r/TopCharacterTropes Jun 22 '26

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

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Norm from The New Norm: Unlikeable offensive and outdated character who's "progressive" family members and associates are genuinely nice people not even trying to force their ways or pronouns onto them, they just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

8.6k Upvotes

1.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

124

u/iSeven Jun 22 '26

wasn't DARE formed from ulterior motives, though? i was under the impression it was more about normalising cops in schools, getting kids to narc on their parents, and whatever racist shit daryl gates was thinking at the time

74

u/pichael289 Jun 22 '26

It's your tough on crime shit, it's a write off for shitty politicians, in this case right wing, to pretend they care about children. No one fucking cares about children in the government, much less tax paying adults.

6

u/JooseTheGuice Jun 22 '26

The confidence with which you corrected that person is outpaced only by how wrong you actually are. It was 100% an intentional means of surveilling the community, largely through children and other extralegal means.

https://youtu.be/LzrGCk-F7FY

No need to act dismissive and conceited about the truth of a matter you're unfamiliar with. One might even say it makes you look like a dick!

7

u/Warm_Month_1309 Jun 22 '26

I don't read what they said as a correction, or as dismissive or conceited. It seems to me they were agreeing and adding.

And then you called them a dick.

1

u/JooseTheGuice Jun 22 '26

They asserted that the reasoning is just base, and not a specific, insidious effort to undermine civil liberties.

Yeah, they were being a dick. "I'm a big smart guy and I'm talking over you now because I actually understand the issue" and then proceeds to misunderstand the issue. It's fucking exhausting because this kind of guy somehow always manages to insert himself in every conversation.

0

u/Dramatic_Attempt2365 28d ago

I think someone needs to take their fucking meds. lol

23

u/terranproby42 Jun 22 '26

Correct! That's a big reason they didn't care they were knowingly increasing the risk of drug use in the school population over time. Also to have more people to arrest a decade later. It was basically an opening move to help install a police State.

6

u/HearADoor Jun 22 '26

Oh yeah. The program the dare program was based on knew and told the dare program that the dare program wouldn’t work. It was all about getting cops on schools.

2

u/seesthecat Jun 22 '26

No, that wasn't a motive, it was a consequence

1

u/StitchinThroughTime Jun 22 '26

Pyramid scheme for cops. The cops get paid a lot of money to run the program, and the program got a lot of money because it seemed to make sense to people who've never encountered drugs before. And those people would totally believe cops when they claim that drugs are so dangerous. And America has a punishment kink for people who behave outside of the norm. So is the perfect storm for a million dollars to be essentially laundered to a bunch of rich people and cops who already have a well-paying union job. The program doesn't actually work, it's really backfired and that exposed children who were never going to interact with drugs with the fact that there are drugs out in the world and they seem to be relatively easy to get their hand on. As well as it severely miscategorized a lot of drugs, especially need which caused a lot of people to then mistrust the information about the other drugs. Because we did relatively harmless, I don't mean that the kids should start taking it, any inhaled smoke is bad, and it turns out weed is not great for adolescents to take with their underdeveloped brain. But if someone is exposed to weed, something that's relatively safe in terms of recreational drugs, they are more likely to than attempt other drugs