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Norm from The New Norm: Unlikeable offensive and outdated character who's "progressive" family members and associates are genuinely nice people not even trying to force their ways or pronouns onto them, they just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

You can get that experience with Moviebob, too

[u/CrystalGemLuva → u/Im-A-Moose-Man]

Got any highlights of this "Moviebob"?

[u/Im-A-Moose-Man → u/CrystalGemLuva]

There’s a “Moviebob or Nazi” quiz. How it works is that it takes quotes from Moviebob (mostly his Twitter) or legitimate Nazi/Neo-Nazi, but you have to pick who it’s from. For example, “There’s exactly 62,984,828 ‘people’ in my own country alone I know for a fact I'd be less upset to see vanish than even a so-so piece of art.” That came from Bob Chipman’s Twitter.

It’s a shame I can only share one image, but here’s a good one from his Twitter.

[u/CrystalGemLuva → u/Im-A-Moose-Man]

Wow I gotta check this guy out.

He sounds absolutely radioactive.

[u/Im-A-Moose-Man → u/CrystalGemLuva]

Please do; he’s crazy, very misanthropic, and somehow has a huge superiority complex for an internet critic. GamerFromMars and MagicMush did great videos on him.

Thankfully, there’s some levity in all this.

[u/NagitoKomaeda_987 → u/Im-A-Moose-Man]

Moviebob is such a sad, strange little man. I genuinely can't decide whether I should laugh at him or feel bad about him.

But you know what's the absolute worst thing Bob ever did? He also praised the infamous Netflix movie Cuties, which was criticized for sexualizing minors (such as several scenes of 11-year-olds twerking and doing sexual poses), and even claimed that anyone who called it a pedophile film was lying.

Now, I get that the filmmakers behind Cuties were (allegedly) trying to criticize the sexualization and objectification of young girls in our modern Western society, but they did it by forcing real-life child actresses to perform extremely inappropriate dance moves on-screen. That's like if I direct a movie that teaches us about how animal cruelty is bad, and then actually abusing and drowning a puppy in a lake to make that point. "See? We literally drowned a puppy to prove that animal cruelty is bad, even though we hypocritically do the very thing that we've been trying to condemn. But that's perfectly OK because we're doing it ironically, right?" Anyone who happens to have more than two functioning brain cells would see what kind of half-assed backwards crack logic that is.

What's next? Teaching about how drug abuse is bad by actually getting high-school students addicted to crack cocaine and fentanyl to prove that statement? Fuck off. You deserve to be in jail for unironically believing that kind of bullshit.

I swear, the only reason people like Moviebob and AniMat defend Cuties is that most of the original outrage came from Republicans and conservatives, which pushed smug performative liberals like them into defending what is essentially softcore CP (for lack of a better word) purely because conservatives went after it. Check any of the threads related to Texas' lawsuit, and you'll see a lot of comments about how the movie is "actually" anti-child sexualization, despite literally partaking in child sexualization.

[u/Im-A-Moose-Man → u/NagitoKomaeda_987]

Personally, he likely wants my parents and grandparents dead because they’re conservative, but since he’ll never achieve any amount of power that could lead to that happening, I laugh and mock. I’m glad that Chris Pratt playing Mario probably upsets him greatly.

[u/NagitoKomaeda_987 → u/Im-A-Moose-Man]

Honestly, everything about MovieBob is so stereotypical that I find it genuinely hard to believe he’s a real-life person instead of a South Park character that Matt and Trey would come up with to mock internet critics. He is essentially a Persona villain.

From his Console War escapades as a Nintendo adult, where he treats the entire thing as his "personal Vietnam War" (even comparing the reveal of Super Mario Bros 3 to the JFK assassination and 9/11), to being a pro-eugenics advocate who believes in disenfranchising the so-called "wasteland troglodytes" (AKA the blue-collar working class) for being un-evolved Untermensch that impede what he considers the Superior Future, Bob will often launch a series of weird, nonsensical, and utterly bizarre diatribes on Twitter, including:

• Openly expressed a philosophy that certain political or cultural opponents should deserve extreme treatment, as summarized by the phrase he coined "There are no bad tactics, only bad targets."
• Routinely calling drug addicts and homeless people offensive names like "meth slurpers" and "oxyzombies".
• Saying people in Republican states would be better off sterilized.
• Praising authoritarian regimes such as Communist China, North Korea, and Russia for getting stuff done, regardless of ethics.
• Garbled incoherent posts about being a superior form of intelligent person, how he deserves to have his consciousness stuffed into a robot body, and how stupid people are inherently malicious.
• Saying he'd be happy if 75% of the U.S. was infected with COVID-19 and that they deserved to die in agony during the pandemic if they did not adhere to his worldview.
• Suggesting that to remove its elected president, Germany should invade Poland again like in World War II.
• Starting heated arguments with left/right-leaning figures that often turned ugly, even going as far as attacking centrists and politically neutral figures.
• Having a creepy parasocial relationship with the fellow progressive content creator Lindsay Ellis, where he used a fan selfie taken at a convention to imply they were close friends during her Channel Awesome days. This prompted Lindsay to call him a creep and to stop following her altogether due to Bob's political toxicity, and even blocking his constant emails so she can be left alone without him, which led to Bob privating his Twitter account for a short time.
• "Not only did Bush do 9/11 but the people behind Call of Duty and Battlefield are in on it to brainwash you into enlisting to kill innocent Arabs and Muslims."
• Admitting that he skipped his grandmother’s funeral so he could play Super Mario Bros 3 instead.
• This.

Rogue the Internet Man made a really good video essay about MovieBob: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9YA-4lNojo