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The “Bro visited his friend” meme template. In panel one, a character says “hi GOG any new deals tod-” and another character, labeled with the GOG.com logo, replies with the screenshot of a mail header titled “Slavic adventures 𖥞 ꥟ ϟϟ”. In the second panel, the first character looks at the second one with a worried look on their face.
Is Slavic Adventures a game?
Nope. There’s a forum post about it. Forgot the name of the game after reading through the pages, but the game uses many pagan runes and GoG decided to be edgy for some reason. No idea why they’d drop the ball like this. It’s not a good look and the person who made the decision to have this title and then send it out should be fired. It’s obvious what they wanted to achieve.
Reporter: [REDACTED]
Reason: manufactured outrage over fontsNot sure if reporter was born yesterday or is a fascist hoping to get this post deleted.
I think that this person that definitely was born yesterday should read the GOG response:
I want to briefly address the discussion as a GOG representative. The Sowilo rune is part of my cultural and historical heritage. As a Pole, I am fully aware of both its history and the sensitivities surrounding it. Its use in this promotion was intended solely as a reference to the sun, which is central to the game being promoted.
What was displayed in several devices as doppelrune is out of our control. ᛋ was displayed as ϟ on several devices. We should pay more attention to checking it on a different systems and devices. I also recognize that placing two such runes next to each other could create an unfortunate association with symbols used by the Nazi regime. This was noticed before distribution, and out of respect for local sensitivities, the material was not sent to the German community.
At the same time, I do not believe that symbols with a history spanning more than a thousand years should be defined solely by their misuse in the modern history. Allowing that would mean accepting that those who corrupted these symbols now own their meaning.
As a Pole, I have every reason to treat this history with seriousness and respect. Precisely because of that, I reject any suggestion that this promotion carried an extremist message. It did not. It was a reference to the historical symbol of the sun, nothing more.
Yeah lil bro that was born yesterday, GOG knew that the symbols could be a problem and decide to send this shit to everyone minus Germany where they could face legal repercussion.
The Sowilo rune is part of my cultural and historical heritage. As a Pole, I am fully aware of both its history and the sensitivities surrounding it. Its use in this promotion was intended solely as a reference to the sun, which is central to the game being promoted.
beep beep beep beep beepI also recognize that placing two such runes next to each other could create an unfortunate association with symbols used by the Nazi regime.
then why post it?
At the same time, I do not believe that symbols with a history spanning more than a thousand years should be defined solely by their misuse in the modern history.
No, no their history doesn’t span a thousand years, they got used, then forgotten, became a historical artifact and were revivded over a thousand years later by a certain political movement.
It was a reference to the historical symbol of the sun, nothing more.
yeah yeah and the wolfsangel just means “national identity” it just kinda looks like a nazi symbol nothing sus going on there
German here, it was sent to me.
So not even this part of their response is true LMAO.
Reporter: [REDACTED]
Reason: Posting moderation reports is fairly childish, and what I would expect from someone promoting manufactured outrage online.It’s rare for someone to double down instead of taking the hint.
This is a gmail interface?
So I got the mail from GoG too and decided to finally see what “slavic” means.
The Slavs or Slavic people are groups of people who speak Slavic languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout the northern parts of Eurasia; they predominantly inhabit Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe, and Northern Asia, though there is a large Slavic minority scattered across the Baltic states and Central Asia, and a substantial Slavic diaspora in the Americas, Western Europe, and Northern Europ…
IDK maybe I have been desensitised to more subtle topics after enduring more threatening problems all these years, but this seems just another term similar to “Gothic”, “Nordic” and the likes. What’s the problem over here?
And while “The End of the Sun” made me at least read through the page thanks to the ‘Tux’ symbol under its name, I won’t have the time for another Skyrim, so skipping this.
“Slavic” is not the issue here, it’s the symbols at the end of the subject line. See the rest of the comments.
Which one of these are nazi symbols? I only know about swastika, what are these called and what do they signify?
the first two are technically unrelated to any nazi shit (in the same way that the eggplant emoji 🍆 is totally just an eggplant and means nothing else yknow), but when put together, they form a black sun
the last two are unmistakably the symbol of the SS
Like, they could have used ANY runes, but they SPECIFICALLY used the black sun and SS runes.
Ah, okay, thanks for the info.
In the Gog character text box, the symbol on the far right is the symbol for the SS
Got it, I think I have seen those before. Didn’t recognize them here.
With fascism on the rise in capitalist states, it’s worth learning how to recognize their shibboleths, which they use to recognize each other and to turn spaces—online and off—into Nazi bars.
Yeah, I remember reading that before. Thanks.
i also got real weirded out by that, but i decided to check it out closer:
- The first one is a Kolovrat, the symbol of slavic neopaganism.
- The second is an Auseklis, symbol of the latvian pagan god of the same name
- The third is quite clearly an SS, but they just took it from the futhark. why gog decided to put two of them…
Edit: apparently this is a font thing! those last two symbols are supposed to be koppas. lots of people reacted to this so there’s quite a bit of discussion. i’m assuming gog don’t test on every email client and os combination possible, so it’s a bit more understandable.
You think this is a font thing and not a Nazi thing? I bet you thought Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and that Iran was days away from a nuke lol.
i’m just reporting what i found.
They are koppas as far as I can tell. Which, is interesting given that the GOG account said:
ᛋ [sowilo] was displayed as ϟ [koppa] on several devices
yeah sowilo makes more sense geographically but i still don’t know what the association wourd be other than nazis…
But why use koppa’s? Two of them? What’s the connection to “slavic adventure” other than that they look more like the SS “runes” than the sowilo rune?
yeah :/
Greece, famously slavic. (/s)
If it was supposed to be that, they should’ve used U+03DE Ϟ Greek letter koppa, that would’ve likely went under the radar for most, but then it might also miss the target audience, I don’t know, it’s hard for me to assume good will here, unfortunately
yeah i can’t really find any other association either. i just don’t really want it to be that.
I’m sorry but this is just a excuse they are using. This kind of thing is not a accident in the current climate. Please do not fall for it.
i’m just reporting what i found. the guy in the post is also not affiliated with gog.
also, let’s say gog are nazis. aren’t they polish? isn’t their symbolism law really strict?
If the last two symbols are supposed to be coppas it would make it worth though, since that has nothing to do with the sun, unlike the sowilo rune
well yea, unicode doesn’t include nazi symbolism for obvious reasons, so the nazis have to get creative
i could, with the good faith GOG frankly doesn’t deserve, see how the first two symbols could’ve happened accidentally. but the SS? nah, whoever wrote this email did this 100% intentionally.
this is nazi shit, in the same way that someone sending you “hey pretty do you want to have some 🍆🍑💦” is not inviting you to drink a peach-eggplant cocktail.
tangent: when i went to vilnius a few years ago there was a lot of symbolism that weirded me out and felt kinda fascist. but it turned out it was from buildings that were built in the 1700’s, based on baltic legends and traditions. which is what the nazis co-opted. but the people there still had those symbols in their culture.
sure it does: 卐
this one is in reference to the swastika used for centuries across cultures, way before the nazis even existed. the nazi one is (usually) angled and thicker.
obviously that doesn’t stop nazis from using it, same for the futhark or koppa.
so are the other two. the slavic religions are more than a thousand years old.
Edit: okay the kolovrat is iffy. the new version of that religion is very racist.
We know what these emojis are about when written together, and when written beside “Slavic adventure”. We know how fascists feel about “Asiatic hordes.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Themes_in_Nazi_propaganda#Russians
well the newsletter was about an adventure game based on slavic folklore. like the witcher, that game the gog guys (who are polish i think?) created from famous slavic folklore. i’m not debunking anything anyone is saying mind, i would just rather it not be true.
deleted by creator
why gog decided to put two of them…
Yeah … that’s the real smoking gun, though. That’s what tips it past being ‘possibly an accident’ and into ‘GOG needs to find and fire their Nazi communications staff member’. (And in either case, they really should be issuing a very public apology.)
I wonder if any media environment has tried to normalize the use of images synonymous with fascism and colonialist genocide around you, provided it has at least a paper-thin explanation 🤔
elaborate
Because there isn’t any other symbol left that doesn’t looks like nazi shit for them to use.
If you’re saying “it’s so hard to find something that isn’t associated with Nazis”, I think the problem is youEDIT: Got Poe’s Lawed! Lol
I thought my comment was quite clear, so I didn’t use “/s”
Lmao my bad!
Just use /s when making a sarcastic comment no matter how obvious, even in person it’s sometimes hard to read sarcasm
An email without symbols would also be acceptable. Just saying.
See? This is already much better than GOG’s email.
