The term “mass hysteria” is generally dismissed as something that happened to other people who were stupid because history is from a long time ago. I disagree so I’m going to relate an event I perceive as (mild) mass hysteria. Note: It was mild. No witches were burned in the making of this story… though it technically involves witches. Also, this isn’t a researched scientific paper. Inaccuracies or mistakes are from my faulty memory.
This is a story I saw with my own two eyes. If you’re of a certain age you did too.
Many moons ago, when kids rode bicycles without helmets, adults smoked in airplanes, and phones were screwed to the wall, people in California (why is it always California?) encountered a novel situation. They’d developed a form of psychotherapy that allowed people to recover “repressed memories” from many years ago. In so doing they’d “recovered” lurid tales of evil satanic rituals in preschools. The stories included seriously weird shit. Hitchcock level depravity!
You might hear “therapeutically recovered memories of preschool satanic rituals” and default to skepticism. Back then, people just went with it. I don’t remember anyone at the beginning pondering corroborating evidence or scientifically investigating the accuracy of “recovered memories”. I don’t know why, but everyone bought into it.
There were evil Satanic cults on the loose! It was on the news. It was swallowed hook, line, and sinker by many of the adults around me.
In retrospect, I think it was a mild form of mass hysteria.
Heavy metal rock bands played into it. They’d been doing the whole “look at us, we’re evil” thing for years and now it was getting traction.
Kiss, 1980.
Perhaps I was cynical. Perhaps I’m under the spell of the dark one. All I know is the whole thing was bullshit.
My logic was infallible: nobody sane takes KISS seriously!
I inferred that rockers tend to dress like lunatics because, lets face it, it’s show business. Also they might occasionally be fucking nuts. So what if they howled at the moon while drawing pentagrams? Nobody takes life advice from a rock band so what’s the big deal?
I also knew that it wasn’t really happening (at least locally). I hiked the woods all the time. If groups of people did anything in the forest, I’d know. Yet the media kept delivering shit about the Satanic menace. It was this guy:
Walter Cronkite in 1980. (Background image has nothing to do with Satan.)
The story grew. First it was something from long ago in a single preschool in California. Soon it was current time and all over the place. Then, probably because bands invited it, it was no longer associated with preschools but had shifted to heavy metal music. Then the press jumped the shark with “it could be happening right in your town”. People interpreted “there’s a non-zero probability of this unlikely thing” as “You’ve got trouble right here in River City”. (Youtube link.)
I’d never personally experienced so much as a whiff of anyone who was seriously & truly Satanic. Either they had ninja like stealth or it was a rare and overstated issue from wingnuts in TV Land. Unfortunately, many adults around me suddenly thought Satanic rituals were as common as rainwater.
I shared my skepticism to no avail. “You seriously think nimrods are forming covens to sacrifice goats and stuff? Have you seen them with your own eyes? Why am I not invited? Aren’t goats expensive? Where are they getting them? Is there a goat farm to ask about this?” My teachers were like “Shut up youthful Curmudgeon, you don’t know shit.”
Which is true, I didn’t know shit.
Gradually it morphed into a threat to, of, and by teenagers. Adults had followed the incorrect (but frankly excusable) logic of “if many people do something trendy and stupid but I don’t know about it, then it’s teenagers”. (Insert jokes about Tide Pods and Fidget Spinners here.)
My parents (God bless ’em) quickly decided there was nothing to worry about on my behalf. I was a prickly teenage asshole and the only thing a teenager worships is himself; not Cthulhu. My folks also knew I don’t join groups. If the power of evil required meetings and memberships I’d nut punch old scratch himself to avoid it.
Then, presumably someone who’d never read Tolkien, decided Satanism was associated with Dungeons and Dragons. There was a TV movie about it. I don’t recall if the movie caused people’s stupid ideas or was derived from them.
I liked (and was starved for) heavy metal music and also played Dungeons and Dragons. This means I was a nerd with questionable taste. Did I really have to explain that bad taste is not the same as demonic possession?
Despite being bullshit, it affected me.
The local radio station practically fled from heavy metal; playing even shittier music than its baseline of balless half-rock. Craving music with some fucking spine, I spent my extremely scarce money on a Dio cassette (questionable taste, remember). I bled for every spent penny! I’d have bought more but the only store around stopped carrying heavy metal… and any other music that didn’t suck. I tragically cut off from loud overwrought juvenile guitar rock!
On the other hand, I had to admit Dio was milking it for all it was worth. Here’s the cover:
Dio, Last in Line, 1984.
Christ on a cracker! Could they be more blatant? It was even more dipshit than KISS! No way could I explain away a cover with radioactive visuals like that! If my parents saw it they might torture me with long boring discussions about “my future”! In my experience, adults lacked the common sense to realize a cassette is just a cassette. How ironic! A generation after masses got naked and fucked in the mud at Woodstock, society suddenly worried immoral music would taint America’s youth!
All I wanted was music with testosterone. FM was saccharine and getting lamer by the minute. Meanwhile, Walter Cronkite stirred the pot and anything more aggressive than Huey Lewis was at risk! How do you deal with people who take dumb shit seriously?
I get mixed up about what happened next. Shortly after the Satanic panic’s peak, Al Gore’s bored wife started testifying before Congress about censoring music. I think it was because of a Prince album cover with pubic hair but the well was already poisoned. Half the adults in my town were convinced youths listening to Twisted Sister were an inch away from sacrificing the family cat. Tipper was a disaster for me! FM radio in my area gave up all spirit. This was long before the internet. I scarcely heard any good music most of my youth.
As for Dio, I loved it. It was shitty music but I never sacrificed a damn goat so everyone could fuck off. No regrets!
Also, now you know my secret. I had bad taste. I still have bad taste.
Just for the record, I own it.
Everyone else had bad taste too. I listened to Dio in a society where Hee Haw was in primetime syndication. In a Dio video he hits a demon in the balls with a fantasy light saber. Hee Haw had jug band jokes about boobies. CBS also featured Benny Hill ogling bimbos to the tune of Yakety Sax. In a world with Hee Haw and Benny Hill, guitars for Satan is almost clever.
A secondary effect was the local bookstore got sheepish about Dungeons and Dragons. They moved them to the back of the store; like the shady draped off section of VHS rental shops where they hid the porn. (Folks born after the internet will never understand the strangeness of the “porn drapes” at VHS rental stores. Or a world where you had to leave the house to see naked women.) Back on topic, I coveted Deities and Demigods but it vanished before I could save money to buy it.
I never owned this book.
I assumed the Satanic panic is why the book vanished. I don’t know that’s true but it’s my hypothesis.
It blew over very gradually. People never actually sussed it out: “The concern that teenagers are actively worshiping the devil en masse is unsupported by personal observation.” Instead it faded.
Maybe a distraction on TV? Last episode of MASH? First episode of the Simpsons? I’ve no idea.
The lawsuit from the original event of “recovered memories” was discredited with a sledge hammer. Nationally, the topic was done by then. Over time nobody admitted taking the whole “devil worshiping heavy metal D&D teenagers” story seriously.
That’s a lesson. When everyone has the same dipshit idea and eventually they get over it… they’ll con themselves into remembering it differently than it happened. They’ll recall that everyone else had the dipshit idea but they personally never bought into it completely.
At any rate, that’s my memory of a very mild mass hysteria situation.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to crank Dio and play it deafeningly loud to my pet butterfly. Don’t judge me!
A.C.
P.S. The DiploMad 2.0 has a post that’s less “mass hysteria” and more “confirmation bias”. Ponder his experience in a Home Depot parking lot described in “Race, the World’s Most Boring Subject”.
P.S. In case you think I’m making up this whole goddamn topic, I encourage you to read this handy summary.