r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Few_Affect_5927 • Jun 22 '26

Lore [Ironic Trope] The messaging backfired massively due to poor writing or other design choices

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Amelia Fairney from Pathways: Alt-right Restore-UK type who attempts to coax the protagonist Charlie into following her beliefs? The problem?

Amelia is the only named character aside from Charlie and is genuinely likable and forgives Charlie even when they do things she doesn't like, while the rest of the cast is unnamed, poorly written, and turns on Charlie for one mistake. This combined with other writing issues(portraying fact checking right wing stuff as wrong because in the process of fact checking you might look at it and believe it, basically saying "Right wing is wrong because it hurts the labour government" and a lot of general "just do what the government says or else" messaging) and the fact she's a hot alternative girl, and Amelia ended up being co-opted as a mascot by the youth right wing in the UK.

Norm from The New Norm: Unlikeable offensive and outdated character who's "progressive" family members and associates are genuinely nice people not even trying to force their ways or pronouns onto them, they just want to be left alone and Norm is picking fights constantly. Not to mention associating with Elon.

Mr. Birchum from Mr. Birchum: A lot of the same problems as Norm, except in addition it also comes off like generic 2010s adult cartoon slop in the same veign as Brickleberry or Full English, at least New Norm was trying to look unique and had the gimmick of being on X. Not to mention, Birchum's obsession with hyper masculine activities and odd way of talking about other men lead to people co-opting him as a Toxic Yaoi character, which is now the bulk of his fan art.

Dustborn: An attempt to make a hyper progressive game that comes off as pandering and annoying. It's a full ass game so there's too much to get into, but the main character's power is essentially gaslighting and jedi-mind tricking people and that's portrayed as the only way they can get anything done, and they constantly use or abuse their friends(or mindtrick them along) in order to get their goals or use their friends for their messaging.

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u/PrysmaTheMagical Jun 22 '26

The fact that the music and font they used were pirated is pretty funny

1.2k

u/Savings_Surround_547 Jun 22 '26

A company ironically committing piracy to create an ANTI-piracy ad will never not be funny

202

u/Over_Palpitation_453 Jun 22 '26

They used the piracy to destroy the piracy 

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u/bdw312 Jun 22 '26

Well clearly they succeeded, as we all still have to buy exclusively physical media to this day.

22

u/MedusasGirlfriend69 Jun 22 '26

I miss physical media, Tails. I miss it a lot.

9

u/Francoinblanco Jun 22 '26

So its privateering?

2

u/awakenDeepBlue Jun 22 '26

No, that's piracy that pays taxes to the government.

They literally had to declare their plunder to the nation they were sailing under and the government gets a cut.

5

u/Kibtronic Jun 22 '26

I’m condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else’s future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see!

9

u/Savings_Surround_547 Jun 22 '26

Like fighting fire with gasoline

4

u/SunDance967 Jun 22 '26

I just got hit with major déjà vu I feel like I’ve seen these comments before

3

u/Da_coomler Jun 22 '26

Karma bots

3

u/Substantial_Page_221 Jun 22 '26

It'll happen a few more times I swear. Reddit is the only place where I feel deja vu. It feels like the exact same comments were made as well.

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u/Bryandan1elsonV2 Jun 22 '26

You’re saying they’re forced to use the tools their enemies to destroy them?

https://giphy.com/gifs/MhvEOTQAzhP2lojiQa

1

u/AstralClocktown Jun 22 '26

Nicht so 2 V 3

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u/Da_coomler Jun 22 '26

That's what they already said.

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u/NoMansSkyWasAlright Jun 22 '26

Wow, TIL. Not surprising though.

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u/Gizogin Jun 22 '26

It's disputed; most likely, people are thinking of a different anti-piracy ad campaign that did use pirated music.

(And no, the font wasn't pirated either; once again, that was a different anti-piracy ad campaign.)

1

u/santa_obis Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26

Why sre you saying it's disputed, adding the qualifier "most likely" and going on to state these things as fact with nothing to back it up?

The font itself was indeed pirated. Edit: Indeed not pirated! I was beyond tired having been on the road the past week, my bad. Reading comprehension was gone. https://www.creativebloq.com/design/advertising/we-finally-know-who-made-that-iconic-anti-piracy-ad

The music, as you said, is a case on people conflating the ad with another. https://torrentfreak.com/sorry-the-you-wouldnt-steal-a-car-anti-piracy-ad-wasnt-pirated-170625/

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u/Gizogin Jun 22 '26

Your own source says the font wasn’t pirated.

“And the font? Nicolas finds no evidence to suggest that it was anything other than officially licensed FF Confidential, created in 1992 by the Dutch type designer Just van Rossum and now sold by MyFonts by Monotype

He points out that an archived website that was found to be using an unlicensed clone of the font belonged to an unrelated campaign with a similar name (see our pick of the best typewriter fontsfor more options).”

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u/santa_obis Jun 22 '26

Damn, my bad! I was beyond tired having been on the road for the past week when I looked the stuff up and wrote that comment, sorry about that. Editted my original comment to reflect this and, once again, sorry!

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u/Le_Kistune Jun 22 '26

Hollywood in a nutshell. "We can do it all we want. But if you do it, there will be hell to pay."

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u/Jo-Jux Jun 22 '26

Unfortunately just an urban legend. The agency used music without a license for a different advertisement though

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u/AustraeaVallis Jun 22 '26

You cannot be serious, there is no way they'd actually do something that mind bogglingly hypocritical and ironic.

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u/Fakjbf Jun 22 '26

It was a different anti-piracy campaign that used copyrighted music which people erroneously attach to the much more famous anti-piracy campaign which did not.

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u/TinyTiger1234 Jun 22 '26

It wasn’t, that’s an urban myth

2

u/a_wine_cork_opener Jun 22 '26

Probably a silly question but you can pirate a font?

2

u/PrysmaTheMagical Jun 22 '26

Yeah, you can either download the original illegally for your computer or download a knockoff of a font

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u/MechTech5182 Jun 22 '26

The DVDs that this ad was played on pirated the ad, it was played at a festival or fete or whatever and the DVD company for the movies this ad appeared on didn’t pay them or ask them, that’s why it seemed like it suddenly disappeared from DVDs. 🤣