We all overreact sometimes, it's human nature. But when the human populace at large start freaking out about pop culture threatening their way of life, it can set off what is referred to as a "moral panic". The precipitating event or subject is typically related something mundane that upsets someone, but quickly snowballs into a wave of outcry from people, media being the catalyst. In her article, Media Phobia, Karen Sternheimer describes moral panic as "fears that are very real but also out of proportion to their actual threat."
In the 1980's, there was a moral panic surrounding the tabletop role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons. The precipitating event in this case was a teenage boy from Texas that disappeared from his college for a few weeks. The private investigator that his family hired to find him decided that the kid was a nerdy loner, that he must play D&D and the game behind his disappearance, despite absolutely no evidence to support this claim. As years went out and the popularity of the game grew, other incidents occurred around the country involving young men. The media and parents quickly latched on to the one thing those young men had in common, they all played D&D. Instead of trying to understand the game, society chose to make it the scapegoat for the incidents. A game that uses the imagination and teaches it players a number of interpersonal and problem-solving skills, was thought to turn players into delusional, witchy, satanists.
Earlier this year, another moral panic occurred, but did not last nearly as long as the D&D satanic panic. A child saw the image of a creepy doll called Momo, created by a Japanese artist, which made the child cry. Their mother's reaction was to post about it in a Facebook group and spread from there. Like a bad game of telephone, especially once the media started posting the Facebook comments as fact, a doll scaring a child morphed into a conspiracy of a doll preying on children through videos and images, telling them to hurt/kill themselves or their friends. And because of social media and our access to the internet from pretty much anywhere, the rumors spread like wildfire, to the point of schools having to send parents letters warning them to this apparent threat to their children.
The most recent moral panic, "MOMO CHALLENGE", is a great example on how easily society can overreact so quickly. Even though, like you mentioned, it did not become as big as D&D, it did impact a vast majority of families, when in reality no child was hurt by MOMO.
ReplyDeleteWe talked about similar things in our blogs. Great minds think alike I guess! I heard these rumors about Momo myself and never investigated to find out if they were true, and I actually found out that they weren't in class! I remember my mom telling me that my little brother and sister stopped using their iPads because they saw Momo and got scared
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