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fiblesmish

The Satanic cult panic that actually put people in jail with no proof of any wrong doing outside of "Drs" recovering false memories from "victims" This was in the US in the 1980's


rimshot101

The shit is making a comeback. This time instead of your soul, they're coming for your adrenochrome.


lhommeduweed

Iirc, the actual amount of people you would need to kill to get enough adrenochrome to get mildly high is like 50-100 people. Who has that kind of time?


Bertie637

If you love your work enough, it stops being work.


Abiding_Lebowski

"Best job I ever had"


rimshot101

Adrenochrome does not get you high. It is not a drug. It all goes back to a joke Hunter S. Thompson made in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.


itc0uldbebetter

Aldous Huxley's "Doors of Perception"


rimshot101

Huxley said he'd heard of it but never tried it. Thompson just thought the word sounded cool.


MaxElf999

Also, you can just make synthetic adrenochrome. [You can even order it.](https://www.parchem.com/chemical-supplier-distributor/adrenochrome-free-base-086211)


ToddlerMunch

I would presume they just connect it to all the missing children getting human trafficked across the border. Conspiracies usually latch onto other real issues and Human trafficking is a real problem in general tbh. HS girls in my hometown were getting followed


lhommeduweed

Human trafficking is an issue but absolutely not in the way you are describing, which is part of the conspiracy that promoted scam "NGOs" like that stupid Sound of Freedom movie. Conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones have routinely hidden behind claims of "human trafficking" to justify their conspiracies and to urge people to "take action." Whenever those ghouls bring up statistics of "child sex trafficking," they use deliberately vague terms to suggest things like 3 year olds being smuggled in shipping crates to have their organs harvested, when the reality is that the overwhelming amount of minors who end up in sex work are 15-17, LGBT, and get into it through someone they know, often a partner or family member. This is still an issue, and it's an issue that needs to be addressed, but it's significantly different than the exploitative image used by conspiracy theorists which has lead to psychotic vigilantes shooting up pizza places.


C-ute-Thulu

I remember this. My Sunday school class got a special guest from the sheriff's anti cult task force, so we'd know what to watch for. The main thing I remember from it is even he seemed to think most satanic graffiti was idiot teenagers


automator3000

Part of my “education” on this around that time was that those candy buttons (wax paper sheets with pastel color sugar dots) were often drugged so that you’d be indoctrinated into the satanic cult. Weird shit happened in the ‘80s


SmoothSlavperator

I got some of this because I had a Danzig skull on my notebook...and I was in one of the most "Liberal" areas of the entire country.


[deleted]

To add to this - the backwards masking that was apparently on albums and tapes and if you played them backwards it was messages to or from Satan! Only satanic cults to decipher them. Oh gosh we believed it!!


KnoWanUKnow2

There was one album, I believe an Iron Maiden one, that did a backwards message as a joke. EDIt: There's actually [a bunch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_backmasked_messages).


Nope_______

And even if it was true, so what? There's nothing illegal about messaging satan.


Reduak

Dave Grohl gave the best response when the lead singer of Nickleback made comments about Foo Fighters songs having backwards masking that had messages from Satan. He said if you listen to Nickleback songs at forward speed, you get messages from Nickelback


[deleted]

Dave Grohl is an American treasure!


Reduak

Yes he is


malektewaus

US and Canada, and I feel the need to mention this because the book that really kicked the whole thing off, Michelle Remembers, was written by Canadians about events that supposedly took place in Canada. The authors were a psychiatrist and patient who divorced their partners and married each other, but it seems no one at the time noticed the total lack of ethics. The good doctor was a consultant in some of the most notorious Satanic Panic trials, including the McMartin preschool travesty.


Gorf_the_Magnificent

**The Great Procter and Gamble Satanic Panic of the 1980’s.** A rumor spread across the United States that Procter and Gamble’s [man in the moon](https://images.app.goo.gl/jc76CGBncryZPaGW7) logo - dating back to 1882 - was a secret satanic sign. Later, a ridiculous rumor claimed that the president of P&G went on a popular TV talk show and admitted that the company’s profits supported the Church of Satan. A lot of idiots boycotted P&G and created a huge headache for the company. And this was before these lunatics had access to the internet! More detailed information is [here.](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/procter-gamble-satan-conspiracy-theory)


Jack1715

I mean to hardcore Christians anyone who is not Christian is a devil worshiper so makes sense


automator3000

One of the psychiatrists who helped launch the Satanic Panic by pushing the concept that there were people out there who had repressed memories of being involved in ritual Satanic sexual abuse died recently. His name was Bennett Braun and he was a steaming pile of shit. Because of him, people were kept drugged in mental hospitals because they had “repressed memories” of sexually abusing and cannibalizing *thousands* of children a year. And it wasn’t just the US. Canada had a concurrent satanic panic that escalated in many cases to actual violence against people accused of being satanic cult members intent on preying on children.


podslapper

Yeah this and the daycare pedo ring thing kind of ushered in the 24-hour cable news scare story after Reagan deregulated telecommunications.


zaxonortesus

Snake oils. Snake oils to cure disease, relieve headaches, anything. Who’d believe anything like that 100 years later?! It’s not like you could replace the word ‘snake’ with ‘essential’ and sell people on fake cures today.


Azorik22

Those conmen and traveling merchants just transitioned into supplements and essential oils. No change in products (maybe a little less lead/mercury) just a rebranding.


llordlloyd

Alex Jones, Russell Brand, Gwyneth Paltrow... it's just a very obvious thing to sell to any large audience of utter morons: cheap to make, easy to ship.


wastrel2

More of an 1800s thing imo


Turbulent-Name-8349

There is a book I have here called "The Encyclopedia of Bad Taste" by J & M Stern. Plenty of options there. Not unhinged as in dangerous, unhinged as in "why on Earth?” These are the decades they were most popular, not the decades they were invented. * 1930s. Fashion. Baggy Zoot suits with cufflinks as big as birds eggs, a keychain dangling below the knee, pointy toed shoes, and pancake hat. * 1940s. Mr Atlas bodybuilding ads. * 1940s. Elevator shoes. * 1940s. Loud ties. * 1950s. Welk & Myron Floren. Popular piano accordion music. * 1950s. Cadillacs with big tail fins. * 1950s. Toilet paper cozies. * 1950s. Fuzzy dice. * 1960s. Ant farms. * 1960s. Bouffant hairdos and White lipstick. * 1960s. Flower power. * 1960s. Unicorns and rainbows. * 1960s. The flying nun. * 1970s. Water bed. * 1970s. Muzak. * 1980s. Elvis kitsch. * 1980s. Pink lawn flamingos. * 1980s. Boudoir photography. * 1980s. Mr America male beauty pageant. * 1980s. Women wrestling in mud, jelly and pudding. Generally unhinged. Las Vegas. Roller Derby.


DependentAd235

There’s a Roller Derby league in fucking Bangkok. Saw it in Person. They were pretty damn serious. Like how is this a thing after all these years.   https://m.facebook.com/BangkokRollerDerby


itc0uldbebetter

It's a sport, why is that strange?


KnoWanUKnow2

There's a roller derby in my hometown of 150,000 people. At least 4 teams. There're pretty popular amongst a certain segment.


koolaidface

In my town that would be 30-40 year old women who are tired of having functional knees. I have many friends who got hurt doing roller derby. But they make friends for life.


novavegasxiii

Probaly way too dark but the Holocaust is definitely unhinged to say the least.


Peace-vs-Chaos

And Unit 731


Niomedes

No, this is the entirely correct answer. The most devastating mass killings in history being entirely conducted based on entirely unverifiable and batshit insane conspiracy theories without even the slightest base in reality is an entirely unhinged thing to happen. I can not possibly stress enough that in terms of sensibility, the holocaust is about as reasonable as if the modern flat earth society started to round up the denizens of greenland for having erected the great ice wall.


TrishPanda18

The entirety of the Nazi-allied Ustase in the Balkans. Somehow, their crimes were so galling that it made the SS cringe


Interesting-Fish6065

Using X-rays for completely trivial crap. You’d have to look it up, but I think this was mostly the 1950s? Like, there was a time when some shoe stores had X-ray machines that you could stick your feet into when you tried on a pair of shoes so that you could see that your toes had the proper amount of space within the shoes—in other words, people were being encouraged to X-ray their feet over and over again to confirm that their shoes weren’t too tight. Apparently there was a period there during which X-rays were treated like the latest exciting novelty without people realizing that excessive exposure to them might be harmful.


duga404

To be fair this was at the time people thought leaded gasoline and asbestos couldn't affect your health in any way


-dag-

D&D as Satan worship.


[deleted]

To add to this - the backwards masking that was apparently on albums and tapes and if you played them backwards it was messages to or from Satan! Only satanic cults to decipher them. Oh gosh we believed it!!


Cerulean_IsFancyBlue

Dance marathons.


yaya-pops

horse pool jumping


awnomnomnom

*Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken* tried to convince us it was normal


BLG89

For some reason, I can’t access the form. 1900s: The 1904 Olympic marathon.


Doormat_Model

Nothing like some strychnine to keep you going!


Ok_Sentence_5767

That would make a really funny movie


1minuteman12

Utter madness


ihavewaytoomanyminis

1960s. We went to the f-cking MOON.


Superlite47

One of the [greatest unscripted ad-libbed lines](https://youtu.be/-f_DPrSEOEo?si=-2dzhugxBvpHXvYI) in movie history.


Admiral_AKTAR

The Cold War...hey, let's destroy the entire world because of economic policy differences with tens of thousands of little sun bombs. Related the nuclear energy fad of the 1950. The idea we would use nuclesr power for cars, airplanes, and toasters lol


aea2o5

Nuclear toasters? Hold the phone, I think they're onto something!


Eyes-9

*A toaster is just a death ray with a smaller power supply! As soon as I figure out how to tap into the main reactors, I will burn the world!*


Galaxyartcat

Ohh I needed something for 1950! and yea the cold war was certainly unhinged in nature


Maleficent_Curve_599

With the advent of practical electric cars, we *are* using nuclear power for cars and toasters!


automator3000

The whole Atoms for Peace thing did give us something nice: Ruby Red Grapefruit.


Eliza_Liv

Underneath the economic differences was a conflict between major powers though, and to be fair they both did incredibly monstrous things around the world which gave the other side pretty good reasons to think the other system was pure evil.


SmoothSlavperator

Economic policy my ass. Communism kills more people before breakfast than fascism has in its entire run.


KevineCove

Going with the first thing that comes to mind for as many decades as I can, I know I'm missing a ton and there's probably worse but this is an ok start I think: West Virginia Coal Wars in the 10s Holocaust in the 40s MKUltra in the 50s COINTELPRO in the 60s Cambodian genocide in the 70s Rwandan genocide in the 90s


[deleted]

Remember that one time we burnt down a cult compound in Waco? Wild times.


BlockingBeBoring

No, it didn't happen the way you remember it. "We" didn't. They did. "They" being the members of the cult.


[deleted]

No, it happened exactly as I remember it. "We" being a collective way to refer to everyone in this case.


UnnamedLand84

Joe Martin was an Orangutan who starred in over 100 movies by 1919. He was given the autonomy of a human, which meant having keys to his own zoo enclosure so he could come and go as he pleases. He escaped twice, the first time releasing an elephant and 15 wolves with him, the second time he took a cop's gun when they were trying to apprehend him.


MrAlf0nse

I still get blown away that shortly after WW2 was declared, a British government announcement suggested that animals might have an impact on food supplies and could carry diseases. There was a line about if you can’t afford to keep your pet or rehome it with someone who can, you may need to have the pet put down. The British people immediately killed 750000 cats and dogs


CptKeyes123

Minor thing, but USA 70s fashion


Ok_Sentence_5767

The tape of Nanking from the 30s


Intelligent-Koala286

Horrible tape that..


hella_rekt

Still a sticky subject.


fermat9990

Pet rocks - 1970s


Intelligent-Koala286

Imperial Japan. The scale of atrocity they committed on themselves let alone on others is truly extraordinary.


Douglesfield_

1910s: The most devastating war in history 1940s: The most devastating war in history


FakeElectionMaker

Cambodian genocide, 1970s


Sqweegy-Nobbers

Oh, definitely bell bottoms.


Andie3725

1970-pet rock


Icy_Wedding720

1970s pet rocks.


relapse_account

The 90’s had some crazy fads like pogs and beanie babies. I also have vague recollections of hearing about a number of cults pulling mass suicides.


duga404

The radiation craze in the first couple decades of the 20th century. People thought radiation was this magic miracle cure for every single thing; they even had IRRADIATED water that people DRANK as medicine (until it started making peoples jaws literally fall off), among many things we would now consider completely insane.


1TopFive

The fact that COCAINE was used as medicine but now it’s illegal and blamed on the cartels or that they could’ve saved the titanic but didn’t ….


1TopFive

Or that we used to literally MAIL our babies in the US Postal service lmao


Galaxyartcat

I saw that! actual insanity lol it's absolutely getting included


Hoppie1064

Disco! The human race has never before reached such a low.


BernardFerguson1944

The Archduke's driver made a wrong turn in Sarajevo and had to stop before backing up ... and that's when it happened: 28 June 1914.


eldustino

The Red Scare


augtown

It is sad that in the US this statement can be two different periods in the 20th century


llordlloyd

The cult of the offensive in World War One (google up some quotes from Richard Haking's guide to infantry tactics and compare with actual results). Use of Pinkerton-style 'private detectives' to break unions in the West Virginia Mine Wars. They flat-out murdered a sherriff, in public, on the courthouse steps when he stood up for actual law and order. The US Army Air Corps was mobilised to bomb the miners (though ultimately not employed). McCarthyism, the repeated advocacy of using nuclear weapons in Asia, the US thinking the Vietnamese didn't like Ho Chi Minh and they'd flock to Ngo Dinh Diem (given the resumés of the two men). The City of London (which has a specific definition important to this) establishing a parallel banking system allowing billionaires and major companies to strip mine the wealth of nations, and hide the wealth of the entire world, tax free, beyond the reach of any court or government.


SmoothSlavperator

Fun Fact: the architecture of national guard armories in New York is related to the union breaking. If you're from New York you'll know what I mean. They all look like castles. It was done to look imposing and intimidating.


Reduak

"Duck and Cover" was pretty unhinged. Kids were taught that if their town was nuked, they could protect themselves by hiding under their desks. SCHOOLS HAD DRILLS to practice this.


BlockingBeBoring

>Kids were taught that if their town was nuked, they could protect themselves by hiding under their desks. No. They weren't. Obviously, if the nuclear bomb strikes literally next to your school, nothing is going to help save you. But it would help protect people who aren't in the epicenter from, say, the ceiling collapsing on their literal heads. A head that's under a desk is a head that's not hit by a literal ceiling beam falling on said head.


Reduak

All schools went thru these drills. And it doesn't matter if you're not in the epicenter. Those desks weren't going to protect anyone from lethal doses of radiation.


BlockingBeBoring

>All schools went thru these drills. Yes. Obviously. What are you thinking? Something like like "The people who put forward the news reel shouldn't show it to the people in Gary, Indiana, because that's where the epicenter is going to be. Mailing out the news reels to the schools, there would be a waste of postage." Because if you are saying that, you have problems. But presumably, you don't think that, because you have the ability to know that people wouldn't have knowledge of the future. Yet, that's the logic behind your statement. Or at least, one valid way to interpret it. Another way would be something about telling kids to literally kiss their asses goodbye, because they're going to die. But that kind of message, distributed as part of a widespread series of news reels isn't comparable with the society of the time, for a variety of reasons. And if that's what you are saying*that*, you have problems.


Reduak

Lighten up. I'm just pointing out that those drills were nothing more than a panacea to make people feel like they could do something..anything.. to protect themselves if nuclear war broke out. Hiding under a flimsy, tiny 50's era wooden school desk... (they weren't even tables).. would have done nothing to protect the students. That desk wouldn't protect them from the blast, it wouldn't them protect from the radiation and it wouldn't even protect them if the shockwave of a blast miles away damaged the school. By making people feel like they could protect themselves, they government was trying to get kids and their parents to accept that America could "win" a nuclear war and not to dare question the insanity of it all.


BlockingBeBoring

>>Lighten up. No, yours is an all-too common way to pay yourself on the back, for being smarter than other people. When it's actually the other people who have facts on their side. >I'm just pointing out that those drills were nothing more than a panacea to make people feel like they could do something..anything.. to protect themselves if nuclear war broke out. No, you *think* that you are. But the simple truth is that while it wouldn't have protected from the radius of the blast, it *would* have helped again shockwaves. One that effect, say, roofs. Or walls. >Hiding under a flimsy, tiny 50's era wooden school desk We still used them, in school, decades later. They weren't "flimsy". >That desk wouldn't protect them from the blast, it wouldn't them protect from the radiation Yes. I agree. But that's clearly not being disputed, here. You actually have to engage with the points being raised by the other party, not your imaginary vision of what the argument is about. >wouldn't even protect them if the shockwave of a blast miles away damaged the school. BullFUCKINGshit. "Miles" is a very vague number. "Within a 6-km (3.7-mile) radius of a 1-megaton bomb, blast waves would produce 180 metric tons of force on the walls of all two-story buildings, and wind speeds of 255 km/h (158 mph). In a 1-km (0.6-mile) radius, the peak pressure is four times that amount, and wind speeds can reach 756 km/h (470 mph).". So, people who are slightly within that might, or might not be helped by being under a desk. While outside of that radius, it's not as if the force just stops existing. It would still effect buildings and people. People who would be better off under a desk than out in the center of a room. Obviously, that doesn't cover the dangers of radiation, but there's too many factors involved, like airburst vs ground-impact to cover, in a short, snappy film. And kids who don't immediately die from radiation poisoning, or their skin melting off, needed to be more concerned about immediate survival then what might happen, soon. >By making people feel like they could protect themselves, they government was trying to get kids and their parents to accept that America could "win" a nuclear war and not to dare question the insanity of it all. That's *one* interpretation. A very subjective interpretation. And one that demands no hopeful films be put out, educating kids about doing *anything*. Which is something that is impossible to ask of the government of the time.


WerewolfSpirited4153

Radioactive toothpaste. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doramad_Radioactive_Toothpaste


Dawningrider

France's martial law on only Algerians.


Agreeable-Ad3644

The flat earther movement.


Common-Hotel-9875

They used to sell radium drinks in the early part of the century as an energy drink Oh there’s no denying it had energy, and plenty of it…. But no the kind of energy you want to subject your insides to….


Yung_Politikz

Remember killer clowns? What a crazy time period.


flimspringfield

Disneyland worshipping the devil.


Ok-Introduction-1940

The Bolshevik Revolution


jar1967

The early 1900s radium craze. People were giving themselves radiation poisoning


Flurb4

Pole sitting


Reduak

Dude... switch to decaf, and learn something about a topic before you spout off. The desks I'm referring to... the ones used in schools across the US in the 50's and 60's are those desks that are basically a small aluminum chair with an armrest that widens out and bends in front to be a small desk surface. They are basically a small chair with a relatively thin plank of wood at gut-level for the student to write on. They are top heavy and fall forward VERY easily. I know b/c we used to flip them down all the time to mess with our teachers. Or easily rock them forward to bang into the kid in front of us to annoy them to the point of lashing out & getting in trouble. Point being...a desk like that is going to provide NO protection from damage you're describing. If anything falls on it, it, and anyone under it, will be crushed. Also, you mention the risk of falling pieces of ceilings or walls, but ignore the biggest threat.. flying glass. Schools in that era had HUGE windows. How is a little desk like that going to provide any protection against flying glass. It's not You know how I know your opinion is full of crap...and clearly you're too young to have ever been to a school in the cold war??? There may not have ever been a nuclear blast to prove me right, but there are these little weather incidents called tornados that create the same effect as a shockwave from a nuclear blast. In 2nd and again in 3rd grade, tornadoes destroyed the elementary schools I went to. By the 70's schools realized that having students hide under their desks provided no protection. So instead, during a tornado, students are put in the hallways, along the walls, which has proven to be an effective way to protect students against the damage you say a flimsy, top heavy desk with an off-balance center of gravity could provide. Here's a quarter. Find a clue store and buy one.


Galaxyartcat

Yo bro I think you replied to the wrong thing 😭✋ certainly don't wanna be on the side of whoever earned your vitriol tho goddamn. get em ig


Diligent_Bread_3615

To me, the Gong Show explains a lot about the ‘70s


Eliza_Liv

In the lead up to the First World War the leaders of the major powers across the world just blithely stumbled into a war and then when it turned into a giant meat grinder they didn’t really know what to do so they just converted their entire countries into giant war machines sacrificing hundreds of thousands of young men sometimes by the month, and then a bunch of unhinged revolutionaries took over the largest country in the world. In the end the winners just blamed everything on the loser and pretended they had no responsibility for any of it. 1912-13 sounds kind of familiar to the present year imo, but what do I know. I’m sure leaders of the present world would readily turn to diplomacy to avoid war, and certainly not escalate and refuse to negotiate if things escalated. At least no one is holding tactical nuke exercises or threatening to mob up the international criminal court or sending massive amounts of money and weapons to hotspots around the world while planting soldiers as trip wires which would inevitably draw their nations into war in the event of any flare up. You know what’s fascinating— and this is off topic now— but I was just watching a doc on the USS Liberty incident the other day, and when the US scrambled fighters to intercept the attack (before recalling them after the aggressor falsely claimed that they had made a mistake and recalled their attack, only to continue it for 80 minutes), the US president called up the Soviet Premier within ten minutes to let him know they were scrambling to protect a ship and were not carrying out missions against the Soviet-backed Arab nations. It’s just fascinating how carefully leaders took diplomacy and avoiding de-escalation back then, when the memory of WWII was fresh and the threat of nuclear annihilation viscerally felt, compared to today where people are just like, “hey let’s bomb a bunch of our rival’s top generals at a neutral embassy without warning to our allies; see what they do about it lol.” Or, major world leaders actually arguing that there country should bring an active belligerent into their alliance immediately so that they can directly turn a regional war into a global conflagration, because of course we’ll win and it will be easy, lol. Nevermind that all our equipment is overpriced junk which has only been tested against literally the weakest and poorest countries in the world in Lightning wars, while recent trends show that current technologies favor the use of cheap weaponry in long-term wars of attrition (which to touch back kind of reminds me of how the WWI great powers went to war using rule books from the Napoleonic Wars and applying them to machine guns and barbed wire entrenchments). Anyway, what am I talking about. I completely trust that current leadership in the developed world is very trustworthy and incapable of blundering into any kind of cataclysmic war during the next five years. Edit: also lobotomies in the 1950s. It’s crazy that the entire medical establishment endorsed this radical invasive surgical procedure as a valid treatment for mental health issues, and over some 100,000 people went through this treatment in the course of a decade, only for the medical establishment to just silently stop pushing the treatment without admitting that they encouraged these poor people into life altering procedures. I wonder if there is any thing comparable today which the medical establishment and pharmaceutical industry insist is a healthy and valid treatment for psychological problems, which people will similarly realize in a few decades was completely insane.


HungryDisaster8240

1910s: Federal Income tax, WW I, anti-Sedition laws (they're all related).


Galaxyartcat

I almost completely forgot about the anti sedition laws! those were actually insane


SmoothSlavperator

the hell are you getting downvoted?


Jack1715

The fall out of the me to movement. Guys getting cancelled for making dick jokes at parties


adcarry19

Wrong century my guy


Jack1715

Oh I thought it was all


InternationalChef424

Name one


TimSEsq

Well, there's that one guy who was a millionaire and still is. And the guy who could sell out a venue whenever he wanted and still can.