Infestation 88 developer, Nightmare Forge Games, have responded to claims that the ‘88’ in the game’s title refers to the Neo-Nazi salute.
I can see the devs having no clue about the alternative meaning, but a game about gassing rodents called “Infestation 88” is a terrible look. I’m glad the devs changed the name right away.
Yea, if they say “we didnt know what that insinuated”, and there are no other dog whistles, I’m happy that they responded so well and quickly!
I think just changing it to “Infestation 1988” would have also been enough…
Though, “infestation 88” a game about killing nazis, would also work!
They could even keep Mickey. Just give him a narrow mustache and a Nazi uniform like you see in Indiana Jones movies and they’re good to go.
Except, I’m guessing Infestation '88 is about being hunted by Mickey, so maybe they should change that too.
there are no other dog whistles
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… Those aren’t the devs or discord mods, they’re literally random people that just joined their server.
🤦
You can find edgy teens with shit eating grins anywhere.
oof. yea, thats not a good sign.
Especially considering Walt Disney’s views…
IDK, what else do you do with rodents in a game? Set traps? Shoot with guns?
I’m guessing the devs were born in 1988 or thereabouts and wanted to set the game in their birth year or something like that. Or they picked a number that’s somewhat long ago but not too long, and ~35 years ago is something I’d probably come up with (it’s not a neat number like 25 and 50), it’s far enough back that it’s old, but recent enough to feel familiar.
Occam’s razor: they’re probably not Nazis or Nazi sympathizers. I had never heard of the meaning behind “88” (granted, I’m not that interested in neo-Nazi symbolism), and I was born near 1988. Maybe I’d change the name, IDK, even hearing the arguments here I really don’t see an actual connection so it’s really no big deal to me. Then again, I think it’s a stupid name regardless, so I probably would’ve been more clever.
That is an unfortunate coincidence.
It really is annoying how many alt right dog whistles there are
It seems like every time the alt-right and neo-Nazis make something a new dog whistle (remember the “ok” sign thing that started on 4chan?) the left is just like “oh fuck, I guess we better stop using that now.”
I’m not sure there’s a better option. It’s not like it’s a good idea to just go on flashing “ok” signs and pretending it hasn’t been coopted by fascists, but it seems shitty and frustrating to just cede ground like that every time the alt right is just like “this is ours now.”
Come to think of it, I named a project at my workplace “IG-88” a while back and didn’t think about the Nazi connection until the name was already in common use. (With that name, the project in question even had a badass theme song.)
There’s some pretty obscure ones to that came and went in a hurry like a glass of milk.
I feel like some have also been claimed for general use. I don’t really associate Pepe memes with the alt right anymore
I’m mainly associating Pepe with all the Twitch emotes.
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Well sure, but people use dog whistles so it’s important to recognize them. Context can be important but sometimes it’s subtle, that’s why they’re called dog whistles.
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No, fascists do use dog whistles. near constantly. In part because they are generally too chicken shit to say anything. It is similar to how (fascist) republicans think they are clever with “go brandon” whereas liberals and leftists just say “Fuck trump, I hope he dies of the most painful cancer imaginable”.
And while there are “false positives”, those are almost all immediately resolved with “yo dog. Uhm… I get you are in your mid 30s but you may want to stop putting your birth year in posts” and a “… holy fuck. Fucking nazis”. Because, “context” generally does apply. The people who need to sign off “14 88” for every single tweet are usually also liking other white supremacist shit. Whereas the people who just got screwed over by what GFWL suggested their username should be twenty years ago have a history of advocating for tolerance and leftist thought.
As for “false negatives”: Okay? Some fascists will be undetected with or without acknowledging their “super secret code” of dog whistling.
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The “ok” sign thing pissed me off. I had learned from a very young age that it was sign language for “ok” (it combines the signs for the letters) and when I went to swim class, my mom would watch and when I’d look over to her she would sign that to me that everything was ok, and sign “I love you” (🤟 — not to be confused with 🤘ROCKANDROLL🤘) to me as well. For the record, no one in our family is deaf, we just learned some basic sign language because communication is cool.
Then keep using it as the ok sign.
If they coopted the peace sign or the “I love you” sign, would you stop using them too? Stop giving in to their trolling. I feel like being so sensitive to Nazis gives them way more relevance than they deserve.
I’m not saying we should ignore Nazis in general, just… don’t let them control our culture.
That’s easier said than done when you have political idiots that will see it and try to ruin your life uploading shit to the internet saying you’re doing it for the wrong reason. It’s not just the Nazis themselves, but the idiots that think they’re being progressive and an ally and all that shit when they don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground.
Exactly. Progressives are their own worst enemy, and their behavior calling out Nazis just makes Nazis more popular.
It’s usually best to ignore idiots and trolls than give them attention.
It’s not like it’s a good idea to just go on flashing “ok” signs and pretending it hasn’t been coopted by facists
Why not? Symbols only have meaning given context. In Germany, a swastika is a symbol of hate, whereas in India it’s a symbol of prosperity and good luck. It’s usually not hard to differentiate them, so there’s no real reason to avoid a symbol just because some idiots have decided to use it to mean something else.
On the flip side, there’s a fantastic reason to keep using them: the best way to beat a troll/bully is to ignore them. Don’t give them the emotional response they’re looking for and you remove all rewards for their behavior.
So if the alt-right coopt a symbol, use it more. Don’t let them impact you or they’ll keep doing it.
So does that mean you would have preferred that Infestation hadn’t changed its name?
I guess? I honestly had never heard of the “88” terminology, I guess I just don’t follow neo-Nazi nonsense that closely. Maybe I’d respond by making the protagonist Jewish or something in a minor content update, just to mess with people.
This whole “cancelling” culture is absolutely stupid. Neo-Nazis don’t own numbers, hand symbols, or anything else, so I wouldn’t give in to that nonsense. Then again, I’m not trying to live off making video games, and if I ever did release any (and I hope to), it’ll be as a hobby and not as a job.
Here’s a list for you to educate yourself on what is or isn’t currently nazi shit online:
https://www.isdglobal.org/explainers/memes-the-extreme-right-wing/
https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/ADL Hate on Display Printable_0.pdf
And they thrive on your ignorance, they are out there and they aren’t just recruiting for numbers, they’re also recruiting for people like you who are dismissive of them, because if your dismissive of them then you’re also dismissive of those of us trying to educate people about them, they want people to ignore both them and us.
Also cancel culture doesn’t exist, consequence culture is what exists, the only people that bitch about cancel culture are the ones who’s bad deeds have caught up with them and they don’t want accountability for their actions, so they, and their stupid ignorant sycophants cry “I’m being cancelled!” When in fact they were just being pieces of shit that accountability is finally catching up to.
ACAB - All Cops Are Bastards
Interesting start to that list
Imagine identifying as a class traitor
they thrive on your ignorance
No, they thrive on your fear and outrage. As they say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. If they manage to tick you off, people who like watching you get angry will be attracted to their side.
cancel culture doesn’t exist
Really? I can point to several examples where someone’s career was ruined just because they were “cancelled” ([here are three CBS reported on] (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cancel-culture-changed-lives-forever-cbsn-originals/)).
Usually what happens is this:
- Person says or does something to offend some group (often by accident)
- Said group demands an apology
- Person apologizes
- No company wants to associate with the person for fear of backlash
- The person is either fired or loses all followers
The best strategy, apparently, is to not apologize. That ticks off the group, but it also generally reduces how much publicity the event gets, which means there’s a decent chance for it to blow over. In some cases, this leads to weird extremist subgroups because the person attracts the wrong sorts, and in others the person is able to change their behavior so that group comes back after forgetting about the incident.
It’s incredibly stupid that apparently apologizing is punished, but that’s how it seems to work out. Those who have been targeted that don’t apologize tend to not be as impacted.
That said, I’ll look through those links. I’m always interested to identify bigots so I can avoid them.
I get what you’re saying, but in cases like this I think it’s important to “signal” (but like unironically) that you aren’t trying to do a little wink and a nod to racists. Yeah it can be tiring, and it’s not an exact science, and we’re going to slip up, but that’s the worthy work of making sure racists don’t feel welcome to be even subtly racist in our spaces.
Well, they did change the name. That’s a pretty big signal.
But honestly, this whole culture of avoiding anything some enemy group has coopted just gives that group legitimacy. Every time we bend over backwards to avoid Nazi stuff gives the Nazis more publicity, and as they say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. So merely calling this out helps Nazis.
I really don’t get how that’s not obvious. If we keep calling everything “Nazi stuff,” we’ll keep talking about Nazis, and then someone will get curious, think the public is being “unfair” and sympathize with the Nazis. We’re doing their job for them…
Its weird to say youve never heard of the 88 thing, as thats taught in history classes in the US, a country famous for shit education. In europe, loads of countries have laws against using it because of this.
Really? Is it a relatively recent thing? My last US/European history class was over 15 years ago, so if it came up anytime I’m the last two decades, i wouldn’t have learned about it.
From some cursory research, it started being a thing at least as of the early 2000s, and that’s about when i went to high school. So it could very well have not been popular enough yet to cover in school.
Regardless, it’s not something I’ve come across. I wonder if the devs here are the same way.
Honestly, a lot of it was just some random twitter user trying to start shit. The drinking milk thing was one of those.
Yeah. The “ok sign” one started just as some random 4chan post.
That wasn’t some random 4chan post it was something planned by a group of 4chan users that made it into an “operation” to push this to go after liberals and the media, and why would they he doing that? Oh because it was started by actual Nazis on 4chan.
Again this is just Nazis trying to use left wing and media overreaction to cover up their Nazi shit, they like trying to make us look like we’re jumping at shadows while they operate with impunity.
That’s the thing is it always seems like it’s just one of these shitheads but soon enough it always becomes more, that’s why they push this stuff, and why they hope for reactions like yours.
It goes back to the 60’s and 70’s, the dawn of Punk music, back before Skinheads were inherently Nazi they were black and white people in London fighting for worker solidarity, then the Nazis took it over and it became a thing inherently Nazi.
So this corruption of things is what they do to grow and to maintain a general ignorance about them.
It’s because they purposely co-opt things in order to spread their message and find new recruits, they’re societal human cancer.
This isn’t “the ‘OK’ hand gesture is used by nazis”
This is shit like a game about gassing rodents to death, lots of “14 88” references, references to german WW2 military technology, etc.
I guess you’re not getting this.
The Ok hand gesture, Pepe the frog, Yes Chad, GigaChad, Wojak, these are all things that the neo-nazis online utilize to get the conversation about them going, this is stuff that they take purposely to get guys like you to say “but this isn’t the ok hand gesture is used by the Nazis” because they want that cover, they want that doubt, they want that degree of dismissal of the person pointing out that this or that is nazi shit, and they also want the person who has it pointed out to them to feel like the claimant is just being silly, hyperbolic, and seeing Nazis everywhere, this is their goal and their purpose, not only to recruit and become bigger, but also to seem like there are more of them than there are.
My point is it’s all the same shit, 1488 or just 88 isn’t old nazi shit, that was a post-war Hitler humper invention, so even you’re conflating the topic out of confusion.
Here’s some good references and write ups about this stuff, because educating yourself on what is or isn’t nazi shit will help prevent you from falling for their bullshit:
https://www.isdglobal.org/explainers/memes-the-extreme-right-wing/
https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/ADL Hate on Display Printable_0.pdf
Yes. A lot of nazis came out of 4chan and all the South Park Libertarian “ha ha, I am just making jokes” stupidity. Gamergate and then The Alt-Right are perfect examples of that. It is all jokes about The Jews and gas chambers while also hearing about how The Blacks and The Mexicans are taking jobs. This is neo-nazi 101 and has been their open playbook for over fifty years.
Again, this is not that. This is not “oh, ha ha, that frog doesn’t make you a nazi. It just means you have the same sense of humor”. These are direct references to nazi ideology
Both are incredibly dangerous and a great way of normalizing bigotry. One of them is “secret handshakes” in public. The other is getting on a podium and sieg heiling.
So no, it is not “all the same shit” and people like you who are clearly pissy about folk getting mad at you spamming pepe are just normalizing nazis. So kindly fuck off with that “if we acknowledge when people are acting like nazis we turn them into bogeymen. It is much better to ignore it and hope they go away” bullshit.
If it walks like a nazi and quacks like a nazi then you tell it to fuck off and play in traffic. And if it wasn’t a nazi? They apologize and stop quacking.
Again, this is what you’re not getting, when you tell a nazi to fuck off and they apologize and stop quacking, that just means they’ve stopped quacking at you, it doesn’t mean they’ve stopped being a Hitler Humper, you’re just being naive or clinging to some misbelief that people aren’t easily susceptible to this shit, and that the amount of racist and nihilistic people is much higher to than you realize.
So… because people do bad stuff we shouldn’t tell them to fuck off for doing bad stuff?
And one of the best ways to prevent people from being in fluenced? Ostracize the bastards. Basically from WW2 up until the late 90s, Nazis were the designated bad guy. Neonazis were the bad guys in the Very Special Episodes of boy meets world and the like. And that made it clear “Nazis are bad. Don’t be a fucking Nazi”
But between South Park normalizing “its funny to make fun of the Jews” and the strong push back against having the designated stabbing bags? It reached the point that people lost their god damned mind over the devs at Machine Games saying “fuck Nazis” at the Keighleys a few years back.
And that leads to stupidity where people no longer view them as subhuman to the point of only being worthy of scorn.
So yeah. I am gonna keep telling Nazis to go fuck themselves with strong implications that the world would be a better place if they weren’t in it. And I am going to stop responding to you until you explain why you are so adamant about protecting them from ridicule and scorn… even though it is increasingly clear why.
Are you misreading everything on purpose?
Yeah I remember working with people who didn’t even feel comfortable using the “ok hand” emoji because of associations with white supremacy (back when the hand sign was in the news again). Obviously white supremacy is a lot worse than that kind of minor chilling effect, but yeah, they just smear a little of their leaky shit everywhere so that people who actually care about their fellow humans have to expend extra energy vetting their own messages for dog whistles and double meanings.
You seem to hear the dog whistle. Are you a dog
“Look, I’m not saying it’s IMPOSSIBLE that this game wasn’t made with ill intent, but 88 is an immediate red flag,” said streamer Josh ‘Anoriand’ Fagundes on Twitter. “As are the facts that they use the word ‘Infestation,’ they use rat-based imagery, it involves gassing them, and counting the space ‘Infestation 88’ is 14 keystrokes.”
That’s quite the quinkydink.
counting keystrokes goes too far into chemtrail conspiracy theorist logic for me, ngl.
Care to explain yourself
Maybe the real nazis were inside us the whole time.
I mean in seriousness that is the premise behind the banality of evil…
oh boy I had an 88 in my old email address back in the days cause you know I’m born 1988…glad I ditched that before the twitter mob find out that I’m also german…
really don’t get why this is a story based on some streamer with too much time. Looks more like something to get out of irrelevance if I look at his subscriber numbers…
The game is also looking bland as fuck and it’s only “thing” is the steamboat willi character that has been slapped on for no other reasons than marketing. Seems a little bit desperate if you ask me…
Everyone knows that the ability to connect something to Nazism makes it actually Nazism.
You’re German, you were born in '88, the phrase ”i had an 88 in" takes 14 keystrokes, and you seem to think not everything is connected to neonazis.
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I was thinking this was a stretch, but then you found hail Satan in there. Grabbing my pitch fork.
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Tankie user defends obvious Nazi dog whistles. Now I’ve seen it all.
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Not the point. “Infestation” + 88 + gassing vermin is absolutely not comparable to the mental gymnastics you just vomited out as an example. Even if the developer was truly this oblivious, it would still not change the issue of it, and the Nazis that posted on their Discord for so long were clearly proof of that as well.
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I’ve read your “points” several times throughout this thread already and none of them actually address the issue. lol
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The mental capacity and denial of reality from tankies on display once again.
I’d hate to live in your world, where literally everything and anything is a Nazi dog whistle
Buddy, if you’re unaware of literally the most common Nazi dogwhistle out there, then that’s simply ignorance and naivety on your part. Just because you chose to look away, does not mean they aren’t there.
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Fuck nazies appropriating shit. People should stop associating things with nazies instead of not being able to enjoy things. Like apparently runic script is associated with nazies for some god forsaken reason and I have a old native myth tattooed in runes on my arm. I have gotten tons of weird looks and I was very confused until someone accused me of being a nazi.
Yeah I see it constantly here on lemmy, the word being thrown around like it’s nothing, imagine holocaust victims reading this shit
So would it change your mind if Holocaust victims were calling MAGA a fascist movement?
There’s a difference between people having clear statements and actions that show they’re fascists, and using an accidental number choice and numerology to find an excuse to connect something to fascism.
The resurgence of open fascism is an issue that’s only minimized by using flimsy logic to find it where it isn’t.
This is a word game that cryptofascists play; they’re quite open about using it to recruit people.
They love the plausible deniability, because it makes people who don’t know about the word game think the people who do are being ridiculous.
Was this a false positive? Perhaps. Is the game worse off for changing the name away from a fascist dog-whistle? I don’t know, it looks pretty terrible in any case.
Regardless, there are ways for a company to make it clear that they are not fascists even if they want to stick to their name. Maybe you’re right and we should just ignore the cryptofascist messaging game, but that just presents more problems in my opinion.
I mean, they already changed the name and said they had no idea about other meanings of the number 88.
My issue isn’t with the concept of dog whistles, it’s that when that’s all you have, it’s not a falsifiable accusation.
A subtle or weak connection doesn’t weaken the accusation, it almost makes it stronger.
Denying it makes it stronger, and responding to it to get rid of the connection entirely doesn’t even get rid of it.I mean, look at your own language. A game briefly had the number 88 in it’s name, which was also 14 letters long if you count the space. They changed the name when someone told them there was a connotation, and said they didn’t know.
Based on that, you say there’s a possibility that they’re not secret fascists.I’m not saying to ignore fascist messaging, but that literally every instance of the numbers 88, 14 or the word “ok” shouldn’t be assumed to be secret fascist messaging without some other reason to be suspicious.
If your entire reason to suspect then consists if secret messages with plausible deniability, the reality is that the rational thing to do is to not believe they’re fascists.Those are some good points, I think we agree more than not. I was a bit sloppy with my language, too so thanks for the check.
:)
From what I’ve seen, no one here has been fundamentally disagreeing, but there’s been a lot of “unscientific” reasoning on display, which is a thing that I care about,
“Your name has two letter S’s in it, you must support the SS YOU FUCKING NAZI😤”
Hanlon’s razor. I myself had no idea that 88 had any nazi-related meaning before I read this article and thought nothing of the title when I first heard it. It seems perfectly reasonable that the dev could have done the same, especially since they were willing to almost immediately change the name and remove all existing promotional material once they found out.
Resetera (among other outlets) have done a bit more digging and it is more or less an orgy of red flags
So we have:
- A game about a rat invasion (anyone who’s read Art Spiegelman’s Maus should already know where this is headed);
- Where one plays as exterminators using gas masks, who coincidentally use poison gas as their weapon;
- On a game titled “Infestation 88” (which, as another user pointed out, has 14 characters, besides the obvious 88 dog-whistle);
- Which also happens to supposedly reference the StG 44 German WWII assault rifle;
- And if you want to add my original dog-whistly speculation, it wouldn’t be a stretch to be suspicious of that “SS” at this point.
And, to add on, the studio’s website claims they have been making games since 2010 with this being their first game. 2024-2010=14 (words).
combine that with the official discord being full of “pronoun jokes” and similar bigotry and it is really hard to view this edgelord game as anything other than a giant dog whistle.
This. Cryptofascism relies on being able to scream, “It was just a joke / I didn’t know!”
Mistakes can happen and you might accidentally engage in a dog whistle as a normal person.
A dozen mistakes all pointing to the exact same thing are unlikely.
And to be fair, it could be one person at the top putting all these wink wink indicators in, and the majority involved might just be normal folks.
I still won’t be buying the game.
So, out the door any media playing with steamboat Willie being public domain is suspect because of rat adjacent symbolism?
Counting characters seems like basically numerology, if you want to get to a specific number it’s not hard. If you count the space it’s 14 characters, but you could just as easily not count the space. What if it had been "infestation: 88”? Not Nazi because of the colon, or do we skip the space now?
Using the conclusion of your argument as evidence to make further leaps is also not super sound reasoning.
It’s an asset flip game capitalizing on steamboat Willie and the “make a now public domain children’s character scary” money grab. It’s exactly what happened with Winnie the Pooh.
It’s a horror game with a mouse as the scary creature. The only cultural touchstones we have for mice are either cute, infestation or disease. Exterminators are who you call when you have a mouse problem, and people wearing gas masks are one of the most prolific assets you can buy models for in asset shops.
Dogwostles exist, but it’s important to actually look at context.
Oooh. Thanks for reminding me of the other important reason to be aware of dog whistles and to look at the context in which they are being applied.
The people who aggressively insist everything is just a coincidence while trying to nitpick everything to death are almost never acting in good faith. Best case scenario, they are an edgelord kid on 4chan who doesn’t understand they are being manipulated. More likely they are angry that people understand their “secret code”.
Either way, they aren’t worth interacting with.
So… good job demonstrating what a bad faith dipshit would insist upon. You missed the
/sthough. Be careful with that. Some people might actually think you woke up and said “I need to defend some neonazis from criticism”.Or, you know, I don’t think that literally everything I can justify with numerology is Nazism, and so I don’t think I’m defending neonazis because someone used 14 letters in a game title.
Your argument is unassailable, because in your mind anyone who finds in unconvincing is a literal Nazi.
Think to yourself what someone would have to discover for you to decide they weren’t Nazis.
I know what I would need to see to think that I was wrong: statements, affiliations, something beyond numerology, refusal to make changes in the face of an unfortunate coincidence, or almost anything.What would make you say “shit, I was wrong and listening to numerology”?
Oh… you were serious. Ewww
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This is on a similar level of derangement as QAnon people spotting Satanist references in pictures of the Clintons. Please touch grass.
AFAIK the steamboat willie version of Mickey which is public domain now wears no gloves
Imagine believing a dev would do this on purpose, your game would just get cancelled
If your game sucks there’s no such thing as bad press.
Not when steam etc completely removes your game
It’s amazing how hard it is for them to say “we’re not Nazis, we’re going to change the name” instead they drag it out.
Only the guilty do this.
They literally did all that, though. It hasn’t even been 2 hours since your post and their name has changed.
Lol why would a dev intentionally do this only to get cancelled
Games are made to make money not cater to nazis haha
Making a game not for money but for nazis would be a really effective way of endearing yourself to the nazis though.
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If you want to say something is a false positive by all means, but just pretending that culturally none of this exists helps no one.
