While society continues to circle the drain, people are actively seeking to pin the blame on something or someone. As a result, several of the usual subjects are being pointed to as the culprits for “inspiring” the horrific travesties we are currently facing—video games, music (specifically metal or rock), pornography, horror, and so forth, are all often targeted. These industries are the scapegoats, easy targets. Of course, this is not the first time something has been demonized by society because of misinformation, and I’m sure it won’t be the last time either. Nevertheless, I feel it’s time to set the record straight in regards to horror itself.
Satanic Panic
In the USA, during the 1980s, a widespread hysteria called “Satanic Panic” gripped the nation and saw many innocent people being incarcerated for being different to what is socially acceptable. If they looked a certain way or thought differently, they were guilty of something. Don’t believe me? Read up on the West Memphis Three.
In the 1990s, this phenomenon spread to South Africa and sometimes the media still uses it as a scare tactic when there isn’t an obvious motive for a crime.
The Censoring of Horror
Recently we realized that Instagram has censored the #Horror tag with a nice little pop-up message:
This is baffling to anyone who works in the horror industry, especially for a writer, because: 1.) Although people in the horror industry are not immune to suffering from mental illness, the genre itself is not the cause of our problems; and, 2.) Why censor #horror and not #crime?
Logically, one can surmise that people who are actively searching for ideas to do something illegal won’t type in #horror in a search engine. So, what’s the deal with censoring #horror?
Oh, but there’s more to this censorship campaign than meets the eye, folks.
A month or so ago horror directors Jen and Sylvia Soska were thrown off Twitter for, get this, sharing a promotional picture of their upcoming horror film, RABID. The horror community rallied behind them and their account was eventually reinstated, but the point is this was an intentional censorship move from a social media mogul. I mean, even Joe Hill’s gone back to blogging on his own website because of censorship issues on Tumblr. He explains the shift, without really going into too much detail, in his post: Resumes Transmission.
And then there’s this guy (and others like him) that just annoys the living hell out of me:
This might be a a lil’ controversial, especially for all my #DisTwitter followers…
But instead of blamin’ #videogames for desensitization, let’s look at horror films, or events like #HHN, where we see mutilated corpses, & people covered in blood screaming, “HELP ME!!!!”— Tyler Dean (@_TylerDean) August 6, 2019
So, why is an entire genre being called the Devil when the horror community are always the first people trying to help?
There’s a non-profit convention dedicated to raising funds for childhood diseases and illness, which is called Scares that Care. Countless anthologies are published every year for charity, where all of the profits—or a big margin of the profit—is handed over to a specific cause. Some recent ones I’ve heard of include: Horror for Raices, a charity anthology that is trying to raise funds for Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, and Dark Tides: A Charity Anthology, which will donate all proceeds to the Virginia Beach Tragedy Fund.
I should also mention the tireless efforts of the Horror Writers Association, a non-profit organization that’s established various scholarships, promotes mental health awareness, has literacy programs, and so much more.
This does not include the charity work the horror community does on an individual basis. Every horror author I know supports some cause, they just don’t always broadcast it to the world, because we don’t need to use the suffering of others to promote our own careers.
In Conclusion
We’re all searching for answers. We all want to point the finger and blame something or someone to make sense of it all. But blaming an entire industry or genre without any proof to substantiate the claim won’t bring any of the victims back. As much as we want to make the world a better place for everyone, we can’t. So, we create escapes for you—fictional worlds that we hope will make you sit back and say: “Well, at least the real world isn’t this bad.” The truth of the matter is: Nothing we come up with is quite as terrifying as reality anymore.
And that, my dear readers, is not horror’s fault.
The reason I’ve actually written this post is because I, like other people in the horror industry, are aware that at some point we’ll be censored off social media platforms. If that ever happens, though, I want you all to know that you’ll always be able to find me here on my website. 🙂 Think of me as a weed that keeps popping up on your lawn.
