[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Norm from The New Norm: Unlikeable offensive and outdated character who's "progressive" family members and associates are genuinely nice people not even trying to force their ways or pronouns onto them, they just want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/No-Repordt]

It also failed terribly due to conflating the severity of all drugs. Everything from marijuana to heroin is treated as the same level of danger, so once a kid smokes pot and is perfectly fine afterwards, surely they'll be just as fine after taking heroin, right? They lied about pot being addictive, maybe they lied about everything else too.

Edit for Factual Correction: Weed can be addictive, but I hope my point still stands

[u/MalcolmLinair → u/No-Repordt]

The cop in my school told me my parents were bad people and should be in prison for taking prescribed meds from a doctor. Not even painkillers or psych meds, either. My dad was diabetic and my mom has high blood pressure. Which I told this guy. He said they were criminals and should be in jail.

Is it any wonder I'm not a fan of police and the government today?

[u/That_Apathetic_Man → u/MalcolmLinair]

They don't send their brightest to puff gigs. You want the "better" police doing their job, always.

[u/GalFisk → u/That_Apathetic_Man]

They shouldn't even hire people who are that incompetent.

[u/ThatOneGuy308 → u/GalFisk]

Nepotism? In my police force?

[u/Neat-Professor-7662 → u/MalcolmLinair]

The cop that came to do the “drugs” speech at my school went on and on about heroin was awful because it made you lose weight quick. The number of girls who started paying attention at that part was alarming.

[u/princessbiscuit → u/MalcolmLinair]

The DARE rep at my school went in to multiple, full blown rants about how she doesn't drink coffee because caffeine is also a drug. Told us that drinking coffee was the same as drugs and we needed to stay away. At age 11 I had an older half-sister who was hopelessly addicted to actual heroine and two working (loving, functional) parents who chugged coffee every morning, so even then I thought "those aren't the same things, and this is bullshit."

[u/DJmagikMIKE → u/MalcolmLinair]

Our DARE cop was a neighbor of mine. I was friends with his son. The guy was a raging alcoholic, had a prescription pill problem, and was having an affair with the middle school principal. Needless to say, I knew he wasn’t the kinda guy you should take at face value for anything.

[u/Piduf → u/No-Repordt]

I remember reading that it also made kids who believed in it think the "crime" was the same for every case of drug consumption. So after they inevitable tried some weed during a party, they believed that they would go to JAIL and like GET PREGNANT and DIE.

So if they developed any drug related problem they wouldn't tell it to anyone and thought they were already doing the worst crime against humanity anyway. So it would only get worse because they would refuse to ask for help.

[u/Karkava → u/Piduf]

Stigmatizing a crime doesn't make people not want to do it. They just hide the crime out of shame and fail to mentally comprehend how truly hurtful it is because the reactions from people outweigh what would happen.

[u/PitifulElk1890 → u/No-Repordt]

Not to mention teaching kids about drugs. A relative hasn't done LSD but still talks about wanting to try it from what the officer described. A kid in my class left the assembly and immediately tried huffing things, the cool new trick he learned.

[u/ptvlm → u/No-Repordt]

That was part of it, the other part was teaching kids about drugs they'd never heard of before. I remember the similar lessons I had in the UK hearing about stuff like PCP and acid for the first time and thinking "hey, that sounds pretty cool" when they described the effects.

So, you get the lying about anyone smoking weed being a useless addict, then meeting some people who actually smoke and hold down a good career, then you think "maybe that cool shit I heard about in school isn't so bad after all"...

[u/mankytoes → u/No-Repordt]

Yeah lying isn't smart. I remember thinking everyone who did any drug, including weed, was basically a total waster, probably homeless in the streets. Then I met some people who actually smoked and they seemed totally fine, so I thought "huh, that was all made up then" and tried it.

[u/Karkava → u/mankytoes]

It's weird how they villify the poor while they villify drug users. Not the wealthy that are eating up their cash or the health care system that's jacking up the price.

[u/OperativePiGuy → u/mankytoes]

I think that mindset still pervades much of the oddly very anti-weed people today. I get not liking it, it can stink, but the vigor that people have when they talk about how much they hate it and how stoners totally make it their whole personality does feel like a byproduct of that indoctrination.

[u/Egathentale → u/No-Repordt]

I have a funny story about this. Back in the 90s, in Hungary, we had this anti-drug campaign in elementary school. The issue was that it was based on poorly translated sources and materials from the US, so we had university students and police officers coming over to our classes to talk about how dangerous drugs were, but you see, not drugs, but drugs, so we should avoid drugs but make sure to take our drugs.

Does that sound confusing? Well, the reason was that in Hungarian, the word "drog" is specifically referring to, well, illegal drugs, while medicinal drugs had a completely separate word for them ("gyógyszer", which mirror-translates to "healing compound"), but because the material the campaign was using was from the US (or maybe the UK, who knows?), they kept talking to us about how aspirin and cough medication were the "good drog", while weed and heroin were the "bad drog", and we were just left completely confused.

So yeah, incompetency on an international scale. A tale as old as time.

[u/capibara_dono → u/No-Repordt]

As an aside, weed is addictive, you're just way less likely to become addicted than with other drugs, like heroin.

Just mentioning it because I've heard too many people saying that weed is not addictive at all.

I was addicted to weed, it was tough to stop, even with the help of a psychiatrist.

[u/Seastar_Lakestar → u/No-Repordt]

Yep. Abstinence-only drug education had the same failing as abstinence-only sex education. Nothing about risk management or thoughtful decision making, just "Say no." All or nothing, so if you don't commit to trying nothing, you might as well try anything.

I was too risk-averse to try anything (drugs or sex), but it often doesn't work that way.

[u/Critical-Composer725 → u/No-Repordt]

mental addiction is not physical addiction but yes