https://www.techdirt.com/2023/04/19/lovejoys-law-and-tech-moral-panics/
"One of the central arguments for a recent rash of age verification laws across
the country is to “protect the children.” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox called his
signing of controversial social media laws a means for “protecting our kids
from the harms of social media.” Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a
press conference that her signing of the so-called Social Media Safety Act will
help prevent the “massive negative impact on our kids.” Once he entered office,
Sen. Josh Hawley, said that loot boxes in popular video games placed “a casino
in the hands of every child in America.” Louisiana State Rep. Laurie Schlegel
called her unconstitutional age verification bill in order to access
pornography in the state a measure to counter how “pornography is destroying
our children.” This all sounds the same.
“Won’t somebody please think of the children!” Do you all know who said that?
The one and only Helen Lovejoy says this quote quite often in the fictional
animated universe of
The Simpsons. If we recall our elementary school
‘Simpsons’-ology, Helen is the morally crusading wife of the town reverend
seeking to make the world a better place for the children. Or, at least, Helen
making the world a better place for the children based on her worldview.
Anything that pops Helen’s bubble of an ideal society for the small radioactive
burg of Springfield, USA, is nothing more than a threat to the town’s morality.
Helen leads grassroots campaigns to demonize and ban the things threatening her
ideal, little bubble.
Some call this ‘Lovejoy’s law’ to further parody the over-the-top caricature of
a socially-conservative moralist who believes that everything they disagree
with is either the work of Satan or woke leftists. In criminology and
sociology, this sort of individual could be referred to as a moral
entrepreneur. Moral entrepreneurs are people who take the lead in developing
and labeling a particular behavior or belief and spreading the label through
the society at large. These individuals also lead in the construction of what
they refer to as a criminally deviant or socially unacceptable behavior. These
individuals also are those who organize at the grassroots level, like Mrs.
Lovejoy, to establish and enforce a set of rules against behavior that these
individuals define as criminally deviant or socially unacceptable. These fine
folks perpetrate moral panic. Moral panic isn’t just a weird trope used by
politicians and the punditry.
It’s a legitimate social phenomenon modeled by world-renowned criminologist
Stanley Cohen. Cohen created a series of sequential levels to understand the
role of “folk devils” as societal outsiders as labeled by the moral
entrepreneurs who wish to do away with a particular class of individuals who
engage in the identified behavior or action. Between the presence of mass
media, moral entrepreneurs, a social control culture, and the general public, a
moral panic can progress based on misinformed, disinformed, or outright false
info surrounding the targets of the moral panic – or, as already mentioned
above, the folk devils. Individuals like Spencer Cox, Sarah Huckabee Sanders,
Josh Hawley, Laurie Schlegel – even the fictional Helen Lovejoy – qualify as
“moral entrepreneurs” attempting to take down their targeted folk devils in big
tech, legal porn, and free speech proponents advocating for speech they
disagree with."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
