From: julianlzb87@gmail.com   
      
   It has been obvious for some time that there are basic concepts that the   
   liberal British Establishment simply does not understand. Like money. Or   
   tax. Or business. Or going to the pub. Or the fundamental value of free   
   speech.   
      
   Well, now we can add a whole new roster of more baroque concepts to this   
   list: meme culture, e-girls, semiotics, détournement, the subtext of   
   black chokers and basic human nature. And all because of a purple-haired   
   young cartoon woman called Amelia.   
      
   Before we get to Amelia, we need to understand what created her –   
   because the joke can only be grasped once you appreciate the lunacy that   
   came before her minxy pink dresses. Amelia comes from a game called   
   Pathways: Navigating Gaming, the Internet and Extremism. It was   
   developed last year by local authorities in East Yorkshire with public   
   money as part of the Prevent anti-radicalisation programme. Ostensibly,   
   it was an educational tool for schoolchildren and college students.   
      
   The player starts as ‘Charlie’, a new student trying to settle into   
   college life. Charlie seems to be gender-fluid and is referred to   
   throughout as ‘they/them’. And poor old Charlie’s task is to learn what   
   kind of thinking is officially permitted.   
      
   The game is simple. Certain actions are ‘good’; others are ‘bad’. Make   
   too many bad choices and you are, within the logic of the game, deemed   
   radicalised. Looking up immigration statistics? Bad. Expressing concern   
   about job competition? Bad. Watching videos that criticise government   
   immigration policy? Bad. Talking about English identity, heritage or   
   cultural continuity? Very bad indeed: do not pass Go, do not collect   
   £200, go directly to Prevent.   
      
   The effect is, to say the least, unsubtle. To question mass immigration,   
   to care about national identity, to simply wonder about the merits of   
   multiculturalism, is to place yourself on a conveyor belt towards   
   extremism. Every Charlie is a potential fascist in the eyes of East   
   Yorkshire educationalists.   
      
   This is where Amelia comes in. She appears in one of the early scenarios   
   as Charlie’s friend: outspoken, political, sceptical of immigration,   
   interested in protests and nationalist groups. Within the logic of   
   Pathways, she’s a warning sign. Stay away from the fash-adjacent temptress.   
      
   The problem is that Amelia does not look like a Nazi villain. She looks   
   intriguing. She has purple hair, a black BDSM-y choker and a goth girl   
   aesthetic.   
      
   For more than a decade, the goth or e-girl archetype has been one of the   
   most consistently adored figures in online meme culture, from the ‘Big   
   Tiddy Goth GF’ to the Doomer Girl. These characters are almost always   
   sympathetic, desirable, aspirational, sexy. They signify non-conformity,   
   authenticity and resistance.   
      
   On 9 January, the game escaped containment and went viral. Screenshots   
   from it began circulating on X. The tone was ironic admiration – ‘Wait,   
   they made the cute goth girl the racist?’ – but irony quickly melted   
   into something warmer and more mischievous. Amelia became an object of   
   playful devotion, deliberate provocation and delicious eroticism.   
      
   Fan art followed. AI-generated images and videos placed her in front of   
   Big Ben, in English pubs, wrapped in Union Flags, laughing at Keir   
   Starmer (‘How did we go from Churchill to you, you git?’), and leaping   
   into a Spitfire to stop boats in the Channel. She was recast not as a   
   cautionary figure, but as a symbol of exactly the sentiments the game   
   was trying to suppress.   
      
   To get mildly pretentious, what happened was détournement in the   
   Situationist sense: an institutional message hijacked and turned against   
   itself. A state-funded warning against nationalism became a nationalist   
   icon. The sign was turned upside down.   
      
   The authorities then made it all worse. Rather than owning and   
   acknowledging the failure, they took the game offline. Links stopped   
   working. The Amelia scenario became less accessible. What might have   
   remained a niche embarrassment became a cause célèbre. The removal   
   itself became proof, in the eyes of Amelia’s admirers, that the state   
   was frightened of its own creation. Consequently, Amelia did not   
   disappear. Go on X, Facebook, TikTok or many other internet sites and   
   you will find Amelia doing all sorts of politically incorrect things.   
   Her purple-haired rebellion has also been covered by Die Welt and the   
   Guardian and birthed copy-cat equivalents across Europe and beyond.   
      
   https://twitter.com/AmeliajakSolana/status/2015939362605629846?s=20   
      
   Does it mean anything important, or is it all just amusing internet   
   froth? I believe it does have significance, even if Amelia disappears   
   tomorrow. Amelia is final proof, in the age of the viral AI meme, that   
   the government no longer has any chance of controlling the narrative,   
   let alone establishing one in the first place.   
      
   This goes against every instinct and reflex of the British   
   Establishment. Because, if the Establishment exists to do anything, it   
   is to control us. This is why Starmer is so desperate to ban X for   
   putting fake bikinis on women, while taking a year to announce a   
   possible inquiry into nationwide grooming gangs.   
      
   Happily, this is one battle the Establishment simply cannot win. It has   
   been said that the internet is the subconscious of humanity. And, as   
   Freud observed, in the end the subconscious will always decide what we   
   do. Dreams denote desires, and desires determine reality. In other   
   words: go, Amelia.   
      
      
   Sean Thomas   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)