How Could a Woke Campaign to Frighten Teenagers Have Backfired So Badly?
It is no exaggeration to say that the online Amelia phenomenon may well be the most extreme example ever of a piece of Woke propaganda spectacularly backfiring. If you move in anti-Woke circles, you can now barely move on Twitter because of the deluge of pro-British, anti-immigration memes involving this beautiful, purple-haired, “based” Goth girl. In the space of about a week, she has become the new Britannia; a rival to Pepe the Frog as a symbol for the Alt Right. How has this happened?
Hull City Council, in the northeast of England, produced a computer game for teenagers called Pathways. It has very simple graphics, like something from the early 1990s and was developed together with an organisation called “Prevent,” which is run from the Home Office. This group intervenes if it is felt that a young person has been “radicalised” towards something that might be related to “terrorism” and it increasingly seems to focus on youths who might be drawn towards the “far right.” Their understanding of radicalisation is incredibly broad and effectively any open opposition to Woke ideas: if you oppose mass immigration, are concerned about Muslim immigrants grooming and raping young girls or express annoyance at anti-white discrimination then your school teacher is encouraged to report you to Prevent so that you can be sent on a de-radicalisation course. This really is how far the UK has descended from being the “Mother of the Free.”
The computer game attempts to manipulate and frightened teens into toeing the Woke line. You are in the equivalent high school — Sixth Form College — and you can choose to be a male or female character, both called Charlie. It doesn’t make much difference because all of the characters you meet are “they/them” except one, a wicked Goth girl with purple hair and purple clothes called Amelia. Forever with a scowl on her face, you have the choice to get involved with her “far right” protests against illegal immigrants and anti-white discrimination. Your female teacher and your mother — both “they/them” — discourage but you can still do so. Even simple curiosity, such as checking a web-link is presented is dangerous; instead you should always ask a “trusted adult.” The message is clear: do not think for yourself, do not question anything you are told . . . obey.
If you get too involved with a Amelia, and go to political protests, you get a talking to from the police, you lose your multi-racial group of friends, Amelia disappears, you are very sorry, you are sent on a Prevent course and you learn a great deal from a wise Black psychologist about the joys of Wokeness and why you shouldn’t question the system. Throughout the game, as you make your choices, you can see where you sit on a radicalization metre.
It is amazing that the people who programmed this game didn’t think about the consequences. Of course a segment of young people will be inclined to strongly rebel against whatever the authorities are pushing down their throats. It has got to a point where they are so strongly inculcated with left-wing ideas at school that being “far right” is edgy and cool; it is the new fashionable thing among a portion of young people, which is why the infiltrated Home Office is concerned. If you present Amelia — the embodiment of based — is evil then they will adopt her as their totem for that reason alone.
Then look at the nature of Amelia; a Goth with purple hair and a choker. This is pure projection on the part of the game developers as you are much more likely to find a woman looking like this on the left. Studies indicate that dying your hair unnatural colours is associated with being mentally ill, which is elevated on the left. There are two reasons for the association with mental illness. In nature, bright colours convey danger: they scream “Stay away. I am poisonous” If you are mentally unstable, and fear other people, you may want them to be wary of you and you may also want to take control of your feelings of being an outsider by making yourself look unusual. One assumes this is why the developers presented Amelia as they did, to associate her ideas with being mentally unstable.
However, men who want short term sexual encounters will select for novelty as, in an unstable ecology where you could be killed at any moment, you may as well take the risk of a woman with some unusual adaptation. Moreover, being quirky, and even conveying a sense of danger, and conveying that she is mentally ill, is interpreted by men, correctly, as saying that she is likely to be sexually available. These kinds of traits — risk-taking, mental illness and so on — cluster into a “fast life history strategy” where you need to pass on your genes as quickly as you can in a dangerous and unstable ecology. You will, therefore, be sociosexual and interested in short term relationships.
Obviously, the age-range at which this game is aimed are far from interested in “settling down;” they are sociosexual compared to older people. Accordingly, in Amelia, Pathways has given a young “far right” man everything he could possibly desire: she is exciting, sociosexual and based. Of course, if you really think about it, Amelia is likely to be mentally unstable and her purple hair reflects her need to overcompensate for her negative feelings by asserting a strong sense of individual identity. One can imagine that she used to be on the extreme left, had a mental breakdown, and joined the “far right.” But the meme-makers don’t think too deeply about this.
AI has so far produced a beautiful and realistic Amelia in a short film promoting all the things she loves about Britain, condemning Muslim groomers, humiliating Keir Starmer and encouraging British men to fight to take their country back.
In a related video she interacts, in appropriate cartoon form, with Peppa Pig and Wallace and Gromit. There are Hentai Amelia cartoons, in Japanese, in which she inspires Charlie to rescue England from its traitor and foreign oppressors. She is known as “Waifu Amelia.” The podcast the Lotus Eaters has started selling Amelia mugs. Russia Today has even reported on what has happened.
It seems that the bubble in which many leftists live is so isolating that it does not occur to them that people might have different opinions from theirs, which is consistent with leftists being lower in Agreeableness — and thus in theory of mind — than conservatives. They assumed that Amelia would repel conservatives because of the association between how she looks and mental illness. But she looks quirky and exciting, so conservatives simply took the shell and stripped her away from the leftist-associated psychology. Her grievances, in cold print, also seemed perfectly reasonable and the preachiness of the game, its lack nuance, was laughable and repellent, pushing people towards Amelia’s position. When will the Woke understand that if you condemn reasonable views and behaviour as unacceptable then, in polarising society, more and more people will say, “Okay, then! I’m with Amelia!”