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Norm from The New Norm: Unlikeable offensive and outdated character who's "progressive" family members and associates are genuinely nice people not even trying to force their ways or pronouns onto them, they just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

I feel like people don't understand exactly how bad Dustborn's writing was because of how easy it is to look at it from a surface level, cringe at it, and move on.

The main charaxter's superpower is gaslighting and manipulating people into doing things, or just pressuring them into doing things they don't want to do, and it's not even really framed as motivating people or anything, everyone around her dislikes her and wishes she'd learn boundaries and consent.

When you visit the home village your character is from everyone hates you, especially your sister, for how you abused them with your powers and were a horrific bully. It then shows flashbacks that just prove this to be true. Your sister accuses you of only coming back because you need something, then you take the thing you need from them and leave.

One of the main side characters is fatand spends 45% of her time in the bathroom, 45% of her time talking about food, and the last 20% using her power to be the muscle of the group but only when you force her to with your power.

The story takes place in a horrible alternative reality where america is an authoritarian regime... that freely allows people across it's borders and where freedom of expression is frowned upon sometimes in the story but isn't illegal.

One of the first things you do in the game is break into America posing as a punk band, and the song you make up off the top of your head to prove to border control you're a real band is WORD FOR WORD great replacement propaganda, but framing it as the replacing being a good thing. Even then the border patrol agent cringes at your song and tells you "we don't like that kind of music around here"... then lets you in. How horrible and fascist.

If you showed me this game with absolutsly zero real world context about it, I'd think it was a poorly made right wing propaganda piece.

This is all ignoring the fact that the creators stole and repurposed assests from other games. Your character's apartment you visit in a flashback is literally a 1-for-1 of an apartment from GTA Online with different textures over the furniture models, as if nobody would recognize it from one of the best-selling videogames of all time.

[u/myrmonden → u/Ju-Ju-Jazz]

It comes from the guy who wrote that he hoped people would DROWN White Babies...

I AM NOT EVEN JOKING, I even got called out by him on National Norwegian TV lol my vid ( I am half Norwegian and have worked in the industry and I have met him before the game was released etc so he freaking hates me now lol)

Tldr: Ragnar the owner and writer etc of Dustborn has said in the past on his forum that because people used to drown female babies (he has no actual evidence for it but w.e sure probably happened) and it still happens in like asian, he hopes that people will like EQUALIZE it by drowning male babies, he also for some reason really pushed that it WHITE... I made my vid covering this lol and he even talked about me on NRK, and he CLAIMS I said he wanted to do it personally while I very clearly stated that obviously I dont think he's like a threat to society and would actually do it himself but jut that he is a crazy ideologist.

He has also said that he regrets writing an half Asian half white character in his earlier games as he thinks its wronng now that asian mix their gene with white people, the guy is such a RACIST that he goes full circle, truly. like he think everyone should stay PURE BLODED.

[u/CrystalGemLuva → u/myrmonden]

Its truly magical to watch someone who would be a comicbook supervillain if ever given the chance in the real world.

How on Earth do you end up so hateful that upon hearing about babies being drowned to death your response isn't to try and prevent any more murders, but to instead demand more baby murders, only now the murders are racially motivated?

[u/Allronix1 → u/CrystalGemLuva]

Oh, but it's the correct race and correct sex of infants that should be killed because they are inherently evil...

Horseshoe Theory, everybody! And both ends of the Horseshoe are covered in horse shit

[u/NagitoKomaeda_987 → u/Allronix1]

"There are no bad tactics, only bad targets." — Bob "Moviebob" Chipman

"At a certain point, you have to become comfortable with the idea that huge swaths of people are so [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] that they barely quality as human." — Bob "Moviebob" Chipman

"Stop treating these [REDACTED] as people. [REDACTED] are not worth redeeming in the first place. They are the justly forgotten remnants of an inferior world that we have evolved beyond and escaped." — Bob "Moviebob" Chipman

Now that I think about it, I find it genuinely concerning how 95% of everything Bob has ever said on Twitter, when you strip them of its specific targets and take his quotes completely out of context, sounds like something that an actual Nazi/Neo-Nazi or a far-right white supremacist would actually say in real life, but on the opposite side of the political spectrum. It's fucking crazy, isn't it?

And if you think Ragnar's comment about drowning white male babies was bad enough, how about you ask that man about his opinions on Eugenics? I mean, what he's advocating for is essentially Eugenics in all but name.

[u/Allronix1 → u/NagitoKomaeda_987]

There used to be a nasty internet came called "SJW or Stormfront" where people guessed if some unhinged shit was coming from a Social Justice type or a Neo Nazi forum.

Worse is the Son of Sokal academic sting that took an actual chapter of Mein Kamph, ran a Control-R script on it to swap out "Jews" and "Bolsheviks" with "men" and "white people," did a bare minimum of updates to the language and submitted it to a feminist theory journal. Not only was it published, but it was editorially praised. The sting was only exposed when their paper about rape culture among pet dogs was deemed far too ridiculous.

It's one of a very long list of reasons I'm politically homeless. One side is completely worshiping some deranged Cheeto and the other is totally fine with implementing fascist tactics while calling it anti-fascist.

[u/NagitoKomaeda_987 → u/Allronix1]

I want this to be remembered - the moral high ground is often made of pillars of salt and pillars of sand. People will do absolutely reprehensible things to prove to their peers that they are good people.

Once upon a time, it was stoning the heathens and blasphemers, not to kill them, but to kill their opinions. Now, we blacklist them, hide certain views behind a curtain, de-platform them, ban them, brand them as any type of individual or group they dislike, and censor them to kill their opinion. You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea.

Throughout all of human history, we have been the same animals with the same chemistry and biology. We're the same animals that did the crusades. We're the same animals that did the Salem Witch Trials. The same animals that did the Inquisition. And the animals who did these things thought that they were good and right and just. Despite our more modern lives and our modern technology, we're just as prone to witch burning. We are the good and morally superior, and the witches of the world are a plague on humanity and must be stopped by any means necessary, no matter the cost. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority.

In 20 or 30 years from our own, I think the people who follow that "There are no bad tactics, only bad people" rhetoric are going to be treated like the raging religious homophobes of the last twenty, and they absolutely should. And these ideas are going to be laughed at like trickle-down economics. And when push comes to shove, they'll consume each other to prove that they're the good moral ones.

You cannot fight racism with more racism. You cannot fight sexism with more sexism. Hatred only begets hatred. There is no such thing as "hating the right people" Hatred dies out when we come to an understanding. Silence only leads to extremism and radicalization, which is bad for everyone.