'Amelia': the AI-generated British schoolgirl, a far-right social media star
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Original matter aside, this Ministry of Truth update is as creepy as anything else in the article.
The right then took the character and made it their ironic symbol.
I guess the right are too conservative to wear purple hair, makeup and sexy clothing though.
//
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?
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
Is that not exactly what pro-choice means.