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+--- Thread: The 1980s Media Panic Over Dungeons & Dragons (/Thread-the-1980s-media-panic-over-dungeons-dragons)
The 1980s Media Panic Over Dungeons & Dragons - 3rd Rock - 03-17-2022
From Mazes and Monsters to Dark Dungeons, D&D was a lot scarier in the 1980s.
These days your life isn’t complete if you aren’t part of a role-playing gaming group, but it wasn’t that long ago that playing Dungeons & Dragons was seen as a surefire ticket to madness and damnation.
During the 1980s, D&D became associated with violence and idiot suicide, casting a spell over the media that resulted in some strident anti-fantasy propaganda.
The game became an instant hit among mid-70s “indoor kids,” who were looking for a fun way to exercise their imaginations and play around in a vast, complex world of magic and mystery. Unfortunately, that same desire for escape often goes hand-in-hand with depression and other feelings of isolation.
The catalyzing event that started the moral panic over D&D was the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III in 1979. Egbert was a gifted computer programmer studying at Michigan State University, having been accepted at the age of 16. While at the school, he was involved with a D&D group that would sometimes do a little LARPing in the privacy of the university’s underground steam tunnels. Egbert disappeared into the steam tunnels in August of 1979, with the intention of committing suicide by overdosing on quaaludes.
Egbert’s family hired enterprising private detective William Dear to find their son. During his search, Dear learned of Egbert’s D&D hobby, and made it the focus of his investigation. Egbert’s disappearance came to be blamed on a “Dungeons and Dragons game gone awry.” Dear concluded the game had driven him mad, that he lost the ability to discern reality from fiction and had gone off on some insane, delusional quest. Of course when the media got wind of this, it planted the seeds of D&D as a corruptor of youth, and maybe even worse.
The controversy surrounding Dungeons & Dragons continued throughout the 1980s. When the second edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was released in 1989, TSR removed all mention of demons and devils, and skewed gameplay to more heroic actions as opposed to the more ambiguous tenor of the first edition. As the 1990s moved on, attention moved away from the evils of pen-and-paper roleplaying games, and focused on violent video games or other cultural boogeymen.
D&D eventually got its devils back, and enough room from its 1980s image to publish such great sourcebooks as The Book of Vile Darkness. However, in those circles where reference to Harry Potter and talk of fantasy violence is still seen as a ticket to the dark side, D&D is still the bad boy of roleplaying.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-1980s-media-panic-over-dungeons-dragons
https://youtu.be/5hJdhL1Ni_w
RE: The 1980s Media Panic Over Dungeons & Dragons - Uwe Blah - 03-17-2022
Another prime case of mainstream media disinformation and mass manipulation. The multi-purposing power of these "fake news" reports has since been turned into an art form of epic dimensions. Daily news cycles with multiple layers of deceptive intentions combining mendacity with narrative associations and predictive programming.
All of this CRAP is meant to cover up true and "simple" reality and paint whatever narratives best serve the globalist agendas at work everywhere.
This particular news story was coupled with the game, D & D being showcased in one of the biggest films of the time, E.T. The Extraterrestrial. That exposure gave the game phenomenal exposure costing them nothing. Stephen Speilberg reportedly used the game because of his son if I recall correctly.
That was sort of the beginning of the so-called "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s with increased reports of Satanic cults committing various murders and acts of violence. Almost all of which ended in cover-ups or the demonic nature of crimes was and has been to this day intentionally left out. The Satanic panic in the 80s was sensationalized by that asshole, Geraldo Riveria, and other like-minded reporters looking to make names for themselves. This also brought the church of Satan more into the mainstream on a regular basis. So-called priests and cult leaders given noticeably extended television exposure and mouthpieces to spread their diseased word.
Through the right lens or looking glass, one might see how a simple medieval game of knights, goblins, wizards, and magic was literally turned into a spell being cast widely on an unsuspecting population. Meanwhile, the real truth of satanism and child trafficking explodes into a multi-billion dollar network of cartels involving drugs, weapons, and child sacrifice. The biggest cover-up later revealed as satanic cults were the McMartin pre-school horrors in mid-1980s Southern California. Later in the decade and into the 1990s was the Franklin cover-ups in Nebraska.
There are several books about the two coverups mentioned above with many reputable individuals and investigative reporters doing truly brave accounts of everything. Here's a great video of Ted Gunderson retired chief of the FBI west coast bureau division in Los Angeles
https://rumble.com/embed/vt2n0c/?pub=b7s09
Be aware of the deep and rather disturbing rabbit holes surrounding all the information and events mentioned above. Most shocking is none of it has stopped but only increased to horrifying levels. Much can be witnessed now on what is happening on the southern borders with illegal immigration. Notice how openly unaccompanied children from any country are literally welcomed into the country. Laws and policies encourage adults to pose as relatives to later come and collect government benefits and housing.
RE: The 1980s Media Panic Over Dungeons & Dragons - 3rd Rock - 03-17-2022
It's become known as the "PMRC Senate hearing" or the "Tipper Gore-Frank Zappa hearing" or the "rock-porn hearing."
To me, they'll always be the hearing where Al Gore sarcastically asked Twisted Sister's Dee Snider if his band's fan club, the "Sick Motherf------ Fans of Twisted Sister," was a Christian group.
It was September 19, 1985, smack dab in the middle of the Reagan era. Moral panics — including claims that heavy-metal music and Dungeons and Dragons were somehow the root cause of real issues like child sex abuse and idiot suicide — were the order of the day.
The hearing on "objectionable" rock lyrics was one of the most widely publicized committee hearings in Senate history. But rewatching the nearly five-hour hearing now, it seems more like a DC satire about puritanical censorship, farcical conflicts of interest, and members of the World's Greatest Deliberative Body clutching their proverbial pearls over a Prince record.
As politicians and their wives implicitly threatened the music industry and the First Amendment, the unlikeliest trio of musicians — avant-garde composer Frank Zappa, hair metal howler Dee Snider, and safe-as-milk singer-songwriter John Denver — passionately defended artistic freedom before the federal government, simply because it needed to be done.
Despite the absurdist trappings, the PMRC hearings deserve a revisit on their 35th anniversary as a reminder that there's always societal tension between the principles of free expression and the limits of acceptable discourse.
These hearings show how people with power can determine certain forms of expression to be vile, antisocial, and beyond the pale. History has proved these particular censors wrong, but history often repeats itself. That's why it's so crucial to always hold the line on defending the right to express unpopular speech.
The first 'OK, boomer' moment
https://www.businessinsider.com/35-years-pmrc-rock-lyrics-senate-tipper-gore-frank-zappa-2020-9
Raising PG rated kids in an X-rated society.
Frank Zappa debates Tipper Gore, summer 1987
https://youtu.be/nxAmK--xxOM