45 pointsby pseudolus13 days ago6 comments
  • djohnston13 days ago
    My favorite part of this whole game / controversy is how "doing your own research" on an issue leads you to the alt-right. Parody-level blunder from the left on that one.
    • throwawayqqq1113 days ago
      Any suggestions where the billions for biased economic research, biased LLMs, skewed algorithms, selective ad revenue, massive botnet operations, campaign funding, corrupted influencal networks, media ownership -- and the most important part: a functioning education system to immunize people against propaganda so they can actually do ther own research against all odds -- should come from?

      What would you suggest, when it turns out, that even with massive fact checking capabilities, lies just spread faster no mattet your factual accurracy?

      Blaming the left for the current upheaval is a right prolaganda message too, so did my broadening reply work on you? No?

      • mycall13 days ago
        Fact checking isn't built into each article readers or video playback systems. That is half the problem as I would find a fact checking curator that I trusted and use that for all knowledge acquisition.
      • djohnston13 days ago
        [flagged]
        • throwawayqqq1113 days ago
          And how did i discourage you from discovering the truth?
          • collingreen13 days ago
            Remember you don't have to feed the trolls.

            It's frustrating when people fake argue with you on the internet and seem like they just aren't quite engaging with what you're saying. Unfortunately, sometimes that's the point since it inherently devalues the conversation as a whole.

            Not telling you what to do; just passing by and reminding that you're under no obligation to engage with a convo that isn't good faith because sometimes I forget that myself in the moment.

            • throwawayqqq1113 days ago
              I believe, i cannot reason pathological dipshits out of ther idiocy. I do this for the silent, maybe tumbling bystanders. But thanks for the heads up.
          • djohnston13 days ago
            Not you - the game! The game is teaching children that the act of trying to independently research information is a dangerous pathway that can lead to extremism. That belief is drivel - any self-respecting intelligent child will instinctively reject it. I feel for those who fall victim to such indoctrination though.
            • throwawayqqq1113 days ago
              So by pointing out that an outsider of the game, the left, is not to blame for its outcome, i somehow made a point for that rigged game? I discouraged you with this?!

              Please dont reply. You are dwelling deeper and deeper.

              The actual problem is the _massive and intentional_ cognitive inability of critical thought.

              • djohnston13 days ago
                The game in question was made to propagate leftist narratives to children, obviously. You needed that connection spelled out? It’s a game that discourages people from trying to reach an independent viewpoint on migration because it might lead them to be anti-migration. Who else would send such a warning, the right? Some politically unmotivated developer building educational games at the behest of the governing party? lol.
                • throwawayqqq1110 days ago
                  Yes, i needed that bullshit spelled out. When your mind is wrapped in identity politics, then "the left" is only about some imaginary enemy. Btw, an image of an enemy, that is conveyed by propaganda channels you should recognize. Disgust towards some ougroup and the elevation/pride of your own ingroup (aka. yourself) are the primary drivers how that propaganda manipulates you. Besides love, disgust can be the strongest emotion one can have towards other humans and when that one is dumb enough, it is futile to argue about complex realities, like crime statistics or socialization.

                  Unfortunately, i have to spell that out too. The left is primarily focused on wealth distribution! That is why i am so sure, you are the propaganda distorted mind here. If the game was really rigged by the left, we certainly wouldnt have the current oligarchy establishing fascism and using all tricks _of that game_ to convince the gullible masses that it is actually the have-nots at the bottom (not just migrants) who are to blame for societal problems. Populists make this their primary campaign message (for their donors) and dipshits make this their primary voting reason. With a little more education and less brainfuck, you would _know_ that most western countries actually need immigrarion!

                  Facing all this idiocy, i am slowly loosing hope. My very first comment to you was "where should the billions for all this come from?" and ofc you didnt engage with it. You talk about some rigged game (which is true) but fail to grasp the bigger picture.

    • seanmcdirmid13 days ago
      They don’t mean actually “do your own research”, they mean “do your own research from these far right biased resources.” All you have to do is plant the seed of a bias and lead them to confirming those biases. Real research would require not having an opinion in the first place and just looking for the cause of a problem from a variety of sources with different biases.
      • 13 days ago
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      • pseudohadamard12 days ago
        I've always mentally translated the instruction to DYOR as "look up conspiracy theories on the internet", which is how it seems to be used.
    • estearum13 days ago
      Much easier to flood the zone with bullshit when you have no regard for truth. It's extremely hard to propagate facts, especially since facts on almost any salient issue are complex, vague, apparently contradictory, and otherwise require a lot of attention to wrap one's head around.
    • ericmcer13 days ago
      Maybe because the lefts big issues are very "all or none". In 2021 if you said "I support trans rights in every area except trans women competing in women's sports" that would make you alt-right. You either completely swallow the narrative or you get thrown out completely, no room for nuance or discussion.
      • cauch13 days ago
        But saying that will also make you a woke terrorist for the right.

        I'm not saying it is not a problem and the left is not to blame. But I don't see why you explain the situation because of the "all or none" of the left, rather than the "all or none" of everyone in the US: left and right.

        • bigbadfeline12 days ago
          > But I don't see why you explain the situation because of the "all or none" of the left

          I'm not sure about the person whose comment you addressed but, from experience, I can think of these reasons:

          1. A Democratic supporter naturally assumes the Democratic party is the smarter one and holds them to a higher standard.

          2. Most of us independents have written the GOP off as a total loss sometime after last January. I suspect, many Dem supporters had arrived at the same conclusion a tad earlier. In other words, what's the point of beating a dead horse?

          3. follows from the previous two - there is a sense of real urgency as to make the Dem party do something meaningful, so by pointing the criticism only to them we deprive them from their favorite excuse - that the other party is even worse - they've been hysterically eager to use that excuse for many decades.

          Otherwise, both parties are very selective about what they do or don't compromise on, but in either case, the public rarely gets something other than the short end of the stick.

    • baggy_three13 days ago
      This sort of thing is why I've moved away from left-wing politics as I've got older. I'm now centre-left and not much engaged with politics any more, whereas in my twenties I considered myself far-left and would be leafleting, going to protests, and have social groups full of people who felt the same way.

      I came to realise that most leftists are idiots who don't think for themselves and need to be spoonfed the latest acceptable opinions, usually from a social media echo chamber. And these opinions change with the wind.

      Like why shouldn't I do my own research and try to discuss it with people who supposedly have similar principles? No apparently that's not allowed and you'll get shouted down for it, maybe even banned for wrongthink.

      • jamiek8813 days ago
        Anyone who uses the term ‘leftist’ is just a right winger cosplaying.

        There’s a fascist take over of the government, citizens being executed in broad daylight on the street. But no the real problem is ‘leftists’ talking mean to me.

        Ok, 16 minute old account.

        • baggy_three13 days ago
          Thank you for a live demonstration of what I'm talking about. You sound just like the arseholes I fell out with back in the day.

          Not my government, by the way. I'm in the UK and so the propensity of USians to blast each other away with guns for stupid reasons isn't something that particularly concerns me. You people have a school shooting pretty much every week. Absolute shithole of a country no matter who is in charge.

          Also, are you aware you have neo-Nazi numbers in your username? Funny to see such an account complaining about fascism, in an incongruous kind of way.

          • jamiek8813 days ago
            I was born in 88 you weirdo. Use your real account, coward. Also I’m British. 3/3 wrong there, sparky who’s scared of ‘leftists’ mocking them so deeply they become right wing? Make that make sense.

            You are saying your beliefs are so shallow, so little thought through that kids on the internet mocking them are enough for you to become the opposite and join the culture war?

            • baggy_three13 days ago
              If you're British then I pity your obsession with USian politics to the point where you're referring to their executive as "the government".

              As for the rest of your comment, I advise you work on both your reading comprehension and your sense of nuance. Hint: someone being irritated by exclusionary groupthink in a subset of the left doesn't mean they are right-wing. If you weren't such a cretinous fool, this would be obvious.

              • jamiek8813 days ago
                Because I live in the USA. 0/4 now leftist.
                • weezing13 days ago
                  It feels like you just keep inventing new facts about yourself with every comment just to prove your point.
                • 13 days ago
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    • torginus13 days ago
      The fundamental issue is that actual information of what the fck is going on in the world/your country and why is so far buried and removed from the public eye that people either accept the BS narrative, latch onto crazy conspiracy theories, or sink into total apathy.

      It would be journalists' job to actually dig into this, but you know.

      Working at an organization owned by a media conglomerate whose majority shareholder is a billionaire with very clear state connections usually qualifies as independent journalism among friends and state propaganda among enemies.

  • paulddraper13 days ago
    > The Home Office said Prevent had diverted nearly 6,000 people away from violent ideologies. It added that projects such as the Pathways game were designed to target local radicalisation risks

    Original matter aside, this Ministry of Truth update is as creepy as anything else in the article.

  • wolvoleo13 days ago
    Goth girls would normally not subscribe to extreme right viewpoints so I wonder why they picked that look.
    • ksynwa13 days ago
      It's probably similar to how the extremely pro-AI people started generating Studio Ghibli-style images in droves. It's sort of a disrespectful co-opting.
    • isubkhankulov13 days ago
      Thats because the character was originally created for a UK government-backed game designed to help young people recognise and resist right-wing ideology.

      The right then took the character and made it their ironic symbol.

      • wolvoleo13 days ago
        It does sound like a worthy goal of the government but I hope this backfire doesn't taint goth culture by attracting the right to it. I have a lot of respect for goths, they're super nice people. Very progressive.

        I guess the right are too conservative to wear purple hair, makeup and sexy clothing though.

    • duxup13 days ago
      Drawing in folks who want to watch young girls on the internet ... there was a similar story in Russia with AI generated young Russian women, but apparently run by China.
    • inimino13 days ago
      Literally nothing about her purple hair and her outfit is goth in any way shape or form so it's interesting that people are latching onto that.
      • wolvoleo13 days ago
        Goth culture has changed a lot, it's no longer all black and white (literally) like it was in the 90s. And I see purple hair a lot. But yeah the rest of her outfit doesn't match. I only had two images to go by :)
    • estearum13 days ago
      The modern right is extremely, extremely confused.
      • laughing_man13 days ago
        The character was created by leftists. She was meant to be the antagonist in the world's cringiest teaching aid game aimed at teenagers but pitched as if they were four year olds. This whole thing was predictable.
      • pstuart13 days ago
        The masses are. The ringleaders are savants at manipulation -- the Right defines the language and the talking points and floods the zone, where the Left plays defense and is always scrambling.
    • jazzyjackson13 days ago
      you want what you can't have
  • AndrewKemendo13 days ago
    Hang on, this looks like classic Internet trolling:

    //

    Pathways: Navigating the Internet and Extremism is a simple multiple choice format game with basic animation. Its players are taken on a journey as characters at a college. They are invited to make decisions in scenarios including whether or download potentially extremist content or join an Amelia character on a rally organised by “a small political group” protesting against changes in society and the “erosion in British values”…

    However, it is a subversion of the Amelia character that has exploded across social media channels …

    Manga-style Amelia, a Wallace and Gromit version and AI-generated “real life” encounters between her and the characters of Father Ted or Harry Potter, accompanied by racist language and far-right messaging.

    …We have seen the meme having a remarkable spread and proliferating among the far right and beyond, but what’s also been of note is how it is now international

    //

    So a bunch of trolls did classic troll things (which is to be expected because you’re on the internet) then the right wingers picked it up and ruined it and then it spread to become a meme coin

    The article wants to make this as though there’s a hardcore group of right wing meme-lords in some giant conspiracy

    This is keeps happening and it’s super wierd.

    Remember the 2007 mooninite panic? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42225609

    Is trolling considered right wing now?

    • laughing_man13 days ago
      "Classic internet trolling" is exactly what it is. You can find video of the original game on YouTube -- it's got a painful "hello, fellow kids" vibe to it that just invites ridicule.
    • tim33313 days ago
      I have to say having watched an original and a 'troll' version it's fairly natural taking the piss.

      real one https://youtu.be/2UI1ZqGpqXk

      anti islam one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu2K48F71rg

      And someone doing a meme coin isn't a "one of the most surreal twists" - people do that for everything these days as the cost of making one is ~$0 and they may may a few bob off suckers.

    • cauch13 days ago
      Your reaction makes me remember the "Angry Jack" videos about Gamergate, in particular the video discussing the fact that when some people (troll or not) were propagating racist or sexist things, they were reacting by saying "whaaaat, I'm not racist/sexist, how dare you". Who cares about them, and what they "are" really: for the society, if someone is spreading racist information "for the lols" or spreading it because they really believe in the content, the damage is exactly the same.

      I, like you, don't believe the phenomenon was the result of an organised action (of course). The phenomenon was started as meme, resonnated with the far-right, and both far-right and people who don't see any problem with far-right ideology just amplified it. After all, the government has made a lot of stupid videos, and yet, the popularity explodes mainly when it's aligned with far-right.

      But I don't have a problem with considering that the "bunch of trolls who did classic troll things" are considered as far-right. They indeed totally jumped in the opportunity to make racist things for the lols. How does that not make them racist themselves? If you create stuffs that racists find great and very aligned with their ideology, I'm sorry, even if you think you are not intrinsically racist, just be an adult and accept the consequences of your actions: you are part of the racist community, you are one of their "allies".

      So, I'm perfectly fine with trolls being considered as racists. Trolling is a pain on society anyway and each time a kid thinks of themselves as "super smart" because they are trolling, the reality is rather that the world would be a better place if this version of them was not part of it. Why should we care about what trolls are feeling, they choose to put themselves at the top of the list of people who don't deserve any consideration for their feelings.

      • AndrewKemendo13 days ago
        So the Hindus are racist because the Nazis appropriated the swastika, and nearly the entire western world doesn’t know the difference, yet they still use it?
        • cauch12 days ago
          Oooh, the poor little trolls, they were doing nice little videos full of flowers and kisses, and the big bad far-right came and stole their memes. Boohoohoo, it's so sad.

          Come on, from the start, what the trolls were doing was to parody the initial video game (which is apparently shit) by taking the opposite stance: so, they were, on purpose, making it as much as opposed as the perceived wokeness of the video game. So, they were putting, on purpose, plenty of racist tropes.

          The Hindus did not do that: their symbol was used in a totally different context. But the trolls were doing exactly that: the trolling itself consisted in putting plenty of racist things. They knew about it, they knew it was racist, they did it 100% on purpose.

          Trolling is, by definition, behaving like an assh*le. I have absolutely no sympathy for those little kids who behave like assh*le and then come crying "boohoo, people say I'm an assh*le". What did you expect? Did you really think you were being smart, or edgy, or that somehow you can spit in people's faces and just say "it was a joke man" and not being accountable?

          • AndrewKemendo12 days ago
            Nobody is complaining about trolls being told they are assholes.

            The fact that this is an article at all is the question.

            Why is trolling noteworthy? The only answer is if there are people who can’t differentiate between trolling and reality.

            So that’s the answer, people are yet again, too dumb to live in reality and not engage with the trolls.

            Your reaction “feeds the trolls” like do yall not know why they are called trolls

            This article did more for trolling than anything else, the streisand effect is the goal

            • cauch10 days ago
              That is a strange interpretation.

              According to you, a drawing equating a black person to a monkey is only problematic if some people do really believe that black persons are literally monkeys? And people who enjoy these drawing are lacking basic biology concepts and would be flabbergasted if they were told that, no, black people is not a different species as distant from white people than macaques or gorillas?

              The problem is the message that it carries and how it unities, spreads and empowers racist communities.

              "Don't feed the trolls" is a cute saying on the internet, usually said with confidence by people who think they are smart but in fact don't really know about what they are talking about. And the goal is usually to deter a troll from a forum, so they can go to the next one and do the same trolling (so, it does not stop any trolling, it just displaces it). And it is not even clear if it is working.

              It is also quite a coward way to response to that. Imagine "oh, these people are beating a foreigner to death. I know what to do: just ignore them, they are doing that for the attention, if we ignore them, maybe they will stop". Trolls act for attention, but these trolls are getting plenty of attention, from racist communities that loves them (and often even manage to groom them). So, who care about "feeding the troll" or "the streisand effect", this has no impact of the damage they are doing.

              > Nobody is complaining about trolls being told they are assholes.

              In the comment I've answered, you were literally saying that the trolls were unfairly blamed in the same non-logical way one would blame Hindus for their usage of their symbol.

  • delaminator13 days ago
    [flagged]
    • Balinares13 days ago
      Maybe right wing people should stop pushing far right policies, then.
    • ben_w13 days ago
      Has the Guardian ever described Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees-Mog thusly? The Tory party as a whole?

      Not "have said things that far/alt right cheer" but that they actually are more than "right wing"?

    • add-sub-mul-div13 days ago
      Yeah, it's a bummer. As someone who doesn't vote for the right I sincerely feel bad for the sane and respectable people among the right who have watched their parties turn into this and have lost their voice and representation in the media.
      • qwertyu313 days ago
        Isn't the issue that they've most representation in their party more than in media? If anything in the US, I would say the media held onto the idea that moderate conservatives as having a voice in their party for too long.
      • throwawayqqq1113 days ago
        I think its time for a distinction between (far) right and conservative.

        To me, (far) right means being primarilly focused on some image of an enemy, nowadays conveyed by social media, and without a substancial constructive political vision. Disgust toward some outgroup and an illusion of former greatness as main drivers for political agitation.

        IMO, conservatives can be similarly misguided by some bloated group identity but enlarge, its not their primary driver. Conservarism can find common ground with left leaning policies, whereas the far right cannot.

        • delaminator13 days ago
          but that isn't "far right" at all and describes a multiplicity of groups
  • dyauspitr13 days ago
    I guess they have a hard time finding actual young women that would vote against their own interests.
    • elzbardico13 days ago
      You know, things are not that black and white in the world. People have different problems, different points of view.

      The fact that the system gives them only two opposing, radical polarities, doesn't mean that there isn't nuance.

      You and I may agree or not, but there are indeed young woman who, for example, are not pro-choice. They may have varied views on the trans issue, they have different class/economics policy goals.

      You don't get to decree what young women interest are, neither me nor anyone else than themselves.

      • theuppermiddle13 days ago
        > You don't get to decree what young women interest, neither me nor anyone else than themselves.

        Is that not exactly what pro-choice means.

    • paulddraper13 days ago
      Brother, it was a (incredibly successful) internet troll
      • dyauspitr13 days ago
        Got to make up what you can’t find.