There is currently a very funny, kind of sad dust-up over Helldivers 2, in which self-proclaimed “anti-woke” gamers have previously heralded it as a rare game where they believe “politics” does not play a factor. Their faith was been shaken by an Arrowhead community manager they believed they found to be (gasp) progressive who was then subsequently harassed, but their head-scratching reading of Helldivers 2 as a “non-political” game is worth examining.
The only thing that makes sense is that these players have the shallowest of surface-level readings of the game. You are a patriotic soldier serving Super Earth. You must kill bugs and evil robots trying to hurt your brothers-in-arms and innocent citizens. There are no storylines to insert progressive causes into, everyone wears helmets so no “forced diversity.” Therefore, no politics.
Of course, this is…wildly off the mark, as Helldivers 2 is about the most blatantly obvious satire of militaristic fascism since the film that inspired it, Starship Troopers.
"I want to make a movie so painfully obvious in its satire that everyone who understands it lives in perpetual psychological torment inflicted on them by all the people who don’t.”
Wellcome to the post-internet era, where u can no longer tell if that obviously idiotic argument was written by a bot, a troll, your average right-winger or a twitter justice warrior.
Idiocracy was satire, but it turned into a documentary. Sadly they were too optimistic and their leaders listened to smart people unlike ours.
Smart != benevolent
It was also kind of like,really pro-eugenics.
Poe’s law was a concern even before its inception by known bigot and casual science fiction writer Edgar Allen Poe. Satire is a corpse animated in allegory to any cause the reader sees fit.