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PaperclipPerfector  10hr ago (text post)   1167 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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Can the mainstream media portray female characters as repulsive? Using the Amelia meme as an example

There was a somewhat comical culture war development lately in the UK in that a new meme was accidentally born by an online game backfiring hard. The Know Your Meme article on it is already up.

The gist of the story is this (quotes from above – bolding done by me):

Amelia is a supporting character in the U.K. government-funded educational visual novel Pathways, a game developed by Shout Out UK to teach the youth about extremism and radicalization. In the game, Amelia is depicted as a far-right anti-immigration activist with purple hair, a pink dress, a purple sweater and a goth or e-girl appearance, who tries persuading the protagonist to join her cause.

In 2023, Shout Out UK, a company focused on spreading media literacy, political literacy and more via their training programs, released the visual novel "interactive learning package," Pathways. The game was funded by Prevent, a program of the British government's Home Office. In the game, players take on the role of a character named Charlie in six different scenarios dealing with online or in-person radicalization.

Scenario two features the character Amelia, a far-right, purple-haired goth girl with anti-immigration views who tries to recruit Charlie into joining anti-immigration groups and protesting against immigration.

Further information from the website of Prevent:

Pathways is a bespoke interactive learning package, developed by us and the East Riding of Yorkshire Council in partnership with Shout Out UK. It is part of the Prevent programme, funded by the Home Office.

The main page of the game is here.

(Supposedly the game was discontinued by the government after the scandal, and the University of Hull was somehow involved in its development. I didn’t find a source for either claim, although I wasn’t looking that hard either.)

Non-paywalled article on the mini-scandal by some news site calling itself GB News available here.

After a cursory search on Reddit I can say that many observers agree that the developers obviously made a simple mistake. They knew that the game is supposed to target the gullible white boys that are also the target audience of dissident right-wing toxic dudebros, and one staple of the latter is their hatred of purple-haired feminist ‘arthoes’. So they thought: ‘let’s make the antagonist in the game an angry purple-haired e-thot; I mean surely she won’t generate any sympathy among dudes who listen to alt-right vtuber bros, right?’. It does sound like a reasonable assumption at first, if we want to be honest.

Anyway, regarding the reasons why the whole thing ludicrously backfired, I don’t want to repeat the arguments you can read for yourself in the articles I linked to. Instead I want to ask a simple question: if your goal is to create a fictional right-wing character who’s a repulsive woman by normie standards, surely this task cannot be that hard, can it? I mean, maybe just make her an obese, frumpy, obnoxious chavette. Maybe also a single mother and a smoker to boot. There’s no way such a character will compel thirsty dudebros to create piles of fanart of her.

But the problem is obvious, and this is probably where the developers felt trapped in a Kafkaesque manner. By adding such qualities to a female character whom you want normies to repulsed by, you are implicitly confirming that such qualities are repulsive to men in general. And that cuts too close to the bone. In this particular case, I’m sure they’d have easily gotten away with it. The only people making a fuss would be a marginal group of radical feminists unironically following their ideology to the letter, and they are essentially a minority within a minority. But that’d still mean taking a risk, and they didn’t want that.

an obese, frumpy, obnoxious chavette. Maybe also a single mother and a smoker to

This character already exists.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=1vhl7af_l9w?si=iz0okGnZcE4ErMJi

Any self-respecting movement bent on expanding its membership is going to send its most attractive true believers out into the wild.

If you're a government bent on creating antibodies against recruitment, it helps to create characters that kinda match the profile of a recruiter: reasonably attractive wordcels. If anything, they toned down how attractive she could be. They could have even made her one of the good Pakis to double down on the "never ask a white supremacist the skin color of their significant other" stereotype.

Governments have had this problem before. For example, some anti-smoking ads kinda actually encourage smoking because of how off-the-mark they get. And TV has tried before to warn about cult recruitment.

I'd guess that in today's environment that enough people would have make waifus out of Sherri for the lulz. Especially if it's for a cause they actually agree with.

Here's a thought experiment:

Suppose that this organization had been tasked with making a similar interactive game, except that the purpose was to discourage young people from trying Fentanyl. In that case, it would make sense to use a non-repulsive female as a villain who was pushing the drug. Because the point is to teach young people to make the right choice notwithstanding social pressure.

From this perspective, I think the choice makes sense: The people behind the game see anti-immigration sentiment and racism like Fentanyl -- i.e. it's something that's obviously bad. From their perspective, no reasonable person could look at the evidence, think things through, and reasonably decide to oppose immigration. Rather, these racists are seduced into their beliefs. So in the same way nobody would expect Amelia to be turned into a pro-Fentanyl meme by Fentanyl users, I doubt that they expected Amelia to become a meme used by right-wingers.

I mean, maybe just make her an obese, frumpy, obnoxious chavette. Maybe also a single mother and a smoker to boot. There’s no way such a character will compel thirsty dudebros to create piles of fanart of her.

Right-wing Amelia smokes now (imitating the Iranian women burning Khameni photos), so no, smoking wouldn't help.

But probably none of that would work if they really wanted to meme her. They'd thin her down and pretty her up (as indeed was done with actual Amelia). They'd drop the kid or create a backstory where her husband was killed by a Pakistani immigrant or something.

the developers felt trapped in a Kafkaesque manner

Shoutout UK has an employee named Amelia (Archive) who basically looks like a brunette, middle-aged version of the character. Might have simply been an in-joke that backfired.

There’s no way such a character will compel thirsty dudebros to create piles of fanart of her.

The original Amelia character isn't exactly attractive, it's some corporate art scribble with a scrounged-up facial expression. The usual suspects would probably have turned any "based" female character into an anime thot -- it's the attitude that's appealing.

Amelia

Damn. Dylan Mulvaney has really let himself go.

*herself.

The person in question is transgender. How convincing the transition is can be judged from videos (including voice audio) available on this page.

Very related to a tweet I saw that pointed out that the BBC (and Netflix) has created an unintended issue where they portray all the female characters, especially those in relationships, as hypercompetent and strong, while their male partners can be incompetent and silly.

But they ALSO tend to portray interracial couples with the male being black and the female white. So there's now an abundance of bumbling black male characters that gets uncomfortably close to looking like a minstrel show portayal. But they're trapped insofar as its impossible to portray the gender-swapped scenario.

I don't watch enough media to confirm with my own eyes, but this is pretty funny in its own right.

But they ALSO tend to portray interracial couples with the male being black and the female white

I wonder why it's this way around.

Okay, I just played the game and I have to say I don't think they were trying to make her repulsive. They were clearly trying to make the point that "falling down the far right rabbit hole" can be easy, seductive and come with social reinforcement that makes it seem desirable. They also show the main character receiving tons of 'likes' and online affirmation. Amelia seeming cool and attractive sort of goes with this and I think was trying to underscore the point that it isn't just old boomers that can have "dangerous ideas" the same way that an after school special about the dangers of drug usage and peer pressure would show the drug using teens as cool and attractive not some random bum on the street.

Well, it does have to be said- thé easy way to make female characters unattractive is their weight. But implying that fat girls are ugly is verboten in woke circles. The government’s own propaganda efforts are hamstrung by political correctness.

It does sound like a reasonable assumption at first, if we want to be honest.

If we want to be honest, no, it doesn't. It requires one to have absolutely no theory of mind, to believe that what people hate about angry purple-haired thots, is them being angry, and having purple hair. If they're particularly high on their own supply they might also believe that they hate them for being women. It is only with these assumptions that the idea makes any semblance of sense.

if your goal is to create a fictional right-wing character who’s a repulsive woman by normie standards, surely this task cannot be that hard, can it? I mean, maybe just make her an obese, frumpy, obnoxious chavette. Maybe also a single mother and a smoker to boot. There’s no way such a character will compel thirsty dudebros to create piles of fanart of her.

No, you still don't get it. You'd have to make her a literal goblin, and even that wouldn't guarantee the effect.

Side note: the Know Your Meme guy is without doubt the single best living journalist/editor on planet Earth.

The 4chan guy is probably a close second in terms of sheer output though.

Know Your Meme isn't a wiki?!

Uh... now that you mention it, I'm not sure. I could swear that in the past it was a one-man operation.

I wonder if these left-wing propagandists have accidentally revealed via typical mind fallacy that right-wing propaganda would be more effective on them if it depicted its left-wing antagonists as distinctly aesthetically right-wing. A Reverse Amelia, if you will, a conservatively dressed tradwife caricature spouting antifa talking points.

conservatively dressed tradwife caricature spouting antifa talking points

Isn't that Ms. Rachel?

Close, but the vibe she's aiming for is "Kindergarten teacher", which is hard left coded. Matt Walsh described it as disturbing and childlike, and was only begrudgingly willing to admit that it was even vaguely tradwife-esque; I imagine he'd be much more disturbed if he realized that that was just the standard Kindergarten teacher register.

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