this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2026
614 points (99.4% liked)
Lefty Memes
7410 readers
154 users here now
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of "ML" (read: Dengist) influence. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
Serious posts, news, discussion and agitprop/stuff that's better fit for a poster than a meme go in c/Socialism.
If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.
Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, updooting good contributions and downdooting those of low quality!
Rules
0. Only post socialist memes
That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme. Please post agitprop here)
0.5 [Provisional Rule] Try to use alt text or image descriptions to allow for greater accessibility
(Please take a look at our wiki page for the guidelines on how to actually write alternative text!)
We encourage alternative text (from now referred to as "alt text") to be added to all posts/comments containing media, such as images, animated GIFs, videos, audio files, and custom emojis.
EDIT: For files you share in the comments, a simple summary should be enough if they’re too complex.
We are committed to social equity and to reducing barriers of entry, including (digital) communication and culture. It takes each of us only a few moments to make a whole world of content (more) accessible to a bunch of folks.
When alt text is absent, a reminder will be issued. If you don't add the missing alt text within 48 hours, the post will be removed. No hard feelings.
0.5.1 Style tip about abbreviations and short forms
When writing stuff like "lol" and "iirc", it's a good idea to try and replace those with their all caps counterpart
- ofc => OFC
- af = AF
- ok => OK
- lol => LOL
- bc => BC
- bs => BS
- iirc => IIRC
- cia => CIA
- nato => Nato (you don't spell it when talking, right?)
- usa => USA
- prc => PRC
- etc.
Why? Because otherwise (AFAIK), screen readers will try to read them out as actually words instead of spelling them
1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith interactions is enforced here
Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism.
2. Anti-Imperialism means recognizing capitalist states like Russia and China as such
That means condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.
3. No liberalism, (right-wing) revisionism or reactionaries.
That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" (read: Dengists) (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).
4. No Bigotry.
The only dangerous minority is the rich.
5. Don't demonize previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
6. Don't irrationally idolize/glorify previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.
- Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:
- Racism
- Sexism
- Queerphobia
- Ableism
- Classism
- Sexual assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
I play the evil l route sometimes but only after a significant playthrough of being good. And most of the time it's just to hear the other dialogue, aka the content you could literally not get the other way. I rarely finish games though so usually 2nd playthrough is started 3/4 of way through first playthrough after I didn't play for 6 months (usually at a tough boss / stealth mission) and figure if be fun to see the start again.
There are exceptions, sometimes it's just fun to run around with stars in GTA but even that adventure has been like a decade since I last bothered. Plus it's basically half the reason that one exists anyways.
This is how religious fanatics think.
I don't enjoy the evil stuff and I'm an atheist.
I'm a serial do-gooder in real-life, let me nuke megaton in peace please.
Thats fine. I just think its more fun when people cheer and clap for me for saving their dog or whatever vs me killing their whole family and looting the house
See that's just a regular tuesday for me.
Unlike real life where you're unable to help anyone.
I cant help Ukraine or Isreal or however many other things are happening. I think that's the "fantasy" part.
** yeah yeah I meant Palestine but ignore the actual point I was making i guess **
Yeah yeah I got the countries mixed up been a long day
"I can't help Israel." Well, that's good.
I am glad you cannot help Israel
You can help Israel if you want to. It's actually quite easy to help Israel all you have to do is get into politics, and then proceed to take all the bribes they give you. They'll find that extremely helpful.
Right?
And everyone dies.
Because you can help without consequence of being mocked for your meddlesome attitude nor being forced to bear responsibility of taking care of your recipient till they safe from harm, which is fantasy came true.
I don't get the mentality of people who say "Isn't this great? I can do all this shitty stuff and be a complete asshole because it's just pixels." Like of course you can, but why is that fun?
Evil can be fun if it makes sense. I sometimes enjoy games where I find myself backed into a corner and have to do something bad to get out. Or I find myself genuinely drawn to the power that an evil choice tempts me with. Or circumstances beyond my character's control compel them to use The Evil to get things done. It can make for an immersive and nuanced story.
The problem is if the "evil" path is more just "asshole" or "kills everyone in sight" then I tend to find it less fun.
It doesn't feel evil to me if we're left with no other choice, but in those cases I still whisper a "fuck you" to the developers. I guess I'm a goody two shoes, but I don't enjoy the evil stuff.
Because being bad is fun. Depends on the game for me but it also comes down to how well written the evil choices are etc but idk I try to do the good choice all day occasionally it's fun to play the baddie
It just doesn't work for me - I don't enjoy it.
Good, because I’m afraid I’ll miss out on story content by killing off potential quest givers or refusing to help some villager
I can’t even emotionally stomach a Joja mart play through.
big fan of games where a lot of options are kinda shitty for this reason. It's a lot more fun where instead of your options being "goody two shoes" or "literal Hitler," it's more like "do you support the dying monarchy because it is currently providing safety to its citizens against the forces of Chaos, or do you support the tribes that live very closely with Chaos and sometimes manage to have control of it but it can still go wild and cause great catastrophe?"
Unfortunately, it takes great writing skill to be able to have multiple factions that are understandably antagonistic towards each other without becoming simplistic caricatures. It also doesn't really move copies if your game is well-written. The wider audience only cares about simple gameplay and pretty graphics.
Can you name games that you think are handling this issue very well iyo? I'm looking for titles atm and could use recommendations.
You're not wrong. But I find fallout 4 easier to plan because of this. There's not enough grey area in 4. Like I usually play a good person with a grey area in New Vegas, but in FO4 that's a lot harder. So it's easier to be straight good or straight evil. They still try to make that hard but with such few options you really have to try hard to remain in the grey area. That's one of the few areas I like about FO4 is that you really only get two options, be evil or be a saint.
FO4 mods give some options to improve a good guy run and some evil ones too. My next playthrough is going to be modded to look like Doom with my character burning it all down. No essential characters!
I don't even mind essential characters other than Preston Garvey. My issue with FO4 is that the options are only yes or no. You can say yes and fail the mission, so there's a psuedo third option.
I liked Kotor's ability to make all the good choices but pick enough pockets to still do a dark side run.
Ehh, I still felt that was too light/dark. Like FONV you could solidly be a grey area person. Kotor gave you options but you either went left or right. It was more about needs. FO4 was very clear on your options. You could sell a child and be evil because by the time you made it to that point, you didn't need the caps. You could then kill the people you sold the child to, and then get a reward from the parents from returning said child. And the funniest part was that by then, it was a simple choice because you really don't gain anything by maxing caps.
I just felt less like a sith lord and more like a douchebag most of the time in Kotor.
Very fair.
I remember in Mass Effect how you could choose to either be good or be an asshole but still good.
My lil heart cannot play the joja mart rpute 💔
I'm a goody two shoes in these kinds of settings EXCEPT that I do wanna steal literally anything that isnt nailed down.
And I wanna steal stuff thats nailed down too, there just isnt a gameplay mechanic for it
Basically how I play Kingdom Come Deliverance. Generally a good guy (except to certain butchers), but I am going to rob you mercilessly.
I saved the Queen in Mass Effect 1, before Mass Effect 2 even came out. 😢
I tried playing ME as evil, I just couldn't do it, it wasn't fun, it wasn't interesting.
I did miss out on some of the best cut scenes though.
I played through twice, once as a paragon, once as a renegade. Paragon just felt natural, Renegade felt like I was constantly having to take half measures to prevent the worst possible outcome. Definitely not as fun.
Call me a sociopath but I played renegade every time and from what I remember it mostly doesn't change outcomes just the way you talk/act, mostly
Now knights of the old republic? THAT game you could actually be evil
In my first playthrough, I didn't even know about that game mechanic and was all over the map for the first few, but it occurred to me fairly soon afterward that very few game publishers, if any, would sign off on most blatantly evil/psychopathic options for a protagonist. I mean, I'm sure someone pitched a SW storyline that comes close to Ani's schoolhouse slaughter fest, and yet? Nada.
Not that I prefer that as an option, just that it certainly made the "Renegade" path seem less likely as diverse in its scope, in comparison.
Though, IIRC, some of the Paragon choices did feel too ruby-lensed and blithe (what's the opposite of edgelord?), but maybe that's just me.
Same I don't think I ever managed to play full renegade though I'm pretty sure it's required to take the renegade option and deck the jerk reporter regardless of which side you choose.
Ender's Game spoiler?
Frankly, the third act of the book (we don't recognize the "movie" —other than the 0g scenes) was the pinnacle bit of plot for me. And, I completely understand why the changes were made for a wider audience (profit=SoP), considering the original's commentary on the mil-ind grooming baked into the system. It's still shite, though.😬
Good because the mechanics tend to favor it e.g. Tenpenny Tower isn't as convenient a location for a home as Megaton is.
More often than not I'm good in video GE's because it's clear that's what they want you to do and what they intend the story to be.
I think the only game I've ever managed to play evil has been Rim World.
The children yearn for the deep drills (because they have been genetically modified to do do)
Baby shoes, human leather.
I just warp things into nonsense and send adventurers on quests.