Satanic Panic - Revision history

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1d4chan>Piroko: /* Reactions */

2022-10-13T01:31:15Z

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← Older revision		Revision as of 01:31, 13 October 2022
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	Outside of the gaming sphere, the larger "moral majority" movement grossly overreached by trying to go after glam rock, with Tipper Gore (VP Al Gore's wife) famously dragging Dee Snider into congressional hearings about obscene music, only for the likes of John Denver and Frank Zappa to criticize the movement for its brazen disregard for artistic and civil liberty.		Outside of the gaming sphere, the larger "moral majority" movement grossly overreached by trying to go after glam rock, with Tipper Gore (VP Al Gore's wife) famously dragging Dee Snider into congressional hearings about obscene music, only for the likes of John Denver and Frank Zappa to criticize the movement for its brazen disregard for artistic and civil liberty.

	The cultural zeitgeist changed. No longer was it a movement defending culture and children. It was a bunch of heckling protestant busybodies who hate fun.		The cultural zeitgeist changed. No longer was it a movement defending culture and children. It was unmasked as a bunch of heckling protestant busybodies who hate fun.

	Thanks to years of work by D&D's defenders and other skeptics, the "Satanic Ritual Abuse" phenomenon being exposed as equal parts mass hysteria and con artistry, and the recurring failure of its attackers to actually win any legal battles or fail to avoid being debunked, the public grew out of it. Some people tried to keep the fire of it going - in 1988, authorities chose to focus on Chris Pritchard's being a D&D player as the "reason" for his murdering his stepfather, rather than his long history of mutual antagonism and his heavy drug and alcohol use. But years of moral hysteria with no actual payoff had robbed BADD and its fellow shitheads of any significant standing from anyone beyond the fundamentalists and the paranoid. The steady stream of actual intelligence revealed that most of the witnesses giving "testimony" to the abuse were remembering things that never happened and were also logically impossible, such as mass human sacrifices in an area where such activity could not possibly have gone unnoticed. In other words, they were coerced into giving false evidence by overzealous prosecutors at best and at worst were outright lying about the abuse they supposedly witnessed in order to get their fifteen minutes in the spotlight. In 1989, an absolute fuck by the name of William Schnoebelen published a pair of articles that claimed D&D was a New Age Satanist front to steal people away from Christianity; by then, most people looked at Schnoebelen's claims that D&D could actually summon demons and work real magic (and the fact he was being bankrolled by Jack Chick), and dismissed him for the crank that he was.		Thanks to years of work by D&D's defenders and other skeptics, the "Satanic Ritual Abuse" phenomenon being exposed as equal parts mass hysteria and con artistry, and the recurring failure of its attackers to actually win any legal battles or fail to avoid being debunked, the public grew out of it. Some people tried to keep the fire of it going - in 1988, authorities chose to focus on Chris Pritchard's being a D&D player as the "reason" for his murdering his stepfather, rather than his long history of mutual antagonism and his heavy drug and alcohol use. But years of moral hysteria with no actual payoff had robbed BADD and its fellow shitheads of any significant standing from anyone beyond the fundamentalists and the paranoid. The steady stream of actual intelligence revealed that most of the witnesses giving "testimony" to the abuse were remembering things that never happened and were also logically impossible, such as mass human sacrifices in an area where such activity could not possibly have gone unnoticed. In other words, they were coerced into giving false evidence by overzealous prosecutors at best and at worst were outright lying about the abuse they supposedly witnessed in order to get their fifteen minutes in the spotlight. In 1989, an absolute fuck by the name of William Schnoebelen published a pair of articles that claimed D&D was a New Age Satanist front to steal people away from Christianity; by then, most people looked at Schnoebelen's claims that D&D could actually summon demons and work real magic (and the fact he was being bankrolled by Jack Chick), and dismissed him for the crank that he was.

1d4chan>Piroko: /* Reactions */

2022-10-13T01:29:12Z

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← Older revision		Revision as of 01:29, 13 October 2022
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	Gamers began to coordinate lobbying campaigns by phone, letters, public forums, the burgeoning internet and word of mouth as a means of informing the media, law enforcement, educators and local government about RPGs and their role in youth culture. Links were forged with the Skeptics' Society and other secularist organizations who had been independently questioning the existence of "Satanic ritual abuse". Articles were written in Skeptics Society journals and psychology journals, and law enforcement officers and criminologists, such as Robert Hicks, began to debunk and expose the religious origins of anti-gaming claims and question their relevance in law enforcement initiatives. Perhaps the greatest blow to the credibility of B.A.D.D, Patricia Pulling and Thomas Radecki was the publication of Michael Stackpole’s “Pulling Report” in 1989. This report severely criticized the ethics and methodology of anti-RPG campaigners, provided conclusive evidence that the suicide rate was '''lower''' amongst roleplayers, and was widely distributed amongst law enforcement, educational bodies, game manufacturers, gamers, and government agencies.		Gamers began to coordinate lobbying campaigns by phone, letters, public forums, the burgeoning internet and word of mouth as a means of informing the media, law enforcement, educators and local government about RPGs and their role in youth culture. Links were forged with the Skeptics' Society and other secularist organizations who had been independently questioning the existence of "Satanic ritual abuse". Articles were written in Skeptics Society journals and psychology journals, and law enforcement officers and criminologists, such as Robert Hicks, began to debunk and expose the religious origins of anti-gaming claims and question their relevance in law enforcement initiatives. Perhaps the greatest blow to the credibility of B.A.D.D, Patricia Pulling and Thomas Radecki was the publication of Michael Stackpole’s “Pulling Report” in 1989. This report severely criticized the ethics and methodology of anti-RPG campaigners, provided conclusive evidence that the suicide rate was '''lower''' amongst roleplayers, and was widely distributed amongst law enforcement, educational bodies, game manufacturers, gamers, and government agencies.

	The cultural zeitgeist changed. Thanks to years of work by D&D's defenders and other skeptics, the "Satanic Ritual Abuse" phenomenon being exposed as equal parts mass hysteria and con artistry, and the recurring failure of its attackers to actually win any legal battles or fail to avoid being debunked, the public grew out of it. Some people tried to keep the fire of it going - in 1988, authorities chose to focus on Chris Pritchard's being a D&D player as the "reason" for his murdering his stepfather, rather than his long history of mutual antagonism and his heavy drug and alcohol use. But years of moral hysteria with no actual payoff had robbed BADD and its fellow shitheads of any significant standing from anyone beyond the fundamentalists and the paranoid. The steady stream of actual intelligence revealed that most of the witnesses giving "testimony" to the abuse were remembering things that never happened and were also logically impossible, such as mass human sacrifices in an area where such activity could not possibly have gone unnoticed. In other words, they were coerced into giving false evidence by overzealous prosecutors at best and at worst were outright lying about the abuse they supposedly witnessed in order to get their fifteen minutes in the spotlight. In 1989, an absolute fuck by the name of William Schnoebelen published a pair of articles that claimed D&D was a New Age Satanist front to steal people away from Christianity; by then, most people looked at Schnoebelen's claims that D&D could actually summon demons and work real magic (and the fact he was being bankrolled by Jack Chick), and dismissed him for the crank that he was.		Outside of the gaming sphere, the larger "moral majority" movement grossly overreached by trying to go after glam rock, with Tipper Gore (VP Al Gore's wife) famously dragging Dee Snider into congressional hearings about obscene music, only for the likes of John Denver and Frank Zappa to criticize the movement for its brazen disregard for artistic and civil liberty.

			The cultural zeitgeist changed. No longer was it a movement defending culture and children. It was a bunch of heckling protestant busybodies who hate fun.

			Thanks to years of work by D&D's defenders and other skeptics, the "Satanic Ritual Abuse" phenomenon being exposed as equal parts mass hysteria and con artistry, and the recurring failure of its attackers to actually win any legal battles or fail to avoid being debunked, the public grew out of it. Some people tried to keep the fire of it going - in 1988, authorities chose to focus on Chris Pritchard's being a D&D player as the "reason" for his murdering his stepfather, rather than his long history of mutual antagonism and his heavy drug and alcohol use. But years of moral hysteria with no actual payoff had robbed BADD and its fellow shitheads of any significant standing from anyone beyond the fundamentalists and the paranoid. The steady stream of actual intelligence revealed that most of the witnesses giving "testimony" to the abuse were remembering things that never happened and were also logically impossible, such as mass human sacrifices in an area where such activity could not possibly have gone unnoticed. In other words, they were coerced into giving false evidence by overzealous prosecutors at best and at worst were outright lying about the abuse they supposedly witnessed in order to get their fifteen minutes in the spotlight. In 1989, an absolute fuck by the name of William Schnoebelen published a pair of articles that claimed D&D was a New Age Satanist front to steal people away from Christianity; by then, most people looked at Schnoebelen's claims that D&D could actually summon demons and work real magic (and the fact he was being bankrolled by Jack Chick), and dismissed him for the crank that he was.

	==Not That BADD==		==Not That BADD==

1d4chan>Newerfag: /* Meanwhile in Italy */

2022-10-13T00:33:24Z

Meanwhile in Italy

← Older revision		Revision as of 00:33, 13 October 2022
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	==Meanwhile in Italy==		==Meanwhile in Italy==
	An interesting side note in this story is what happened in Italy. News from USA media filtered here. Italian culture is a strange duck where "proper intellectuals" think that nothing past the middle ages could have real influence or meaning. Therefore the D&D part was completely skipped. But the "satanism doing bad stuff to children" kinda took roots. There were some investigations that supposedly uncovered satanist cults abusing children. Something that might surprise you - or really not if you know a thing or two about history - is that basically the only ones to come out and say "wtf is this bullshit about Satan? None of this can be real" was the Catholic Church, of all people. After all the ~~inquisition~~ were torching exactly the people putting up this kind of panics in the middle ages (usually). Not so funny, some thirty-odds years later some journalists said "What if we do our job for once?", started digging and found out that there was no real basis and kids were taken ~~for~~ their ~~family~~ on bogus charges. And never fucking returned. The whole thing spawned a trial started in 2020 called "Il caso di Bibbiano" (Bibbiano's case, from the name of one of the towns involved). Really scary stuff on what can happen when media-induced hysteria meets overzealous ~~psycologists~~.		An interesting side note in this story is what happened in Italy. News from USA media filtered here. Italian culture is a strange duck where "proper intellectuals" think that nothing past the middle ages could have real influence or meaning. Therefore the D&D part was completely skipped. But the "satanism doing bad stuff to children" kinda took roots. There were some investigations that supposedly uncovered satanist cults abusing children. Something that might surprise you - or really not if you know a thing or two about history - is that basically the only ones to come out and say "wtf is this bullshit about Satan? None of this can be real" was the Catholic Church, of all people. After all the Inquisition were torching exactly the same people putting up this kind of panics in the middle ages (usually). Not so funny, some thirty-odds years later some journalists said "What if we do our job for once?", started digging and found out that there was no real basis and kids were taken from their families on bogus charges. And never fucking returned. The whole thing spawned a trial started in 2020 called "Il caso di Bibbiano" (Bibbiano's case, from the name of one of the towns involved). Really scary stuff on what can happen when media-induced hysteria meets overzealous psychologists.

	==The Satanic Panic in the Modern Era==		==The Satanic Panic in the Modern Era==

1d4chan>Newerfag: /* Reactions */

2022-10-13T00:31:25Z

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← Older revision		Revision as of 00:31, 13 October 2022
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	Gamers began to coordinate lobbying campaigns by phone, letters, public forums, the burgeoning internet and word of mouth as a means of informing the media, law enforcement, educators and local government about RPGs and their role in youth culture. Links were forged with the Skeptics' Society and other secularist organizations who had been independently questioning the existence of "Satanic ritual abuse". Articles were written in Skeptics Society journals and psychology journals, and law enforcement officers and criminologists, such as Robert Hicks, began to debunk and expose the religious origins of anti-gaming claims and question their relevance in law enforcement initiatives. Perhaps the greatest blow to the credibility of B.A.D.D, Patricia Pulling and Thomas Radecki was the publication of Michael Stackpole’s “Pulling Report” in 1989. This report severely criticized the ethics and methodology of anti-RPG campaigners, provided conclusive evidence that the suicide rate was '''lower''' amongst roleplayers, and was widely distributed amongst law enforcement, educational bodies, game manufacturers, gamers, and government agencies.		Gamers began to coordinate lobbying campaigns by phone, letters, public forums, the burgeoning internet and word of mouth as a means of informing the media, law enforcement, educators and local government about RPGs and their role in youth culture. Links were forged with the Skeptics' Society and other secularist organizations who had been independently questioning the existence of "Satanic ritual abuse". Articles were written in Skeptics Society journals and psychology journals, and law enforcement officers and criminologists, such as Robert Hicks, began to debunk and expose the religious origins of anti-gaming claims and question their relevance in law enforcement initiatives. Perhaps the greatest blow to the credibility of B.A.D.D, Patricia Pulling and Thomas Radecki was the publication of Michael Stackpole’s “Pulling Report” in 1989. This report severely criticized the ethics and methodology of anti-RPG campaigners, provided conclusive evidence that the suicide rate was '''lower''' amongst roleplayers, and was widely distributed amongst law enforcement, educational bodies, game manufacturers, gamers, and government agencies.

	The cultural zeitgeist changed. Thanks to years of work by D&D's defenders and other skeptics, the "Satanic Ritual Abuse" phenomenon being exposed as equal parts mass hysteria and con artistry, and the recurring failure of its attackers to actually win any legal battles or fail to avoid being debunked, the public grew out of it. Some people tried to keep the fire of it going - in 1988, authorities chose to focus on Chris Pritchard's being a D&D player as the "reason" for his murdering his stepfather, rather than his long history of mutual antagonism and his heavy drug and alcohol use. But years of moral hysteria with no actual payoff had robbed BADD and its fellow shitheads of any significant standing from anyone beyond the fundamentalists and the paranoid. The steady stream of actual intelligence revealed that most of the witnesses giving "testimony" to the abuse were remembering things that never happened and were also logically impossible, such as mass human sacrifices in an area where such activity could not possibly have gone unnoticed. In other words, ~~these shitheads~~ were ~~delusional~~ at best and at worst were outright lying about the abuse they supposedly witnessed in order to get their fifteen minutes in the spotlight. In 1989, an absolute fuck by the name of William Schnoebelen published a pair of articles that claimed D&D was a New Age Satanist front to steal people away from Christianity; by then, most people looked at Schnoebelen's claims that D&D could actually summon demons and work real magic (and the fact he was being bankrolled by Jack Chick), and dismissed him for the crank that he was.		The cultural zeitgeist changed. Thanks to years of work by D&D's defenders and other skeptics, the "Satanic Ritual Abuse" phenomenon being exposed as equal parts mass hysteria and con artistry, and the recurring failure of its attackers to actually win any legal battles or fail to avoid being debunked, the public grew out of it. Some people tried to keep the fire of it going - in 1988, authorities chose to focus on Chris Pritchard's being a D&D player as the "reason" for his murdering his stepfather, rather than his long history of mutual antagonism and his heavy drug and alcohol use. But years of moral hysteria with no actual payoff had robbed BADD and its fellow shitheads of any significant standing from anyone beyond the fundamentalists and the paranoid. The steady stream of actual intelligence revealed that most of the witnesses giving "testimony" to the abuse were remembering things that never happened and were also logically impossible, such as mass human sacrifices in an area where such activity could not possibly have gone unnoticed. In other words, they were coerced into giving false evidence by overzealous prosecutors at best and at worst were outright lying about the abuse they supposedly witnessed in order to get their fifteen minutes in the spotlight. In 1989, an absolute fuck by the name of William Schnoebelen published a pair of articles that claimed D&D was a New Age Satanist front to steal people away from Christianity; by then, most people looked at Schnoebelen's claims that D&D could actually summon demons and work real magic (and the fact he was being bankrolled by Jack Chick), and dismissed him for the crank that he was.

	==Not That BADD==		==Not That BADD==

1d4chan>Newerfag: /* 'Ere We Go */

2022-10-13T00:29:29Z

'Ere We Go

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	This incident was later used by hack writers to produce the cheesy 1981 "horror" novels ''Hobgoblin'' and ''[[Mazes and Monsters]]'', both of which ran with the basic plotline of "roleplayer loses his mind because of roleplaying and ultimately ends up killing or nearly killing himself" - Mazes and Monsters even got a freaking film adaptation a year later, which you can read about on its own page.		This incident was later used by hack writers to produce the cheesy 1981 "horror" novels ''Hobgoblin'' and ''[[Mazes and Monsters]]'', both of which ran with the basic plotline of "roleplayer loses his mind because of roleplaying and ultimately ends up killing or nearly killing himself" - Mazes and Monsters even got a freaking film adaptation a year later, which you can read about on its own page.

	This controversy was bad enough, but at the time the advent of real-but-mostly-harmless "Satanic" groups like the Church of Satan (~~largely atheists being~~ counterculture to the above fundie revival), as well as other cults that allegedly kidnapped and brainwashed children, gave Christian fundamentalists more fuel for their paranoia. At the same time, therapists and social workers were pushing for greater recognition of child sexual abuse as a serious crime, and in spite of their good intentions they developed a tendency to be overzealous in investigating possible abuse; this was itself exacerbated further by the growing awareness of post-traumatic stress disorder and the assumption that memories "recovered" via hypnosis were perfectly accurate representations of events (as opposed to being unintentionally created by the therapists and social workers themselves). The end result was a bunch of people who were convinced that the US was filled with cannibalistic, child-raping, and generally evil Satanic cults that controlled the secular world from the shadows and whose very existence was a threat to society.		This controversy was bad enough, but at the time the advent of real-but-mostly-harmless "Satanic" groups like the Church of Satan (itself a counterculture to the above fundie revival; incidentally, the Church of Satan doesn't actually worship Satan, but instead uses him as a symbolic entity representing individualism and rebellion against conformity), as well as other cults that allegedly kidnapped and brainwashed children, gave Christian fundamentalists more fuel for their paranoia. At the same time, therapists and social workers were pushing for greater recognition of child sexual abuse as a serious crime, and in spite of their good intentions they developed a tendency to be overzealous in investigating possible abuse; this was itself exacerbated further by the growing awareness of post-traumatic stress disorder and the assumption that memories "recovered" via hypnosis were perfectly accurate representations of events (as opposed to being unintentionally created by the therapists and social workers themselves). The end result was a bunch of people who were convinced that the US was filled with cannibalistic, child-raping, and generally evil Satanic cults that controlled the secular world from the shadows and whose very existence was a threat to society.

	This ended up getting linked to tabletop RPGs because of one particular asshole.		This ended up getting linked to tabletop RPGs because of one particular asshole.

1d4chan>A Walrus at 18:45, 12 October 2022

2022-10-12T18:45:35Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 18:45, 12 October 2022
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			{{topquote\|He knew about concerned citizens. Wherever they were, they all spoke the same private language, where “traditional values” meant “hang someone.” \|Terry Pratchett}}
	The '''Satanic Panic''' was a moral panic of presumed ritual child abuse against American suburbia, from a period of roughly the end of the 1970s to the start of the 1990s. Janet Reno, DA for Dade County in Florida at the time, made her name prosecuting day-cares for such abuses which, of course, never happened. Relevant to /tg/ this panic impinged upon the tabletop roleplaying community, focused on the [[Dungeons & Dragons]] fandom.		The '''Satanic Panic''' was a moral panic of presumed ritual child abuse against American suburbia, from a period of roughly the end of the 1970s to the start of the 1990s. Janet Reno, DA for Dade County in Florida at the time, made her name prosecuting day-cares for such abuses which, of course, never happened. Relevant to /tg/ this panic impinged upon the tabletop roleplaying community, focused on the [[Dungeons & Dragons]] fandom.

92.19.18.126: /* Global Context */

2022-07-30T14:07:30Z

Global Context

← Older revision		Revision as of 14:07, 30 July 2022
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	By the 80s, a new generation of charismatic Protestant preachers such as Jerry Falwell and Billy Graham paved the way for these 'fundamentalists' to return to the public sphere. Thus began the rise of what then called itself "Moral Majority" and is now known as "the religious right", as the fundamentalists quickly forged ties with like-minded politicians. As Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan - different political parties, note - were among the politicians in question, this meant they had a ''lot'' of influence in American society. Funnily enough, these same people’s politicization of Christianity would drive younger people away from it in later generations, a fact they are only now coming to realize (although they blame the later generations for it, because in their minds nothing is ever their fault).		By the 80s, a new generation of charismatic Protestant preachers such as Jerry Falwell and Billy Graham paved the way for these 'fundamentalists' to return to the public sphere. Thus began the rise of what then called itself "Moral Majority" and is now known as "the religious right", as the fundamentalists quickly forged ties with like-minded politicians. As Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan - different political parties, note - were among the politicians in question, this meant they had a ''lot'' of influence in American society. Funnily enough, these same people’s politicization of Christianity would drive younger people away from it in later generations, a fact they are only now coming to realize (although they blame the later generations for it, because in their minds nothing is ever their fault).

	Britain, for what it's worth, only ever came as close to the panic in the mid-'80s through the efforts of one [[Inquisitor Greyfax\|Mary Whitehouse]]'s campaign against "[[Slaanesh\|video nasties]]" (i.e. horror/exploitation films that were unclassified, because obsolete British film censorship laws [[FAIL\|hadn't been updated to account for the existence of videotapes]], and thus could be legally rented by viewers as young as 10) - and very few people took her seriously even then, on top of the campaign [[Derp\|sparking a profound interest in the otherwise unremarkable low-budget grindhouse/horror movie schlock that made up the majority of that list.]] True to her brethren setting their crosshairs squarely on DnD across the pond, however, in her crusade to stamp out material she'd never actually seen but objected to on vague overheard principle, she ~~for some reason~~ instinctively homed in on anything remotely dungeony or dragony, resulting in the significant toning-down of beloved and totally inoffensive childrens' dungeon-crawling TV gameshow "Knightmare" - amongst modifications made to placate her, the face-turning-into-a-skull health meter was replaced with a pie losing slices.		Britain, for what it's worth, only ever came as close to the panic in the mid-'80s through the efforts of one [[Inquisitor Greyfax\|Mary Whitehouse]]'s campaign against "[[Slaanesh\|video nasties]]" (i.e. horror/exploitation films that were unclassified, because obsolete British film censorship laws [[FAIL\|hadn't been updated to account for the existence of videotapes]], and thus could be legally rented by viewers as young as 10) - and very few people took her seriously even then, on top of the campaign [[Derp\|sparking a profound interest in the otherwise unremarkable low-budget grindhouse/horror movie schlock that made up the majority of that list.]] True to her brethren setting their crosshairs squarely on DnD across the pond, however, in her crusade to stamp out material she'd never actually seen but objected to on vague overheard principle, she similarly instinctively homed in on anything remotely dungeony or dragony, resulting in the significant toning-down of beloved and totally inoffensive childrens' dungeon-crawling TV gameshow "Knightmare" - amongst modifications made to placate her, the face-turning-into-a-skull health meter was replaced with a pie losing slices.

	=='Ere We Go==		=='Ere We Go==