Roblox, Unsurprisingly, Still Has A Problem With Nazis

If you’ve been perusing Roblox in the news as long as I have, or even just by playing on the website and clicking on advertisements, you’ll know that Roblox has a significant portion of its fanbase obsessed with war, the military, and fighting/raiding other people. Sometimes their obsession is from a good place, in that they want to learn about military history out of a place of interest…And other times, you have the child equivalent of Discord mods abusing people who are often younger than them so they can feel powerful, like the Wired article I linked demonstrates.

Having an interest in historical events like wars or in military tactics in of itself isn’t problematic in any way. When I was a little kid, I’d make my Littlest Pet Shops (small animal figurines roughly the size of a Hershey’s Kiss) fight McDonald’s toys I got, and if I was feeling up to it I would film it with my mom’s iPad and post it onto YouTube on my dad’s account. That didn’t mean I was going to grow up a fascist who’d call Nazi outfits “based” by any means.

The problem comes when Roblox doesn’t moderate how people approach and discuss topics like war, the military, militarism, and — by extension — fascism. To be fair, they have a history of being godawful at moderation, between that time a 7 year old girl got gang raped on Roblox and the popular game MeepCity having to remove their infamous parties because their userbase were more or less having sex parties in there…for 5 years straight, with more or less nothing being done at all.

That’s without mentioning the underground Condo system that I know for a fact is run by a giant system of Discord servers…I know this because I used to be a witness to it and in some of those servers myself, albeit not doing anything to help those making the games make their games.

Getting back on topic again, I want to stress that nothing is wrong with children wanting to learn about World War I, or II, or really any war or genocide that’s happened in the history of the world. Children should be taught about these things, 100 percent!

I just really, really don’t think that having people exploit certain items on Roblox like a black beak meant for birds so they can cosplay Adolf Hitler on a website meant for children to play obstacle courses and grind for resources in foraging games has a purpose that isn’t malicious.

Meet Joel. I was going through random items in the Catalogue and looking for things to wishlist when I realized that ROBLOX HITLER was staring into the depths of my soul via a comment someone made on an item.

I found Joel in the comment section for a black motorcycle helmet I was debating on buying (I own one in real life and I wear it as a prop on occasion). His comment refers to Playboi Carti, just as many of the other comments do with phrases like “Slatt” and “bro think he carti”.

Just so you can see the comments for yourself, here’s the link to the helmet. Also, just to be safe, I want to make it clear that I do not blame the owner of the helmet for the audience they unfortunately attracted.

In addition, I see neo-nazis pitch this argument all the time, so before I get into this I’m just going to squash that: “Neo-nazi” and “person of color/fan of a person of color” are not mutually exclusive. You are not suddenly not racist because you like a celebrity who’s a person of color. You can be a neo-nazi and a person of color — hell, you could’ve been an original nazi and a person of color.

With that out of the way, let me explain how I realized Joel wasn’t just a single bad apple but apart of a bad orchard.

At first, I thought that maybe this guy was just cosplaying a mustached man…After all, before Hitler rose and fell, his style of mustache was actually pretty popular and used by the likes of Charlie Chaplain. While I found the use of a toothbrush mustache off, what really clued me in was his outfit.

This is the shirt he’s currently wearing as I write this on 2/27/22. Geez, I wonder why it’s titled “Chancellor WW2”, or why its tags include “execute”, “communist”, “army”, and “german”?

This is the pair of pants he’s currently wearing. The title is the same thing, just repeated two more times.

And if you thought people making Nazi clothing on Roblox for Robloxian Nazis was bad, you’re gonna LOVE the comments (I’m being sarcastic).

This is the most recent comment under “Chancellor-WW2-Chancellor-WW2-Chancellor-WW2”, the pair of pants meant to emulate Adolf Hitler’s most recognized outfit. This was roughly a day ago, and it will likely be up after this article has been posted.

A compilation of comments on the pants item, showing that children A) Clearly recognize who wore this outfit in history and B) Think that he was “based” and “funny”. The one comment making a relatively good point (that being that the outfit was made for historical purposes) then turns it into a joke at the end, which then ruins any argument he had…Also, someone on the shirt pointed out that Hitler only wore this outfit BEFORE 1939, so it’s not even a “WW2” outfit.

The aforementioned comment.

It’s pretty clear from the comments that the people who realize that children shouldn’t be allowed to cosplay a genocidal dictator who directly allowed millions of people to be murdered are a minority.

Please, “IGotBurgersOnMyMind”, elaborate on how a clothing business selling one of Hitler’s outfits for MONEY educates children on literally ANYTHING about World War II or what Hitler did with his life.

For reference, General is referring to a comment saying that Nazis should burn in hell because they’re racist. The guy in question is not a “Slender” by any means, he just looks like an e-boy and made it clear in his bio that it’s just his personal fashion style…And other than being intensely anti-racist and being in a Black Lives Matter group, nothing is remotely political about his profile page.

As you can see, someone with the same outfit as Joel (Except for one hair piece) is also in the comment section. Both “GermanLeader” and Joel have World War II themed games in their favorites…But ironically enough, “EEE”, the user who posted a swastika made of emojis under the comment section for Hitler’s pants, is a recruit in a British army group.

Regardless, I can only hold the creator of these clothes — NotoriusK — partially responsible, as one look at their catalogue makes it clear that they’re just stealing clothes with no particular care of whether it’s a rainbow crop top of the shirt of a communist soldier.

The clothing groups’s catalogue features a strange mix of military clothing, Friday Night Funkin’ outfits, and photos turned into outfits.

Another example — this is a petri dish of military clothes, what I can only assume is streetwear, trans pride socks, Christmas clothing, and a Squid Game outfit. Another big signifier that these were all stolen is that they’re all priced for what’s considered the bare minimum price for Roblox clothing, 5 Robux.

As for the creator of the group, OrangeR3D, he’s surprisingly non-indicative…

While he calls himself an “Israel hater” and has something in his bio that got censored (Presumably a political term, but I can tell you now it’s not “communist” or “fascist” because I counted the number of hashtags used to filter the word out), he’s not in any military group like the people in his comments are and his favorites is full of those Roblox games people make to have an “aesthetic” favorited game page on their profile, except instead of it being anything aesthetic it’s just crying anime boys.

No, I’m not kidding. His favorites page is just this.

My conclusion: While people who make and post things like Nazi clothing may not be doing so with malicious intent (Or more likely, are doing so for the intent of making money), it’s very clear that those who are attracted to buying and owning Nazi clothing are more than okay with Nazis, Nazism, Hitler, and what he did in World War II.

Outfits like this, especially when sold to get a cash grab off of little boys obsessed with war who aren’t inherently hurting anyone or being racist just by being interested in history, are not teaching children anything about World War II and are commodifying the outfit of a fascist dictator so children can cosplay as him in re-enactment groups.

This isn’t just a few bad apples, it’s the sign of a large group of children at risk of being spat out of a alt-right conversion pipeline through “It’s just a game” and “We’re just joking”, one we’ve been ignoring in favor of acting like it doesn’t exist. This has been a growing issue online in recent years, and it’s time that parents take the initiative to teach their children about things like sex or war before a Discord mod pedophile who wants to see children have Metaverse sex with each other, a money-hungry clothing stealer, or a kid who cosplays as Adolf Hitler does it for them and unsurprisingly screws it up.

Stop expecting the Internet to raise your child for you.