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So, throughout history what have people claimed was an "evil Influence"?

For example like today: its video games, the internet, smartphones, Harry Potter, etc. What forms of pop culture did people back in the day claim was a bad influence?

EVERYTHING. No exceptions. The plays of Euripides, philosophy, Shakespeare, word in prose (I shit you not), communism... everything, when it first appeared, was accused of corrupting the youth and teaching everything from atheism to prostitution to homosexuality to don't-know-what.

You basically have to understand the mindset of these people, and see what ideas they were affected by: it's a combination of romanticising their own childhood (for the older ones), traditionalism (if it worked for our ancestors it can work for us), and the meme that older is better. The most effective way would be to ask one of them.

Off the top of my head?

Writing encourages laziness. When people can just write down the stories of their forefathers or what to get at the grocery store, no one will ever take the effort to memorize things for themselves.

Calculators, two thousand plus years later, same story.

Winter clothes turn men into sissies, at least according to Diogenes. And a cup is wanton luxury when you can drink with your hands.

General music, theater, sport and art as sinful distractions from the all-important God. Theater in particular has a long history with moral guardians.

Specific works of literature, theater and art. Wasn't there a riot at the opening performance of Rite of Spring?

Chimneys make boys grow into women, a real man's lungs are hardened by smoke.

I hear Education is a good way to ruin a child. Literacy leads to a lifetime of discontentment.

Not beating children turns them into spoiled brats.

Philosophy, and general questioning of cultural assumptions.

Any sect of any religion, special note to Catholics/Protestants who often hold nearly identical beliefs but will insist the other party is the road to damnation.

And atheism.

Regular bathing.

Any form of music your parents didn't listen to, when I was growing up it was metal.

Any form of dance your parents didn't do when your age.

Desegregation.

Miscegregation.

The telegraph and phone remove the charm of communication, and let people spread any old message instead of putting thought into what they communicate. Funny thing this charm, since previous generations complained it was lost to better transport/cheap postage, and despite being lost twice over we could still lose it to the internet, itself a source of smut and inappropriate ideas.

Television rots your brain.

Comic books make you violent. Or possibly gay.

I hear smoking is all sorts of terrible for you, but so present in the media.

Drugs do (fill in terrible effect) as does alcohol.

Anime is the death of Western Civ. Kids who see it won't care for US made entertainment.

Vaccines.

Gay Marriage, if treated as normal, will lead more people to be gay. This will be bad, somehow.

Oh! Can't believe I forgot D&D.

Ahriman covered things pretty well. Off the top of my head I can only add a couple of things I encountered growing up:

Listening to modern pop/R&B/dance/whatever the name is nowadays, because it's disrespectful to women/useless dreck (comments that I find actually reasonable, but meh).

Listening to classic rock/metal because it's "living in the past" and "stops modern artists being able to succeed."

The all-evil VIDEO PIRACY! (dun dun dun). Because.....because.

Computer games (the perennial parental boogeyman).

Anything sci-fi, anything fantasy...because.

And from the 1950's, any TV program which featured married couples sleeping in the same bed!

EDIT: In simple terms, anything even slightly innovative is (at the time) seen as a danger to society (by certain people with a certain mindset, most likely those who are in the majority of that society and have everything going right for them).

I suppose Dr. Trainwreck can get half credit, but three people and nobody said COMMUNISM yet?

Or jews. Seriously, that one has been in use since the Romans.

Eternal_Freedom wrote: Anything sci-fi.

What was wrong with Science Fiction?

Earth001 wrote:

Eternal_Freedom wrote: Anything sci-fi.

What was wrong with Science Fiction?

Amongst other things, it encouraged the most horrible idea that humans might forget about hating each other when dealing with aliens. To use TOS as an example, you had a Russian of all people ont he bridge, and a black woman too, who kissed the captain once. Shocking. And obviously a bad influence on young people.

Earth001 wrote:

Eternal_Freedom wrote: Anything sci-fi.

What was wrong with Science Fiction?

It's weird. Why can't you read a nice western like the other boys?

Seriously though, it's part of a long-running theme of anti-intellectualism and "imagination is bad" that extends at least as far back as recorded history.

Sea Skimmer wrote:I suppose Dr. Trainwreck can get half credit, but three people and nobody said COMMUNISM yet?

That's true, I heard once that during WWI the Germans shipped Lenin back to Russia to rabble-rouse and distract the Russian Army. In a steel boxcar, welded shut so he couldn't interact with anyone and spread his pernicious ideas.

Psychological counseling and psychiatric medication was on my parents' list (I was born in 1979, in Taiwan, a.k.a. the "Republic of China"). Psychology was bad because it was "wrong to spread family embarrassments/household shame outside of the family/household," a common attitude in Chinese culture; and psychiatry because the psychiatrist may be "using me as a Guinea pig for harmful Western medications," in my father's opinion (he's an acupuncturist, and had bad experiences with quacks claiming to be Western-style doctors). Fortunately, I didn't share their attitude, or I'd have committed suicide long ago; and my mother eventually saw the value of psychological counseling, and received professional help with her depression.

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" Not so much a moral panic one I know. Amused me still.

Masturbation, and hand-in-hand with it, pornography.

Junk food.

Women Driving.

Drunk Driving, as an example that some of these are legitimately awful things. Though perhaps not the greatest crisis facing our civilization at the moment.

Gun proliferation.

Gun prohibition.

well you can pretty much condense it to "anything that's different from the Status Que(sic)"

Lord Revan wrote:well you can pretty much condense it to "anything that's different from the Status Que(sic)"

Not quite. There is also "anything about the current state that is different from way when I was young" and "anything that I don't like".

In fact you can pretty much condense it to "anything I don't like and you should not like either because I said so".

When I was younger skateboarding was considered a gateway to drugs and gangsterism.

Now that I'm older I see that some skaters are genuinely jerks.

Oh, also, sometime around 1999 Malaysian society simply decided that (teens) hanging out in shopping malls is immoral. The moral outrage was enough to mobilize the government to create a mandatory summer camp program (we don't have summers so it's more like school holiday camp - they called it "national service" despite it looking nothing like national service in other countries).

Speaking in slang was bad, immoral, disrespectful and crass (but dialects are fine, the primary difference from my point of view is that "slang" originates from the cities and dialects from rural areas).

Wearing western clothes. At one point it was jeans. Then bell bottoms. Then short skirts. The definition of how much "western" is bad changes over time as people get used to the fashion.

I don't know if it was my grandfather's generation or just him but my grandfather considered eating with fork and spoon (or knife) as being uncivilized. He said - how can you tell how well a person's upbringing has been if you don't see how he eats with his fingers.

Oh, also for as long as I can remember, the white man (especially the English) was/is considered evil. Or at the very least a very bad influence. It's a common feeling among ex British colonies (or people who've had historical interaction with the British). To some extent these days the animosity has shifted a bit to Americans for some reason.

Also, every new wave of immigrants. When I was a kid people blamed Indonesians for crime waves. Then it was Bangladeshis. Then a few years back it was Nigerians. Then Iranians.