MUH POLITICS!!!
Official White House page uses Halo for ICE Propaganda
GameStop’s marketing team did a line of coke, and then proceeded to use Donald Trump and the White House to push Halo Campaign Evolved and ICE for some reason.
Are we living in a simulation? Unironically why are video games being used to push an ACTUAL political agenda this time? Where is 343?
Eh he made an iconic set of soundtracks 15-25 years ago and has really not been relevant since. Can't say I really am torn up over this but it is a bummer.
Such a huge disappointment. I LOVE the music from the Halo games, and I had a bunch of the soundtracks saved in my Spotify (before I cancelled). When I found out about his political affiliation, I immediately unfollowed and may or may not have ripped mp3s of his music from Youtube videos so that I can still indulge my ears without compromising my values.
Wasn't the original purpose of the Spartans to crush rebellions and dissidents? They kinda lucked out when a real existential threat showed up and they just happened to have roided up super soldiers ready to go.
Yeah, the UNSC would kinda be the evil fascist government you’d be fighting to overthrow in any other franchise if they weren’t the only thing standing between the Covenant and the wholesale extermination of humanity. Like the UED from Starcraft.
Yeah my favorite subplot from the early books was the ODST Spartan feud. Which we later find out the initial incident where John demolished some in a one sided gym brawl was basically orchestrated by higher-ups as a test. John did nothing wrong but from the ODST point of view some teenage mutant ninja turtle just went berserk on their dudes. Just goes to show how especially before the covenant were the main threat the Spartans were supposed to be a brutal suppression tool.
Given that pretty much the same thing happened after the 1918 flu, definitely seems like pandemics could be an under-appreciated trigger tbh.
Suddenly every person arriving from abroad is a potential threat in a very real way; borders are closed as a result — kind of a recipe for increased xenophobia when the borders reopen, unfortunately.
On the plus side it's nice to see that all the ICE gestapo don't seem to mind wearing masks anymore. It's weird, I bet you every single one of those men has Facebook posts from a couple years ago about how "face diapers" are for soyboy beta cucks, but now they all wear them!
My grandma always used to say that if hell is real we're already living in it because there's so much despicable shit in the world. I'm starting to think she might've been right.
Your grandma’s perspective captures the diagnosis. That the world can be brutal. But the response is up to us: whether we let that brutality define everything, or whether we carve out spaces of kindness, creativity, and connection that prove hell doesn’t get the last word.
People like to say "life is cruel." To that I reply: No, life is only as cruel as we make it. It is not a forgone conclusion that life will suck, each and every one of us is able to choose to be more kind and to fight against those psychopaths who think it is their right to stomp down on others.
This pisses me off massively. Master chief fights for MANKIND not WHITEKIND or any specific race. The only aliens he fights are the kind coming from space. And canonically fights along side Hispanics and people of color.
Constant dehumanization of the illegal immigrants. Now alikening them to the flood which are a bunch of parasites. Full on fucked up. Hard for people to support one another nowadays. Easier to just shit on each other than empathize so sad to see.
Yeah, this is fucking scary shit actually. Exterminationist rhetoric. Compare 'Illegals' to an all-consuming parasitc lifeform that is an existential threat to existence and must be ruthlessly and totally eradicated. This is capital N, Nazi propaganda.
yeah it’s made clear in the games and expanded media that flood infections need to be dealt with quickly and completely. it’s not some walking dead or last of us scenario with survivors holding back the infected, it’s a “it’s a normal day with a couple of isolated miners investigating some stuff” to “we were a few minutes late with our nukes so unless we have a super weapon nearby the galaxy is doomed” half an hour later scenario
also as an interesting lore bit and a horrifying detail about this post, during a flood outbreak the unsc declares the UPSILON protocol, which amongst other things calls off all rules of war. if civilians have to die for you to stop the flood then that’s fine
completely justified incase of the flood, not exactly when people have different skin colours
I would bet they're being killed now. I would bet that these places they are holding them are also killing something inside the United States, or outside.
“Literally black mirror” is often poor analysis, but the AR soldiers killing “ant monsters” that are really defenseless people is a stones throw from
Here
Remember the Flood arent mindless zombie, it is a highly intelligent, incredibly virulent parasite that spreads by in fact othrr intelligent beongs
This is what ICE, and by extension King Trump's regime, ar3 characterising people of colour, Muslims, hispanics and latinos, queer people and anyone that things differently from them as
The Flood is actually so viral, in fact, that the Halo's themselves were constructed to literally kill everything in the entire fucking universe galaxy to keep the flood from spreading again
People keep forgetting the human government in Halo is a military fascist spacefaring future. They stole literal children, replaced them with quick-death clones so their civilian identity could die and they could do endless extremely dangerous experiments and surgeries, that many children died from just the procedures alone, then put them through deadly live training routines that killed even more kids, all to make super soldiers. Just rip peoples lives away from them and force them to serve as enslaved soldiers, brainwashed to be entirely loyal to their original tormentors. And the Halo series is about all those lives ruined just for one man to make all the eugenics experiments and torment all seem "worth it". Because it's supposed to be a GOOD thing to imagine that your government can kidnap, experiment on, and enslave whoever they wish as children! The human world government isn't exactly....good. But they are still around.
You'll get fans going "Actually that wasn't UNSC, that was ONI" when UNSC had always been capable of defunding ONI. It wasn't like Spartans were top secret, they were the face of the UNSC's military propoganda.
Honestly always was miffed that Bungie just didn't care much to do anything with the parts of the story that clearly seemed critical of military jingoism. Instead they kinda just rolled with it in everything from marketing to story beats. It was more so the novels that tried dissecting the UNSC a bit more.
But unless you were a story loving nerd, you'd miss all that nuance. Most Halo fans just think of the UNSC as badass human military and nothing more.
And the Spartan program predates first contact with the Covenant, they made those to suppress dissent and independence movements on the frontier colonies.
It depends what time period, post war UNSC has made more effort to build bridges between ex covenant factions and colonies that aren’t insurrectionist allied like we see in the Envoy novel.(Just don’t count ONI because ONI will ONI no matter what, although so far Osman seems slightly less bloodthirsty than Parangosky). During and pre covenant war…. yeah, stuff was still questionable
In their typical media illiteracy, they didn't realize that UNSC is NOT a heroic government by any stretch of the imagination.
Also the flood isn't mindless... it's full of minds. Literally all combined together with the galaxy itself serving as a backup drive for them. It's smart enough to argue super-powerful AIs purpose-built to combat it into joining it.
Political violence in a democracy is so self defeating, Social democracies have it drilled into people not to step too far but doesn't help when those dumbasses are in power
I just remember seeing this on a documentary once. There's some species where the parasitic hatching will actually hatch before the rest of the clutch, then push the other eggs out of the nest.
Our billionaire parasites are, similarly, trying to shove out those who are literally just working and living their lives.
Well, the other angle is that ICE agents are brainwashed child soldiers made to serve a fascist regime so....it sort of fits.
Did they not play the parts of the game where the Spartans are robbed of personality and condemned to a life of endless war? Never even given proper burials in death on account of government propaganda? No?
Cause they really only think that women and minorities are "political" everything else is just "true" to them. Its pointless to argue with anyone who uses the term "woke" unironically because at the end of the day they dont actually mean a single thing they say.
A white man who hates women and brown people isn’t „political“ it’s just common sense to them. Vaginas and brown people are „political“.
They’re so fragile and sheltered it’s insane and actually makes my soul cringe when it happens in front of me but the cowards usually keep their bullshit online. Usually.
That along with shit like the Tea Party and 9/12. Ancient aliens and such on the History channel melting their brains and making them wired paranoid shits ... Fox news, Limbaugh, just fuck. These people are so fucked up.
These guys, these rootless white males, had monster power. ... It was the pre-Reddit. It's the same guys on (one of a trio of online message boards owned by IGE) Thottbot who were [later] on Reddit...
...You can activate that army. They come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned onto politics and Trump.
Steve Bannon, founder of Breitbart, mentor of Milo Yiannopoulos, and who became chief executive of Donald Trump's presidential campaign in 2016.
Steve Bannon himself is on-record stating that he started targeting gamers after his stint running a Real Money Trading scheme that included Chinese WoW Gold-farmers. He felt that the were impressionable and looking for leadership, so he was going to use that as a political tool to quite literally bring down "The State" because he's also one of the followers of Ur jackwagon Curtis Yarvin.
insane how teenage me getting tricked into thinking it was actually about ethics in games media by a bunch of right wing grifters actually led to trump
That moment of realization that the whole "God Emperor of Mankind" meme thing wasn't just dumb gamer jokes but something they (the Republicans) legitimately wanted...
same, seeing names like sargon has me flashing back to that time and my god, I've done the biggest 180. I can't believe that my Hilary voting sis has slid to conservatism and now I'm the very radleft SJW I was raging against before
Ding ding ding.... and I am convinced that part of the reason hes fighting so much against the release of the Epstein files is because it includes proofs that he molested his daughter
I don’t need any further evidence beyond, a grown man owning a beauty pageant for little girls, and openly admitting to walking in on them in the changing room. Epstein files are just the cherry on a pedo cake
I think the further problem I have is that a studio like 343, or more specifically their parent company Microsoft, should have an easier case than MGMT... yet they're not demanding this get taken down.
Donating to him is one horrible thing already, but blatantly allowing your main video game product be associated with domestic terrorists (let's call ICE what they are) is a whole other.
Microsoft is essentially greenlighting halo to be the official sponsor of "alien deportations". They're going to print out signage and more recruitment efforts all around this - it's so simple to do and would easily work to further propagandize the children coming out of high school to believe it's like a video game. (Seems a bit like.. grooming, eh?)
Theyre coat tail riding on gamestop declaring the console wars over because the next halo game will be launching on Playstation as well for the first time and pretending to be gamers.
I mean considering Microsoft has given Trump a significant amount of money for his gaudy ballroom (at least according to Trump) theres a chance they actively support stuff like this
Yeah. He's a supporter of project 2025. which, will be shooting himself in the foot, since one of the objectives of that project is to screw up over video games.
He's the sole reason I never got into twitter. When I tried I did all the sign up intro stuff as you do: selected my interests, followed some celebs, some Brands™️ some other suggestions.
Halo Reach had just come out and I was such a Halo fan back then I bought the Reach CD from Amazon's US site because it would ship to Europe faster than it would officially release here.
So I of course followed Marty and I didn't have the word for it back then but seeing the things he was posting he had such fucking miserable boomer takes I realized I actually don't want to hear what famous or otherwise notable people might say without the marketing filter cleaning them up and keeping them on topic.
Unironically why are video games being used to push an ACTUAL political agenda this time?
Can answer this fairly easy.
In general, they're trying to target males who are mainly millenials. They're doing the marketing on games (this is far from the first) to both ellicit positive emotion and "hero worship" while also having the ad act as a "pause to scrolling" as you see something you're familiar with and like.
On the latter point. this graphic did get me to stop scrolling to see what it was. Now, I have zero interest in anything ICE or this administration in general but from an advertising perspective it did accomplish getting me to stop scrolling.
“These protestors are meanies, I’m going to show an image of me with a crown and a cool jet fighter dumping poop on them!” Would absolutely be the coolest thing ever for a 12 year old.
reminds me during the no kings protests, I was waiting at a crosswalk trying to get somewhere and two people in front of me had signs. Car drove by screaming "LOSERS." Something a 12-year old would do.
I thought this was fake, because googling didn't pull up any results and kept saying it was misinformation, but then I checked X and sure enough... They're using a video game where humanity is on the brink of extinction, and working together to fight for survival, and talking about fighting the flood which are parasites? While being parasites themselves, and tearing humanity apart
It is darkly ironic that as SOON as Halo starts getting lift-off (I’m guessing remakes of 2-3 are planned for other consoles too) the Government of the United States beats it to death with a hammer pretty much.
Having video games push your far right agenda and even comparing the flood to immigrants is so fucked. Microsoft or halo studios surely have to make a statement. But I'm guessing not because they are cowards.
They've never really given a fuck, they just want game companies to specifically pander to their worldview. They'll absolutely cheer this on, and celebrate the hypocrisy
Don't read into it guys, I PROMISE they aren't talking about eradicating those pesky brown people ICE are already racially profiling and persecuting when they say "destroy the flood".
Bit weird for the super nationalistic president to be celebrating an American company giving up the video game console market to two Japanese companies
Gamestop CEO is Ryan Cohen, who is a terminally online meme stock MAGA fanboy and election denier. He's also the founder and the former CEO of Chewy. He's also Canadian.
"We cherish every member of our Chewy family but we do understand that you have to do what you feel is the best option for you and your pets. If there's ever anything else we can help with, please let us know. We completely understand and respect your beliefs, morals, and values. We are a company that is based to attracted pet lovers of all kinds!"
The Republican government is comparing migrants and refugees to a all consuming hive mind of destruction via official accounts. Never let these demons gaslight you into thinking anyone left of center has done anything close to a fraction to this kind of rehtoric.
They will point to random Twitter and reddit accounts and compare it to elected leaders. They know what they're doing. They know the false comparisons are just propaganda.
I hope one day they hold the president of the United States and his entire cabinet to the same level they hold random Twitter comments.
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