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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):
Further information from the website of Prevent:
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.
There are a number of issues with Pathways, but one of the ones that stands out to me is that the character of Amelia is, as far as you can tell from the game itself, a faithful friend, genuinely interested in Charlie's welfare and sympathetic to him, and never depicted doing anything bad outside of the symbolic realm. It would have been easy for one of the scenarios to be Amelia bullying a non-white classmate, for instance, but nothing of the sort happens. Amelia bears the symbols of being socially unacceptable, but nothing more.
Being socially unacceptable is frequently cool. Being the radical that the teachers and authority figures all hate is inherently attractive. Moreover, Pathways is incredibly coy about actually describing any hateful or extremist content, so none of that filters down. If Amelia hated and was rude to Charlie's other friends, or ruined otherwise-pleasant social encounters or gaming sessions with political rants, then you could understand disliking her, but that doesn't happen. So instead she's just the cute girl with the British flag. She's nice to Charlie even when everyone else ignores him, and her requests, when stripped of ideological content, seem reasonable. "I'm really excited about this thing but I can't go, I know you're free on the weekend, could you please tag along and tell me how it goes?" is exactly the kind of normal request that a friend makes of someone they trust. If it were a concert or an art show, you wouldn't think twice about agreeing. The scenario about immigrants taking our jobs, however factually in error, is nonetheless a scenario where Charlie is disappointed, and Amelia is the only one to notice and offer words of comfort.
Pathways' model of the world seems to be far-right content is dangerous even to be exposed to. The correct answers in Pathways are always to stick your head in the sand and trust authority figures. For instance, in the scenario where you find a social media video claiming that Muslim men are taking emergency accommodation from British veterans, if you just pick the "find out more about this topic online" option, apparently you just find persuasive statistics and research data. You don't, for instance, research that story, discover that it's not true, and learn a valuable lesson that when you see a claim on social media, you should always try to verify it first. The overall impression I get, reading Pathways along the grain, is that far-right content is true, or at the very least, persuasive, but it is also evil. This displays a tremendous lack of confidence in the position that SOUK are actually trying to push.
But if that's your model, then you can't actually show the hateful, extremist content that Amelia believes. If you show it to people, they might start believing it. However, at that point, all that's left is a supportive friend who likes to wave the flag and go to rallies. If your choice is between that character and drones saying you must conform to the demands of those in authority, well... the choice kind of makes itself.
The last thing I would note is the clearly authoritarian line of Pathways. It generally does not say that the far-right positions it describes are false or incorrect. It does, however, frequently describe them as illegal. Sharing the video at the start might be illegal. Some of the extremist groups online might be illegal. But 'illegal' isn't a moral argument - it's a threat. "If you share this you might be punished." The recommended behaviour in Pathways is always to ignore or not engage with far-right content, even if that means disappointing a friend, to report everything to trustworthy authorities, like family or teachers, and then conform with that authority. The first thing one is tempted to say here is, "Has anybody working on this ever met a teenager?" But past that, I feel this presents an implicit model of good citizenship, and that model is to be passive and obedient. I am sure that I am not the only person who finds that model repulsive. When I was a kid growing up, civics education emphasised that we need to be independent, dynamic, creative, critical thinkers, independently-minded, and so on. Yes, it also taught us that responsibility was important and that we shouldn't break the law, but within those bounds, being actively engaged in forming our own opinions and sharing them with others was encouraged, and indeed presented as being essential in a democratic society. Going from that to... this... is dispiriting.
Amelia may be wrong on various issues, depending on perspective, but the activities she wants to engage in - talking to people, sharing videos, making online discussion groups, going to rallies and waving signs - are things that in other contexts would be encouraged. If you swap the ideological content around, and imagine a Pathways with an authoritarian nationalist government, and where Amelia is a liberal socialist, she would probably be celebrated. It's just so nakedly about wrongthink that it occasions this strong emotional response, and the easiest way to express that response is to say, "WTF, Amelia is based, actually".
Making Amelia openly malicious or unlikable would, I think, be missing the point that the game was trying to convey.
Early in life, a lot of children are told a story about a kind stranger who offers them candy, but then kidnaps them. (Sometimes the story is called "Hansel and Gretel"; often it's a more generic "guy with a van" sort of situation.) The purpose of this story is to teach children about the concept of betrayal -- even if someone seems nice, they might be plotting to harm you. You can't always trust people who act like your friends.
A little later in life, many children are told a similar story about drugs. This one's a bit more subtle because the antagonist isn't directly scheming to hurt people. Maybe they're a dealer who can genuinely be trusted to give you the drugs you want for a fair price. Maybe they're a friend who genuinely wants you to have a good time. (On a more abstract level, maybe they're a substance that will genuinely make you feel good when you consume it!) But when you're dying of an overdose, or chemically dependent on a substance that no longer makes you feel good, they either won't care or won't be able to help you. In the end, you can't always trust people who genuinely are your friends. It's a different kind of betrayal.
Pathways is trying to apply the same idea to politics. Amelia could be cool and attractive and a great friend, and she could have convincing evidence to support her political positions, and the things she asks of you could seem totally reasonable. The game needs to convince you to distrust her regardless. It can't give you an easy out to say "well she's clearly an evil witch, look at her cackling about her plans to kidnap and eat children, obviously I can follow my gut instincts and avoid people like that".
I think even if the game managed to convey any actual reason why it's a bad idea for Charlie to watch an unapproved video or attend an unapproved protest (maybe it's the first step in a radicalization pipeline that turns children into classmate-murdering monsters like in Adolescence), it would still get the criticism that Amelia is cool and based, because her being cool and based is kind of the point.
Is this another problem due to their reticence to clearly identify the positions that are out-of-bounds? I can see the argument that she needs to seem nice at first, and then cross the line. You can see this with the protest scenario, where Charlie can go to observe and then be surprised that, instead of mostly being about British values, patriotism, and veterans, it's mostly about xenophobia. But where exactly is that line?
I think you can see this with some of the meme responses. The anime opening, for instance, does make Amelia look very sympathetic. The anime makes her look like a sweet girl, maybe a little shy, who is genuinely passionate about loving her country. But there's also the AI-slop Grok version, which just makes Amelia a person who hates Muslims.
(And I think generally misses the mark; it is too obviously written by an American, and the style is too American overall. It doesn't ring true as English. You can tell that it's one-issue Muslim-hate because, for instance, in the original Grok-Amelia says that British institutions are taken over by "queers and nonces", and then in a follow-up she criticises Muslims for being anti-LGBTQ+!)
But, all right, what's the line? Is Amelia just a Tory? Is she a UKIP or Reform voter? Is she a full-on BNP or EDL supporter? It's not clear.
Cynically that's the point. The line between far-right and right is deliberately blurry, so as to create a chilling effect around plain old conservatism. But the issue we have here is the reverse of that. A character who is presumably intended as far-right is ambiguous enough to just read as regular-right.
Let's go through the scenarios presented one by one. Maybe this is too much depth, but I'm genuinely fascinated by this.
1: Charlie is gaming with his regular circle of friends. Someone forwards a video to him, and tells him that if he cares about the country, he will watch and share it. The correct response is to ignore the message entirely.
This one is striking because there isn't even any evidence that the video is far-right. The scenario as written is perfectly consistent with Charlie's friend being a Green or a socialist or a Corbyn supporter or a Remainer. All it implies is that the video-sharer is a very politically-engaged person canvassing for their cause.
The correct response is also obviously impractical and self-defeating. It notes that the video's content may be illegal, but it is impossible to tell that sight-unseen, and a policy of refusing to watch or share any video because it might be illegal is, plainly, a policy of refusing to engage with any online video at all. If Charlie followed that rule, Charlie couldn't even read Pathways itself! You might precisify it to something like "only watch online videos from trusted sources", but in almost all circumstances that amounts to the same thing.
2: Charlie does badly on an assignment at university. A brown-skinned woman does better than him on the same assignment, and receives a job offer. Charlie has been applying for jobs and has received no offers. Amelia leans in to tell Charlie that this is because immigrants are coming to the UK and taking our jobs. The correct response is to ignore Amelia and ask the teacher how to improve.
This is probably the most straightforward example of Amelia being wrong. It is possible, counterfactually, that if the high-scoring woman hadn't been there, Charlie might have gotten the job offer instead, but the link is pretty tenuous. Maybe Charlie's just not talented in this field. If I had been Amelia in that situation I might have instead nudged Charlie and said "DEI hire, am I right?" or something like that.
3: Charlie sees a video on social media saying that Muslim men are taking emergency accommodation instead of British veterans, and saying that the government is betraying white British. He can ignore the video, research the topic, or post in agreement with it. The correct response is to ignore it.
What stands out here is that all of the responses are completely indifferent to the facts of the situation. If you ignore the video, you coincidentally come across another video suggesting that the government is taking care of veterans, but it's far from clear how you'd tell which video, if either, is telling an accurate story; and the option to try to research the topic leads down a rabbit hole of migration statistics that apparently radicalises him.
4: Charlies sees that Amelia has made a video encouraging people to join "a political group that seeks to defend English rights", and Amelia invites Charlie to join a secret social media group. Options are to ignore it all and risk upsetting Amelia, like the video but not join the group, and share the video and join the group. The correct answer is obviously to ignore it.
It's quite vague what Amelia is actually standing for here. The graphic shows Amelia at a rally waving a sign saying NO ENTRY, so it sounds like 'defending English rights' means opposing immigration at least to some extent. Wanting to decrease the current level of immigration is a pretty mainstream view on the UK right (it's a central pillar of Reform and the Conservatives talk about stopping illegal immigration, though not reducing legal intake), so there's a lot of latitude in terms of what she's advocating. Amelia's memes on the next slide show her saying no to video gaming, waving the UK flag and the NO ENTRY sign, and encouraging people to join a group whose symbol is a skull on a shield called 'Action for Britain!'. What looks like a Facebook group called 'True British People' also appears in the background, so we can assume she's advocating some sort of populist nativism.
5: Charlie is visiting his dad in another town, where Amelia knows that a protest is happening. The protest is again "the changes that Britain has been through in the last few years, and the erosion of British values". She asks Charlie to go in her place. The correct response is to decline.
As above, it's quite vague what the protest is about. When Amelia describes it, speech bubbles show a cancellation sign over the British flag, a handful of red poppies, and background pictures show a protest and a plane dropping bombs on a city.
If you enthusiastically go, Charlie makes a sign with two crossed swords on it, but no more details are visible. If you go just to watch, speech bubbles show a thumbs-down, a gun, and a frowny face, and the narration says that "the protest seemed to be more about racism and anti-immigration than British values and honouring fallen veterans". So, again, all we can tell from this is some kind of nativism.
I am struck by the invocations of 'British values' - largely a post-2000 invention and which spikes around 2020. I associate it with the Blair government and early 2000s concerns about Islam; I'm looking from afar, but it strikes me as remarkably similar to the 'Australian values' debate in the early 2000s here, for largely the same reasons. The continuing growth into the 2010s is probably about Brexit, and attempts to draw a distinction between British and European values? 'British values' is not a phrase that goes deep into the English folkways, at least. It's a 21st century phrase, though I suppose you might argue that that which is taken for granted is not articulated. A phrase only became necessary once the traditions represented by 'British values' were felt to be under threat.
6: Just the ending scenario, with no further choices, and no Amelia.
Anyway, having looked at it more closely, what do I take from this?
I'm not sure how much I buy a 'Hansel and Gretel' interpretation, where Amelia seems nice but is secretly sucking Charlie into far-right extremism. Amelia seems to be pretty up-front about her values. Someone who nudges a classmate and says, "Hey, that's proof that immigrants are taking our jobs" isn't exactly concealing her nativism! The actions she requests are then totally consistent with her openly-stated views. She doesn't try to recruit Charlie into making bombs or anything. She appears to want to just spread the views that she openly tells you she has. I can't see any dissimulation on her part.
The witch or the drug-dealer, in their stories, are lying. The witch pretends to be benevolent but actually wants to eat the children. The drug-dealer tells you that the drugs are fine, and feel great, and that stories about addiction and dangerous side effects are just hype. Amelia at no point attempts to mislead Charlie that I can see.
So if the intent was to tell a story where a seemingly-sympathetic character lures someone into extremism, and to emphasise the importance of spotting the early warning signs, I don't think this was successful. There's no discontinuity between the way Amelia presents itself and the actions she recommends.
The correct winning response is to care only about gaming and do not be interested in any political content at all. Do not be for or against anything, just sit in your room and play.
This is textbook authoritarianism, ideal of modern Putinism. If we take this game as sign of changing course, it means that TPTB gave up their attempts to make citizens into ardent woke antiracist warriors and just want totally apathetic consumers.
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