A fictional schoolgirl created for a UK Government-funded game designed to steer young people away from far-right extremism has been subverted and transformed into a viral racist meme spreading across social media.
The character, known as Amelia, was originally developed for Pathways: Navigating the Internet and Extremism, a multiple-choice video game aimed at 13 to 18-year-olds in Yorkshire. The initiative was funded by the Home Office and created by political literacy company Shout Out UK.
However, the purple-haired “goth girl” carrying a miniature union flag has now been co-opted by far-right accounts and is proliferating rapidly on platforms including X and Facebook.
Analysis provided to the Guardian by Peryton Intelligence, a UK disinformation monitoring company, traced the trend to an anonymous account that posted an Amelia meme on X on 9 January. That post has since been viewed 1.4 million times.
The volume of “Ameliaposting” has surged from around 500 posts per day when the meme first emerged to approximately 10,000 daily posts after it reached international audiences on 15 January. On Wednesday alone, 11,137 Amelia-related posts appeared on X.
Users have employed AI tools, including X’s Grok chatbot, to generate increasingly sophisticated iterations of the character. Videos typically show Amelia walking through London or the House of Commons while warning about “militant Muslims” or “third-world migrants”.
Variations now include Manga-style versions, a Wallace and Gromit adaptation, and AI-generated scenarios placing Amelia alongside characters from Father Ted and Harry Potter, all accompanied by racist messaging.
The trend has also been monetised. An Amelia cryptocurrency token has emerged, with users attempting to inflate its value. Elon Musk retweeted an account promoting the token on Wednesday.
Matteo Bergamini, founder of Shout Out UK, said the company had received a deluge of hate mail, including threats reported to police. He described the phenomenon as “the monetisation of hate” and said Telegram groups had been coordinating to artificially boost the cryptocurrency’s value.
Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan, an analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, said the meme had achieved “remarkable spread” and was now international. He noted that sexualised imagery and its appeal to young men had been central to its proliferation.
The Home Office said Prevent had diverted nearly 6,000 people from violent ideologies and that projects like Pathways were designed independently of government to address local radicalisation risks.
