Memes, #15 - Amelia
There are Memes, and then there are Viral Memes. While a single meme might be enough to encompass an idea, sometimes the idea is so explosive that it spawns hundreds of memes in a short time. And that’s what happened with Amelia.
Who is Amelia?
The British government thought it could use video games to counter the popular shift towards the political right among native British youth. This went awry so thoroughly that they took the thing down within two weeks.
Just as well, too, as it was rendered in this horrible Corporate Memphis style, and the “Gameplay” of Pathways basically railroaded the player into getting counseling for his/her radicalization. Yeah, “His/Her” because even though the player character “Charlie” is clearly male, the programmers wanted to cover all the bases, but didn’t want to make separate gendered courses.
And where they really went wrong is the “Villain” leading poor Charlie astray from the Pro-Social Values of Globalism and into British Nationalism was a purple-haired Goth girl with ah choker named Amelia. And the memers of the world embraced her as a symbol or England.
Others have gone into the horribleness of the gameplay, on par with some of the worst mandatory training presentations you’ve ever had to go through at work. You can find them on YouTube.
But here are a couple of screenshots:
In the game, so much as looking up a video to verify somebody’s claims is the “wrong” option, and could even get you marked as an extremist, just for looking at the video. Far better to remain ignorant of any other point of view, apparently.
But when obvious Propaganda is so blatantly obvious, and this ineptly ham-handed, the immediately inclination is to mock it. And the best way is to turn the “Villain” into the Heroine.
And Here Come the Memes
And of course, AI tools made this easy (alas, it also made it too easy to create videos, which are hard to paste into this post!). It also meant a lot of these shifted from Corporate Memphis to Anime style.
But the thing is, there was no good ending to be had. Some joked the game should have been named “Pathway.”
Keir Starmer does not figure well in some of these.
This is my personal favorite, having been in the original Macintosh 1984 generation.
That also sets the stage for some photorealistic ones.
She even made it into 4-Chan’s library of “Soyjack” characters. Twice.
So expect that to show up in memes forever.
If you have X, there are two very good videos that even if I can’t embed them, I’d like you to see. The first is a pseudo Anime trailer, in Japanese, oddly enough. Just click on the box and it will take you to the post. It’s kind of a romantic love story for Charlie and Amelia.
And the second is a two minute long piece where a guy… hell, the post explains what he did. It’s pretty compelling. Again, just click on it and it will take you to the appropriate post. It should work without an account (It just won’t show replies, which are kinda worthless anyway. Nobody needs to see the Small Language Models Meowing about Israel or the Epstein files in the replies to every popular post).
Here’s a pretty good article to read about this.
Now this is where some writers will put a mealy-mouthed “Both sides have valid points” denial of having any position on English Nationalism, while still managing to dump on it. Mostly because Leftists have worked overtime to portray standing up for one’s national culture as “Code1” for racism. But we’ve all seen just how horribly things have gone wrong in the UK in the name of welcoming people who have come to the UK, not to become British, but to suck the lifeblood out of it and turn it into something else entirely, a Caliphate. And I see the exact same thing happening here, with the Left supinely thinking they’ll come out on top if they facilitate the cultural submission of the nation. And I’m pretty damn sure I’m not alone in this. One person on X says he’s compiled over 117 different Amelia memes. It must be resonating. Although I’m sure most of them don’t come from the UK, since they’re probably afraid of getting arrested for them.
It will be interesting to see if something that lights up this fast lasts or burns out just as quickly.
“Code” means “A non-leftist has said something I don’t like, so I’m going to pretend it secretly means something else entirely that’s easier to attack, and simultaneously slime them for pretending they don’t really mean what I want them to mean.”
Thank you for posting about this. I had skimmed it on the margins but didn't know what it was really about until now.
Hopefully it gives the Brits some focus for action. Though it may be too late for them.