# Your favorite moral panics **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 10, 2019, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-moral-panics/830875 "2019-03-10T05:06:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-moral-panics/830875/21 "2019-03-12T01:15:06Z")
I guess I"d agree with backwards masking since it led people to put [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myUyWOvm1WM) on YouTube, which is mainly notable for its guitar solo, which is just as great backwards as forwards (for what it’s worth!) ---
**Author:** ![Doug\_K](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5ac83/32.png) [@Doug\_K](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doug_K)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-moral-panics/830875/22 "2019-03-12T01:51:03Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I recall talking about ‘Paul is dead’ backward masking with some friends when it first was being talked about and of course the dumb guy asks “How do you play a record backwards, is there a reverse switch?” I think someone told him there was only on the really good turntables. Years later when Spinal Tap came out and the guy talked about his amp going up to 11 I remembered this guy and all dumb things he did. The supposed “Paul is Dead” thing wasn’t backwards, it was a greatly slowed down snippet at the end of “Strawberry Fields” that was supposedly John saying “I buried Paul”. To hear it more clearly you could play the LP at 45rpm. Their press agent said he was saying “I’m very bored”, John said he said “Cranberry sauce”. I thought it sounded more like “i’m very bored”. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-moral-panics/830875/23 "2019-03-12T02:09:03Z")
We had the D&D scare in high school. It even made the local news because some parents at another school wanted to have the D&D club banned. The sponsor tried to show it was all simply a game and demonstrated that “casting spells” was simply rolling dice. The other objection was that there were drawings of characters which showed nekkid breasts (with a nipple)! I’m absolutely certain that adolescent boys are completely incapable of drawing ones themselves. The solution was to have the teacher or parent take a black sharpie to the offending material. > [@TriPolar](#): > > Of course we thought we were wonderful experts on stereo equipment but it wouldn’t be that long before everything changed. One of my friends was planning to eventually spend $10,000 on a quality music system one day. By the time he was earning real money you could buy the quality equipment he imagined for a few hundred dollars. But I had lost interest by that time. To continue the hijack: In the mid to late 90s, I worked for an import company in Japan which imported and sold brands such as McIntosh. The whole consumer audio business suffered from exactly this problem. The people who were buying high end systems in the 1990s were (typically) men, professionals in their 40s, but usually older, who had gotten to the point they could afford it. They had typically loved dreamed of equipment from their late teen ages through their 20s. The business model got hit by two factors. First was the huge reduction in cost of quality systems, as you mentioned, and the other was that later generations of kids had more options, e.g., video games and cable TV so fewer people were growing up dreaming of someday owning the best of the best. [/hijack] ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-moral-panics/830875/24 "2019-03-12T02:47:34Z")
Also on many good turntables you can have the pickup and preamp powered while the motor is unpowered and the platter can be freewheeled backwards; you are supposed to only do that for about a quarter turn to cue the record, not to play a couple of revolutions. Turn me on, dead man… > [@Defensive\_Indifference](#): > > I’m not sure where to draw the line between an urban legend and a full blown moral panic. Maybe it becomes a moral panic when it’s featured on major news outlets and community/political leaders take action on it. Right, mere rumor about iffy things happening is not enough. It has to get to the point that enough people begin saying we gotta DO SOMETHING that nominally cooler-headed responsible people are willing to say “eh, better safe than sorry”. This is often the result of it being picked up by information-conveyers in a sensationalized manner and then propagated in a self-reinforcing vicious cycle, often through reporting _about the reporting_ and about _people’s reaction to the reporting_ rather than about the truth of the facts or lack thereof, causing the public to become concerned the threat is not just real but getting worse, which in turn leads to citizens demanding that authorities and leaders look into it, and the authorities and leaders feeling they must do so rather than tell the panicked “are you listening to yourself? sit and calm down!”. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-moral-panics/830875/25 "2019-03-12T05:25:06Z")
> [@Living\_Well\_Is\_Best\_Revenge](#): > > I remember in the 80s we were told to be careful for razors and poison in our Halloween candy. **Kaylasmom** worked in the early 90s in a hospital radiology lab, developing X-rays. Every November 1, as a “service to the community,” the radiology lab would X-ray bags of candy, to reassure panicky parents that there were no razor blades. And that’s the story of how the children of Los Alamitos, California all got mouth cancer from eating radioactive candy… 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-moral-panics/830875/26 "2019-03-12T06:17:20Z")
A couple I can remember from my youth; - Children are beating each other to death while playing Power Rangers - Pogs are teaching children to gamble - Marilyn Manson is causing teen violence - Doom 2 teaches kids how to shoot up their schools - Strangers are luring kids to their deaths via AOL chat rooms ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 9:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-moral-panics/830875/27 "2019-03-12T09:22:28Z")
The religious right’s fascination with the intersection of heavy metal and Satanism was memorable back in the day. A writer for _Spy_ magazine attended a seminar on the subject. The expert advised to watch out for references to “heavy metal bands such as Lynyrd Skynyrd, Kiss, and the Grateful Dead”, one of which, the article noted, actually \*was \*a heavy metal band. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-moral-panics/830875/28 "2019-03-12T13:18:30Z")
I forgot about the D&D scare. [Kids were going to kill themselves in steam tunnels.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons_controversies#Mazes_and_Monsters) ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-moral-panics/830875/29 "2019-03-12T13:49:12Z")
> [@Asuka](#): > > The Rainbow Game. > > Basically teen girls would have parties where they would all put on different brightly colored lipstick and give boys they invited to the party blowjobs. The boy with the most different color lipstick on his penis won, but you would think any male participant in that game would already consider themselves a winner. Yeah, I remember hearing about that one too and wondering exactly how you lose that game. ---
**Author:** ![TRC4941](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trc4941/32/6792_2.png) [@TRC4941](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TRC4941)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-moral-panics/830875/30 "2019-03-12T14:02:21Z")
How about the Y2K Scare :eek: We were told to stock up on canned food and water, computers were going to crash, there would be blackouts, mail delivery would cease - pretty much the world would end. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-moral-panics/830875/31 "2019-03-12T14:03:20Z")
> [@asterion](#): > > Never having done it, I assume you physically force it backwards with the needle down and speakers powered. Which probably means hurting the motor in your player. Is this about that vodka/tampon thing? ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-moral-panics/830875/32 "2019-03-12T14:43:37Z")
> [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > It’s amazing what kids will say when you have an authority figure who they want to tell them they’re doing the right thing. Dissociative identity disorder is also sometimes accused of therapists leading patients to fit the therapists’ narrative. Yes, and if you didn’t remember it happening, you had "repressed memory syndrome, which proved it happened??? I’ve take to some rah-rah Christians who insist the Satanic thing continues to this day, but it is being repressed by the government because they are in it. Proof is that the FBI investigate it and found no evidence whatsoever! ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-moral-panics/830875/33 "2019-03-12T14:44:13Z")
> [@Napier](#): > > How do you play a record backwards, anyway? The way I did it was to record the song on open reel tape, then flip the reels. Works perfectly for mono or 2-track recorders; for 4-track (actually quarter-track), you need to realign the heads, or in one auto-reverse model, just push them down to the other track pair during playback. For true 4 track recorders, after flipping the reels, just select the tracks that are playing backwards that you want to hear. Easy as cake. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-moral-panics/830875/34 "2019-03-12T15:18:38Z")
> [@F.U.Shakespeare](#): > > The religious right’s fascination with the intersection of heavy metal and Satanism was memorable back in the day. > > A writer for _Spy_ magazine attended a seminar on the subject. The expert advised to watch out for references to “heavy metal bands such as Lynyrd Skynyrd, Kiss, and the Grateful Dead”, one of which, the article noted, actually \*was \*a heavy metal band. Kiss is a number of things, but heavy metal is not one of them. Though I suppose my definition of heavy metal is closer to thrash or even death metal. That said, now I want a metal cover of Sugar Magnolia. Knowing the Internet, there’s probably more than one out there. ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-moral-panics/830875/35 "2019-03-12T15:59:10Z")
> [@zoid](#): > > Why would you say this? It’s certainly possible to do. I read it somewhere, couldn’t tell you where. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-moral-panics/830875/36 "2019-03-12T16:04:54Z")
PLEASE! Doncha know KISS stands for Kids in Satan’s Service?😃 ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-moral-panics/830875/37 "2019-03-12T16:09:58Z")
> [@Doug\_K](#): > > The supposed “Paul is Dead” thing wasn’t backwards, it was a greatly slowed down snippet at the end of “Strawberry Fields” that was supposedly John saying “I buried Paul”. To hear it more clearly you could play the LP at 45rpm. Their press agent said he was saying “I’m very bored”, John said he said “Cranberry sauce”. I thought it sounded more like “i’m very bored”. I don’t recall ever hearing it, just the rumor mill. I guess some people took it seriously but I just put it up there with Mikey dying in Vietnam and other nonsense like that. Later on some bands said they did actually backward mask some things, but I don’t know if that actually happened, I remember one time hearing what was supposed to be backward masking and it sounded like ‘rhubarb up me go mo’. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-moral-panics/830875/38 "2019-03-12T16:21:31Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > PLEASE! Doncha know KISS stands for Kids in Satan’s Service?😃 I thought it stood for mid-grade musicians that figured out a marketable gimmick. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-moral-panics/830875/39 "2019-03-12T16:28:17Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Yeah, I remember hearing about that one too and wondering exactly how you lose that game. A STRANGE GAME. THE ONLY LOSING MOVE IS NOT TO PLAY. [mandatory lowercase] ---
**Author:** ![sitchensis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sitchensis/32/4892_2.png) [@sitchensis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sitchensis)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-moral-panics/830875/40 "2019-03-12T16:33:28Z")
In the early 2000’s there was a rumor going around that the brightly colored rubber bracelets teenage girls were wearing somehow represented different sexual acts they were willing to do. I thought it was ridiculous and so did the teenage girls who were wearing the bracelets. The very next night on the evening news they did a story about the stupid bracelets. The evening news basically called a bunch of random teenage girls sluts so they could sell products to scared old people. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-moral-panics/830875.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-moral-panics/830875.md?page=3)