📚 18th–19th c. – Novel reading panic
🗞️ Early 1900s – Dime novels & pulp fiction
🦸 1950s – Comic books & juvenile delinquency
🎸 1950s–60s – Rock ’n’ roll
📺 1960s–70s – Television addiction
🎲 1970s–80s – Dungeons & Dragons
🤘 1980s – Heavy metal & Satanic Panic
🎮 1990s – Video game violence and VHS nasties
🌐 2000s – Internet & online danger
📱 2010s–2020s – Social media & smartphone addiction
Discussion
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There were cults in the 70s, parents were afraid their teens would run away and join a cult. And some kids did, and some of those were kidnapped back and had to be deprogrammed.
@JamesBaker are you open to a little discussion about this or nah? The teachers I've been hearing from have some reasonable concerns about the effect short-form content and generative AI are having on cognitive development.
@JamesBaker
isn't it missing various drinking related panics early on? Also pamphlets, coffee, women's suffrage, and probably many others...
@JamesBaker 500 BC -- writing rotting your brain panic
@JamesBaker 1600's - Pamphlets: "… no person or persons whatsoever shall presume to print or cause to be printed either within this Realm of England or any other His Majesties Dominions or in the parts beyond the Seas any heretical seditious schismatical or offensive Bookes or Pamphlets wherein any Doctrine or Opinion shall be asserted or maintained which is contrary to Christian Faith or the Doctrine or Discipline of the Church of England ..."
– The Licensing of the Press Act (1662)
@JamesBaker
"Video games cause violence" was a disinformation strategy funded by weapons manufacturers trying to avoid regulations in America.
It's hilarious that the social science experiments that found a link between games and aggression were invalidated when someone realised the effect was caused by frustration at wonky control schemes.
And entire frivolous field of study that could have been avoided by playing Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy.
@JamesBaker
Must recommend Sarah Marshall's fantastic podcast on the satanic panic "The devil you know".
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/2054-the-devil-you-know-with-sarah-marshall
The interviews from the victims of the panic are amazing; the social trends and how it relates to today's trans panic is even better.
The idea these panics are really about control and reactions to progressive trends in societies is illuminating.
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Is this a "spot the difference" game? The abusive and polarizing algorithms of big social media are scientifically proven to be bad for people's health, not to mention made to amplify fascist ideology and destabilize democracy.
@JamesBaker how bout 2020’s #ai
@JamesBaker @lkanies until you get to social media, none of those were destroying democracy, the idea of real truth, or eradicating real journalism, so… yeah, false equivalency there.
@relistan @JamesBaker @lkanies Ah but moral panics have nothing to do with tackling the actual social problems associated with a cultural change & everything to do with pearl clutching & thinking of the children.
The people who propagate them are only worried about their impact on specific groups (usually children/young adults), not about their impact generally. E.g. comments from middle-aged professionals about how AI will harm people younger than them, while they are immune to the dangers.
@relistan I don't know... Printing press released religious war in Europe, radio arguably enabled fascism... One person's "panic" is another's "reasonable concern".
I mean the fact that we're kind of having cold war 2/WW III + continued biocide does not support the argument these developments were unproblematic. @JamesBaker @lkanies
@douginamug @JamesBaker @lkanies the post was about “moral panics” drawing equivalency between social media addiction and dungeons and dragons etc.
@relistan yes. And I thought your point, and my extension, was the panic/reasonable concern distinction being subjective? (And I know about the D&D satanic panic, and I do think that was panic. But I have a lot of concerns with internet / smartphones / social media)
@JamesBaker I was squeezed between the D&D satanism and the Heavy Metal era. Good times.
@JamesBaker @cstross I thought “video nasties” were an 80s thing (at least in the UK, and presumably elsewhere). Films like Cannibal Holocaust (which were less explicit than mainstream Hollywood fare these days), “BAN THIS FILTH” headlines in the Sun/Daily Mail, urban legends about snuff films in which the murders are real, Mary Whitehouse and all that