CptEnder comments on Mom jailed for letting 10-year-old walk alone to town

A Boring Dystopia

17,709 readers

4,742 active

65 users here now

Pictures, Videos, Articles showing just how boring it is to live in a dystopic society, or with signs of a dystopic society.

Rules (Subject to Change)

--Be a Decent Human Being

--Posting news articles: include the source name and exact title from article in your post title

--If a picture is just a screenshot of an article, link the article

--If a video's content isn't clear from title, write a short summary so people know what it's about.

--Posts must have something to do with the topic

--Zero tolerance for Racism/Sexism/Ableism/etc.

--No NSFW content

--Abide by the rules of lemmy.world

founded 3 years ago

moderators

[–] CptEnder@lemmy.world 8 points 2 years ago (1 child)

I think the real origins come from "do you know where you're children are?" PSA campaign during the Atlanta Child Murders in the 70s. My parents said they remember the whole country started locking their doors and were crazy about keeping their kids inside.

permalink

fedilink

source

parent

hideshow 1 child comment

[–] roguetrick@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

So the PSA wasn't intended for that. It actually kind of only shows up late at night after most cities curfew and is supposed to be an anti-deliquency message, lol. The Atlanta Child murders are the other high profile case that happened right around Walsh's murder though. Both popped in the national news in around '81.

What's important about the Atlanta Child murders is they were ALSO dramatized in 1985 after the success of the Walsh dramatization( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Atlanta_Child_Murders_(miniseries)). It was even more sensationalized and was specifically designed to fuel the panic. That's why I consider the Walsh precursor really the watershed point. It was, however, gradual from the '60s as the news media really found out how to exploit it.

See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_children_panic for a more complete overview. You'll see this is also intimately linked to Reagan, the satanic panic, homophobia, and the political right.

permalink

fedilink

source

parent