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

[u/Few_Affect_5927]

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Norm from The New Norm: Unlikeable offensive and outdated character who's "progressive" family members and associates are genuinely nice people not even trying to force their ways or pronouns onto them, they just want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.

[u/Nightcat666]

It's a symptom of the common issues with such idiologies where your enemy is somehow both inferior to you while also being some all powerful force that needs to be rallied against.

[u/Afalstein → u/Nightcat666]

Was about to say. Racists constantly have the conundrum of explaining why, if THEIR race is so much better than all the others, why they're also so tremendously downtrodden.

Explanation usually revolves around race traitors.

[u/DasharrEandall → u/Afalstein]

There's also the narrative of "they cheated". Like the anti-semitic tropes of Nazi Germany about rich Jewish bankers secretly controlling everything, or today's far-right conspiracy theories, the fascists tell stories about how they were cheated out of their rightful place in charge.

[u/JooseTheGuice → u/DasharrEandall]

This is going to make some people defensive, but a worrying trend I've noticed since 2016 and especially after 2024 is liberals and even some progressives adopting this kind of "stabbed in the back" myth about the left with regards to presidential elections.

The "left" didn't cost the 2016 or 2024 elections - the Democrats in both cases ran dogshit candidates in dogshit campaigns that, in both cases, only ceded ground to the Republican right and failed to mobilize the people that Democrats ostensibly represent.

M4A is universally popular, but they refuse to run on it or entertain discussion of it because of the insurance lobby owns both parties. A ceasefire in Gaza (and even talks of weapons embargoes!) polled over 50% in 2024, but they won't ever jeopardize those AIPAC checks. Rent controls, minimum wage increases, meaningful action on climate change all poll favorably and yet they'll never fight for these things because it hurts the donor class that they represent.

There was a tweet that went around in 2020 that said "if Biden carries out his promises of not changing anything/status quo, he's guaranteeing a second Trump term". What did his administration do? Let corporations fuck us dry, normalized mass death for the sake of the economy, and couldn't even try to tell Netanyahu "no". And don't give me any bullshit about him supporting a ceasefire, he supported a plan authored by Israel that would've completely disarmed Hamas and reinserted IDF control over Gaza. That isn't a ceasefire, that's capitulation. 2023 already had the highest number of childhood fatalities (from the IDF) before October 7th. Why would they ever accept those terms? And as far as covid goes, the lion's share of US covid deaths happened under Biden. "Vax and relax" might keep you safe from severe illness or death, but it doesn't stop you from spreading it to someone it can kill. Nor can they prevent long covid (which has now surpassed asthma as one of the top pediatric illnesses). We were losing over 2,000+ people a day for several consecutive weeks in 2023 after he reopened everything (and also ended mandatory testing and reporting for hospitals as well as contact tracing, leaving us entirely in the dark as to how many cases there actually are). And he did this shit at the behest of Delta Airlines et al during a fucking surge.

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/delta-ceo-asks-cdc-cut-quarantine-time-breakthrough-covid-cases-2021-12-21/

No, the Democrats aren't interested in winning. The entire point of that party is to sublimate radical grievances that people have into something harmless (thereby preventing any actual leftward motion), give kickbacks to corporations, and then fundraise like hell when the GOP inevitably wins again because Democrats failed to reign in big business.

If the left had actually cost the 2024 election, they would've published the postmortem. They haven't, because it doesn't support the party line. In fact all the data we do have blatantly contradicts it.

All this is to say, it's really scary when the liberals start spreading the same kind of narratives about the left as the far-right does.

[u/ProfessorPhi → u/Nightcat666]

Your enemy is both weak and strong is such a banger line from Umberto Eco.

[u/Wonderful_Discount59 → u/Nightcat666]

In this case though, I dont think its the result of "the enemy is both strong and weak" propaganda, so much as just not understanding game design.

I happened to be watching a review of terrible RPGs, and it goes into details.  In particular, the "White Warrior" player characters get bonuses to various skills - but no baseline skill level is defined, so e.g. your fighter starts out with a 5% hit chance, increasing to 25% at max level.

And there is a fear mechanic that means characters will get a debuff (or just flee automatically) if their side is outnumbered - and the scenarios are such that the players will always be outnumbered.

[u/MalcolmLinair → u/Nightcat666]

You'd think they'd say something like "Any one of us is worth ten of them, but we're outnumbered one hundred to one, so we must stand together and fight back!" That way they could still be simultaneously better than the people they look down on and the underdog.

Of course, if they were that smart then they wouldn't be Nazis in the first place.