Moral panic

I just don't think it's the case.

Yeah, there might be a little bit more of, it's like when women sexualize themselves voluntarily, or when men are just sort of losing status, that triggers kind of what we're seeing now, which is a little bit of a moral panic around porn and OnlyFans.

Well it's interesting because it's a very specific class of men and I've always felt like the manosphere and the whole like new men's rights movement is basically just a reaction to like white men now being treated like men of color because all of the things that like the manosphere and MRAs lament have been happening to black men for a long time but again it was just chalked up to like cultural or genetic inferiority if you're all right like the fact that right now they're like women are out graduating men almost two to one that's been the case in the black community like black women have been out matriculating black men or they're like you know men have or have to pay all this child support they're getting divorced they're unemployed they're getting like addicted to opiates and these drugs and like all these problems which you have again like disaffected like the black community or like brown men have struggled in the dating market probably at comparable rates to now maybe these like white incels are constantly getting like highlighted and propped up by new media and stuff you know what I mean so I don't think there's like like a new issue of men falling behind it's the only new issue is now again like the men that were supposed to be like the main character are now just getting treated like normal people you know

Yeah, that might be true.

I agree 100%.

So I do remember at the time, and of course, studying this as a political science major, it seemed like a moral panic

at the time.

Or

when I look back at it now, it seemed like we would look back on something like the Salem Witch Trials, where the amount of hype that was generated um got one group of people extraordinarily up in arms and yet for another group of people uh the president remained very popular so

they were up in arms in a different way yes

yes you know exactly so i see other moral panics happening in in culture now some of them related to politics some of them related to other topics um And from that respect, the human propensity to manufacture a moral panic, that has not changed.

But what we are willing to panic about has changed and will continue to change.

If we can be turned against each other, we never become effective in working together to build something parallel, to build something better, to build something that actually works for all of humanity and not just the few.

I think the transition here then is to the moral panic that ensued in the 1960s from psychedelics.

And you outlined this in one of your chapters.

What then happened? So there was this dramatic shift in expansion of consciousness and a drug that could be used to improve humanity and then fear.

I believe – I think I put it in my Pizzagate episode.

I basically said that – It's time to justify only justifiably inside a moral panic.

Right.

And I legitimately feel that way.

you know just just rub some salt in that wound

Yeah, exactly.

And that's why I think the way that I basically put it was, you know, this is essentially, as we justifiably incite a moral panic, I think...

What we should be prioritizing is our effort to expose the immoral society of the inverted moral landscape in terms of the dishonest framework intended to distract us from really the most disturbing and destructive epidemic facing all of global society, man.

I think a lot of that comes from the time period that this was set in.

And a lot of the... a lot of the kind of like moral uh moral panic that surrounded the times because this is set in 2006 this is only like five years post 9 11 so at this time america was like looking for for like a great moral figure to stand behind and looking for a target to make the bad guy and you know Who doesn't want to catch predators, see these bad people get exposed and have their lives ruined? And having a figure like Chris Hansen, any kind of thing that is counter to that image, I can see that being a threat.

I just wish they took some time to explore that more.

But the movie ultimately just doesn't.

Yeah, I really enjoyed it.

I can see why there was moral panic over this kind of stuff, because there is some really gruesome ideas in these comics.

But I can't see it causing anyone any real harm.

Maybe a few kids might have a few nightmares.

You know?

Yeah.

The moral panic was over.

No LGBT portrayals at all.

And I think, you know, if we, if we look at the kinds of waves of far-right sentiment in Germany today with particular political parties, I, I don't think it's so much a chicken and an egg discussion.

I think You know, if we go to the very base of this, creating moral panics and folk devils and things like that, this kind of racism, um, Islamophobia, it's often a very good distraction from a bigger problem.

And you can, you can take Germany historically as an example of that.

You know, um, Hitler's justification for what he did during the Holocaust, for creating that populist hatred of the Jews, was that the Jews formed some sort of anarcho-Bolshevik alliance and were a threat.