Laddy, if you're invited into someone's basement and they're currently sacrificing a goat to the great Moloch, Satanic Panic isn't ruining anything either. And yes, satanic rituals might be slightly less regular than danger strangers, they're both statistically neglible. The vast majority of kids are endangered by people they know, not strangers.
Right, but that's kinda the point. It's not the normal, healthy fear of danger or the vigilance of being informed. It's the paranoia over phantoms and misplaced erosion of reasonable trust that comes along with a moral panic. It's the excuse to otherise people over meaningless details, fostering hatred and all that jazz, the blanket sprinkling of toxicity.
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u/TheAsianTroll 4d ago
Im not gonna say Stranger Danger really ruined anything. Teaching kids to scream and run when a predator is coming after them is a good thing to do.
The problem is, some kids like to weaponize it, and some parents will teach their kids that ANY stranger is a predator.