-update-on-toyota-and-unintended-acceleration/ https://embeddedgurus.com/barr-code/2013/10/an-update-on-toy...
  - LanceH 5y ago
    Try https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/us-department-transportation-releases-results-nhtsa-nasa-study-unintended-acceleration https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/us-department-t... The large majority of these are either someone getting the throttle stuck with junk in the floor space (including the mat), or someone hitting the wrong pedal. I'm not saying that nothing ever broke and there was never a stuck throttle or two. But it is portrayed in the media as the cars pressing the throttle on their own, and the brakes suddenly not working (though they work in the wrecked car afterward). The media goes right along with this hysteria and plays it all like it is true. A very large percentage of these "stuck throttles" with "brakes that don't work" are people pressing the wrong pedal. It's that damn simple. With the Audi 5000 in the 80's (same hysteria) it was possible because the pedals were shaped a bit different. This also led to requiring the brake to be pushed when shifting from park.

ben7799 5y ago

It seems like a lot of the people who thought the D&D players could lose touch with reality had already lost touch with reality. It's just there were so many of them going to their churches that it was normalized.

aftbit 5y ago

Don't forget the satanic child abusers hiding in tunnels under kern county. https://meaww.com/kern-county-child-abuse-ring-witch-hunt-documentary-satanic-rituals https://meaww.com/kern-county-child-abuse-ring-witch-hunt-do...

LanceH 5y ago
ah, sweet spot between the repressed memories of abuse and satan worship.

zabzonk 5y ago

> We haven't caught all those satanists who were holding ritual sacrifices in the 80's But how else do you explain self-driving cars?

glonq 5y ago

we haven't even caught the democrat pizza basement pedo club yet. /s

saithier 5y ago

To be fair, it's not really like Prius's out there accelerate regardless of intention.