5 Totally Normal Things Society Once Thought Were Satanic

5 Air Conditioning

You would think that air conditioning goes against all our knowledge of Satan. He’s more of a summer guy, and it’s more lava pools and endless burning than cool breezes. Yet, when air conditioning first debuted, some people saw it as spitting in the face of God. To them, altering the weather was akin to creating some sort of horrific man-animal hybrid, an area man shouldn’t interfere in. Eventually, people got over it because, I mean, have you felt air conditioning? That’s the work of a benevolent deity if there ever was one.

4 The Telephone

These days, I don’t know if I entirely disagree. Thanks to X’s new moderation team, you’re able to witness true and actual crimes on your phone, which doesn’t seem good for the soul. Simple, voice-to-voice phones, though? Harder to ascribe sin to. And yet! When the telephone started to be adopted, it was technology that people truly didn’t understand. I mean, if you’re honest, do you fully understand how a landline works now, more than a century later? 

As the pattern goes, scary, inexplicable technology quickly became filed under black magic. So much so that not only was the morality of the telephone itself questioned, but there were thoughts that telephone lines would attract evil spirits. Which would make for one hell of a conference call.

3 The Smurfs

Is a Smurf a demon? No, I don’t think so. A goblin, maybe. As far as being agents of hell, though, I find that a stretch. How could something evil live in such an adorable house? None of this, though, was enough to free the Smurfs from the ire of the religious for a period when they were considered Satanic, and even worse, communists. They’ve also been suggested to be anti-Semitic, which I find confusing because as a Jewish child, I always clocked Papa Smurf as one of the tribe. Apparently, something about little blue guys makes them the perfect vehicle for pretty much any horrible beliefs.

2 Procter & Gamble

Massive megacorporation Procter & Gamble also found themselves in the crosshairs of demon hunters, all thanks to a bit of misunderstood iconography. I have to say, we better hope that Procter & Gamble isn’t a demonic organization, because if they are? They won. If they, Coca-Cola and Unilever all turn out to be different houses of the demonic line, it would explain a lot, actually. 

The link between P&G and the man downstairs was to do with their old logo, which featured 13 stars. A reference, they said, that was to the original 13 colonies. Unfortunately, thanks to a particularly grievous instance of the Mandela effect, this was coupled with a bunch of people who remember the President of Procter & Gamble telling Phil Donahue that the company supported the Church of Satan. They never did, of course — and if so, why would they tell Phil Donahue? But that, plus an admittedly weirdly mystical-looking logo, was enough to force them to change their branding.

1 A Rooster

A rooster is a male chicken. Hence, it doesn’t lay eggs. A violation of that simple rule, especially before anyone understands things like chromosomes and hormones, is clearly the work of Satan. Unfortunately for egg-laying roosters from the 1400s, they were born into the wrong time. Now, we know that they were likely hens with a hormonal imbalance that generated rooster features. But back then, they didn’t have that knowledge. So they did what they did whenever something confused their delicate understanding of the world: They put the hens on trial and burned them at the stake.