Helldivers 2's latest in-game campaign sees the defenders of liberty* supervising the construction of yet another massive wall of pine-scented gas in space.
  • supersquirrel ( supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz ) English
    28·
    3 months ago

    I think parodying Trump’s wall is low-hanging fruit for a satirist at this point, not that Helldivers 2 has ever really tried for subtlety. I’m interested to know what current Helldivers 2 players think of the game’s satire. I haven’t played for a while, but given the trajectory of US and European politics at large, the extended riff on Starship Troopers is really starting to feel like wallowing in crapulence. I think the game’s writers need to, at minimum, start allowing for the fact that the Trump administration has no problem adopting this kind of shit-eating, irony-poisoned burlesque for propaganda purposes.

    I 100% agree, the devs of Hell Divers 2 are dangerously clueless about the fact that fascists don’t have media literacy and that their art will be interpreted unironically by them.

    This is not a trivial problem either…

      • supersquirrel ( supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz ) English
        4·
        3 months ago

        Thanks for the link! Yes Scifi but also Fantasy too.

        For example, if we threw the upper management of all tech companies named after people and things in the Lord Of The Rings in prison the world would be a far safer place and I am struggling to think of anyone innocent that would be wrongfully imprisoned…

      • MartianRecon ( MartianRecon@lemmus.org ) English
        2·
        3 months ago

        They don’t miss the point at all. They see themselves as the people who own those companies. They see the power and that is what they want, and see the way they subject people as a ‘blueprint’ vs the story being a societal warning.

        To them, the warning is that they can become those people.

        It’s just another example of these people being fucking sociopaths.

        • godsammitdam ( godsammitdam@lemmy.zip ) English
          3·
          3 months ago

          Exactly. They see the surveillance tech and say “well, the people in the book did it wrong. If I did it with my super smart boy brain, it would be great, and I’d make a ton of money doing it!”

          The video goes into that. There’s also a book I’ve been eyeing called The Nerd Reich that goes into it more deeply.

          • MartianRecon ( MartianRecon@lemmus.org ) English
            3·
            3 months ago

            Oh interesting I’ll have a read on that.

            Yeah, the antisocial people (aka tech bros) look at those things and don’t go ‘my god how horrible of a world’ they go ‘wow here’s how I’d run it better because I’m so smart and a special boy.’

              • supersquirrel ( supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz ) English
                2·
                3 months ago

                Literacy is not something game devs are going to be able to solve.

                First of all I am not invoking the term “literacy” in its general in meaning the ability to read, I am referring to a specific literacy, basic skill of critical analysis of art. I.E. basic middle school english class reading books and reflecting on what they mean or the ideas they suggest. It has been exhaustively shown by academics and historians that fascists are shockingly incompetent at the skill of critically analyzing art and sorry, but tough luck this means artists have to think about that carefully in as dangerous as a time as we are now.

                Second, the way art is received by an audience is the only thing that really matters about art, so your suggestion that the nature of how the audience of Helldivers interacts with the universe of Helldivers in terms of their realworld beliefs and politics just doesn’t hold water, the reason people make art is to impact people… even when it is “just entertainment” if that is undermined by a stoking of hateful ideologies than the entire enterprise of the artistic work has catastrophically failed.

                Third, my beliefs on this are just as, if not more based on my interactions with human beings amidst grass, who are “real”, outside where there is air I can breathe deeply.

                Let me be exceedingly clear: I’m not offended that others didn’t enjoy this weird, nebulous bit of horror as much as I did, because art is subjective and each experience with art is personal. What I find interesting, others may find boring; what I find dull, others may be riveted by. What brings me pause is the vast insistence that Him is about “nothing” when myself and others are able to derive so much meaning from it. What brings me pause is the increasing ease with which people accost me—a culture and media critic—for thinking critically about art and even aggressively discourage me from doing so, especially when my analysis goes against the consensus. People are near-constantly diagnosing me as incapable of “just enjoying things,” failing to realize, or refusing to accept, that critical analysis is an enjoyable part of my engagement with art.

                https://scalawagmagazine.org/2026/06/the-erosion-of-critical-thought-and-media-literacys-decay-in-the-bowels-of-fascism/

                The fascist exists in a state of internal conflict. Their speech and actions make them fascists, which puts them at odds with the human condition. They must actively try to kill that internal part of themselves that binds us together. In doing so they remove themselves from art, from the beauty of our internal connections. When they do this, they are unable to see art as anything but product: an object to claim. To validate false supremacy. They do not truly care what the art is or what it can do. They feel nothing in it. They only see the physical surface. They may be able to describe its historical context, comment on the mechanics of its construction, and of course speak of its financial value. They can use it - for propaganda, for status. They feel nothing of it.

                https://www.daveclay.com/blog/fascists-are-incapable-of-understanding-art