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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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That's fair. This kind of earnest education aimed at teens is very hard to do well - it's a naturally anti-authoritarian, rebellious demographic, after all.

This one just seems like a particular failure, or one that sends perverse messages. As Eetan noted, the correct answers in the game are usually apathetic. The only one that seems productive is the one where Charlie asks the teacher for help improving his work and applying to more job. For all the others, the correct answer is either to stick your head in the sand and do nothing, or ask an authority figure for guidance.

I do wonder if part of the problem is concern that research or facts by themselves don't do enough work? They don't make the case by themselves. You could argue that "do your own research and use critical thinking" doesn't suffice as an antidote to extremism in a time when misinformation is everywhere online; less charitably, I'd note that "do your own research" codes right-wing now. But whatever the cause, the scenarios in Pathways are those where an earnest person researching them online could come to the conclusion that the radicals are right. In the hiring example, Charlie might come to the conclusion that being a white man, rather than a woman of colour, is making it harder for him to get a job - and that's plausibly true. In the migration examples, Charlie might find that the rate of immigration is high and the ancestrally British proportion of the UK's population is only projected to decrease. That's also, well, true. And you can't really combat people being concerned about that in the space of a Flash game with only two or three sentences of narration.