#doesnt has the same impact for non brazilians

[littleseasalt]

The political/cultural context behind Forever's campaign slogan

This is a post I've been meaning to do for a long time now, since I had a talk with Kia a few weeks ago about the automated translations and Forever.

We were talking about how out of the Brazilians, Forever is the one who the translations are always off even when he sets them right. And the reason for that is very simple, of course. The automated translations are not suited to be able to get the different dialects Brazil has, neither to understand slangs. Specially Brazilian slangs, which are rooted directly to the culture and history of the country, the addiction of the dialect aspect worsening the situation.

That's when I realized, our speech is so rooted in our culture that even Forever's "Do the F" is something that is rooted to the politics/culture of the country. And none of the gringos even know that.

"Do the F" would be the translation for "Faz/faça o F", which is a parody of the political slogan "Faz/faça o L"

The slogan itself gained more force during the Brazilian 2022 elections, but the act itself- doing the letter "L" with your right hand- was something that already happened before. The "L" stands for "Lula", which was the main opposition to Bolsonaro in the elections.

I don't want to go to deep into Brazilian politics, but Bolsonaro was basically Brazilian trump. He's an alt right politician. Between 2016-2022, the working class in Brazil was severely demobilized. The last hope against him in the power was Lula, and even then, he was considered elected with 50,83% of the votes, compared to Bolsonaro's 49,12%

The slogan became a meme, which worked in favor of the campaign, mostly. It's something catchy, it's something that it's easy to promote- you just need to take a picture of yourself doing the L.

Then, when Lula won, Bolsonaro supporters tried to use the meme in their favor. They would say stuff like "Then, when the country goes broke, then you do the L". That. Actually backfired terribly, because people turned it against them and started mocking them back in the same way.

When Forever became the president, people started jokingly saying "Forever pay for the server". And now, whenever Forever crashes, his chat gets filled with "Now you do the F". Not in a supportive way, and not in a way that it's against Forever (like the Bolsonaro supporters use the "do the L"). They say "Now you do the F" as a way to both have fun and mock the people who unironically say "Now you do the L" after something bad happens.

It's sort of funny to see how much context there is behind his slogan, and that no one outside Brazil has any idea of how deep it goes (I can only imagine how weird it must be to see a character complaining about a presidential decision forever has, and see Brazilians doing the "now you do the F" joke. it must sound so rude lmao but generally they don't mean any harm or bad implications but are simply having fun with it).