Why did Witch Trials Happen?

Video

Why do witch hunts happen? Ask a hundred people, get a hundred different answers - but perhaps, the feverish origin of persecution is not that nebulous after all. Or as far from us as we'd like to think...

From Salem to D&D, explore the nature of witch trials with me!🪄

PS: One of my biggest sources for the second half of the video was Joseph P. Laycock's book, Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds. It's really good and if you want to learn more about the complicated rep of TTRPGs, this is where I'd start :) You can find the book here: https://amzn.to/3WTqeHZ

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"Over the years, multiple cases of young people struggling socially and mentally were used as sticks to beat their obscure hobbies with. It’s difficult to link all this directly to any one witch hunt. These moral panics are just too different. In scale, in origin. In... ultimate death toll.

Though it’s probably not an exaggeration to say that the hysteria over Dungeons and Dragons cost lives. After all, any child suspected of being brainwashed by The Dungeon Master probably didn’t get the kind of attention they actually needed. Like James Egbert himself, who became a victim of suicide in 1980 after months of being on the run from Dear.

As much as we like to think of history as a line, ever progressing, it seems to bend into circles all too often. Collective trauma and paranoia can tear communities apart. And people who were at those communities’ margins will fall down the cracks."