TV lawyers and doctors however get to hold jargon-filled monologues and be in lead roles.
/rant
It's probably also an issue of writing - walking the line between realism and cool isn't easy, doubly so if the writers aren't themselves technical people. People are still referencing Mcguyver, but nobody's had the hubris to try and reboot that classic.
They did. And it probably got the same treatment mentioned in the article. It survived 5 seasons despite receiving abysmal reviews.
"Young Angus "Mac" MacGyver works for a clandestine organization within the U.S. government, relying on his unconventional problem-solving skills to save lives." [0]
I’m looking for a Walter White money fiend
Who is tony stark?
The only recent and decent "IT guy" series was Mr. Robot and the differences from any other field are obvious. The main "IT guy"-character is presented as socially dysfunctional. The supporting IT-people are tiny little gears turning in their cubicles.
Military - always fighting in the harshest condition, against the toughest enemies, saving the world.
Lawyers - good looking people, living a lavish lifestyle in corner offices of New York skyscrapers, having the cool monologues that wow the courtroom.
Doctors - brilliant but otherwise normal people facing very difficult decisions every day, making brilliant decisions to save life after life, and dealing with loss.
Spies - absolutely superhuman skills and knowledge, constantly capable of turning the tide of any way with a single person concentrated effort. (The more you go towards the "military/spy" side of things, the more likely it becomes about superhumans.)
IT focused movies/characters are probably just not attractive to the wider audience. Or at least nobody really proved that they can be. So even in Mr. Robot didn't focus on the hacking as much as on the larger plot. It simply made a very realistic point of that hacking.
But TV always veers off into personal drama, presumably to chase ratings, whether it's doctors or cops or anyone else.
All the science/tech stuff they do tends to make me cringe. A hair from a nearly-extinct field mouse found in just one park? whatever. I guess that beats big "revelations" you can see coming a mile away.
So it's a stretch but as the team was designated Major Case Team i could see it working
The protagonist is a female programmer, and the male programmer involved becomes a hero and "gets the girl".
As an aside: It's one of the best movies I've seen in the past 2 years. Watch it if you like Ryan Reynolds and are looking for a movie to watch.
That billions of equipment and resources provided by the woke cabala? Let's talk about that instead of military covered intervention in society.
As a citizen from An USA allied country, I find disturbing how much propaganda the military pushes for at global level. That's a very serious matter.
Hundreds of millions are spent worldwide on endowments for universities to push this specific agenda. So, yes, I wouldn't find it surprising if the movie makers are sponsored, too. Now, it's clear why US army would want a positive optics. But who's to benefit from, say, Tajiks internalizing the "oppression scale"?
Done well, it can be a vehicle for criticising one's own culture in a constructive way. Done poorly, it can be a vehicle for oikophobia and gatekeeping, a means of distinguishing oneself from the naively patriotic proletariate.
Red Pilled is used in contexts where someone starts seeing the hidden truth the elites want to hide from them etc. Woke in my experience is more used to describe progressive people and their opinions, without having anything to do with some hidden secrets or other such things.
> Woke in my experience is more used to describe progressive people and their opinions
Like any hot cultural term, it has become loaded with plenty of other meaning. However, to a degree I think you are talking about the reactionaries' use of the word, which they have adopted to politicize it - to use their endless (and successful) rhetorical technique of attacking the messenger; of saying 'it's just liberals' to shift the discussion from the actual problem, racism. For example, you can see the same technique used for climate change.
That's a fair point, yeah.
> When you take that red pill, when you are open to the facts, it is shocking what has been happening right under our noses
I think the problem there for me personally is, that "being red-pilled" was kinda adopted by the right wing, so I would never label myself red-pilled when I learn what kinds of things black people experience because of being who they are. But yeah, if we keep current politics out of our context, then I get what is meant with being red-pilled.
So essentially, red-pilled means "I learned(or at least think so) something which the mainstream(god I hate that word in the political context) does not know."
Furthermore, if what you think you've learned is objectively true, then you were red-pilled, if it's objectively wrong you just invented a new conspiracy theory.
Richard Dawkin's wrote a fantastic book called The Selfish Gene on exploring the difference between memetic and mimetic theory that's worth the read.
I think the definition is narrower. I think it's something that completely shifts your persecptive, that is relvelatory. I know things about certain policy issues that the mainstream doesn't - or about IT, but it's not the same.
> if what you think you've learned is objectively true, then you were red-pilled, if it's objectively wrong you just invented a new conspiracy theory.
This is the nature of all knowledge - there is no way around thinking critically, using all the skills (empiricism, post-modernism, etc.); it's never easy.
And the most harmful bullshit is that racism is a personal failing rather than a system working as designed; designed by people who will not peacefully let it go.
Yes, an essential point. But it's also a personal choice.
One way or the other you might be having a difficult time seeing that they're both essentially propaganda, but its just the mirror image of the same thing.
I see it used much more on the right, such as in the comment that started this subthread.
EDIT: But otherwise, I think that's an excellent definition.
I don't know anymore.
In some circles / historically it is used to denote liberal/progressive agenda. It's sometimes (often?) meant to be negative/slur, just like some people will use "Socialist!!!" believing it a derogatory term.
However, increasingly it's used as generic term in various conspiracy circles - "Wake up to the truth!" transmogrified to "Woke!". So Woke will be claimed by those who understand the truth about Illuminati/Freemasons/Rothchilds/Vaccines/5G/EM/Israel/etcetcetc.
So between whatever original use there may have been designed, vs today's actual usage on the interwebs, I don't personally find it a useful nomenclature that I can interpret on its own with any degree of confidence. 90% of the time I find it in short rambling sentences of the format of either "Their pushing their fascist woke agenda!!!" or "be woke, don't be sheeple". I generally don't find the term used in any discussion that ends up being in any way productive or enlightening.
(note also my experience that, anybody using it, in any of the above and myriad other senses/terms, will strongly believe their is the only obvious correct usage and resent the notion that there's lack of clarity)
Let's take feminism for example, which is generally considered as pertaining to woke culture, what do feminists want? Well you have sex-positive feminists, sex-negative feminists, you've got the ones that want to legalize sex work, the ones who don't, abortion at every stage no matter the circumstance, abortion in hospitals depending on term, trans inclusive, trans exclusive, men inclusive, men exclusive, men-can-only-be-allies... And I'm not even mentioning different waves of feminism.
It's hard to nail down what it pushes, exactly, but I'd say that a focus on identity politics as opposed to economic issues is a constant. A character existing solely because of their identity, disregarding if it adds anything is, I'd say, peak wokeism.
And I've no doubt many will disagree with that, as some others will with any other take.
As an example, some people think that showing homosexual people in media is part of some wokeist agenda, just virtue signalling and an act of identity politics.
I guess to sum it up, we should probably stop using such general terms and just explain what we think in a couple of sentences. I guess that's where Twitter can be blamed a bit, when you don't have the space to thoroughly explain what you think, you have to resort to abbrevations and single words, in turn making it more confusing for everyone.
Can you list any media (mainstream news, or Hollywood) that are promoting sex-negative or trans exclusive views?
There is no discussion or dissenting views allowed for most “woke” people.
> Information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.
I would say that almost all entertainment is of a biased nature and is used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.
Pamphlets about the end of the world and Christianity--propaganda. The Glenn Beck show--propaganda. NYT editorials about defunding the police--propaganda. Tucker Carlson--propaganda. Joe Biden's Twitter account--propaganda. Portrayals of white men as problematic or evil in Netflix shows--propaganda. Portrayals of black men as problematic or evil in archaic books, shows, movies, etc.--propaganda.
Edit:
I realize I sound a little unhinged. Let me try to be more clear about my point.
If media is deployed with the intent to promote or distribute a worldview, I think it is propaganda. Fox News meets the definition of propaganda because it promotes the worldview "cable news, specifically Fox News, is a source of authority". The fact that it is entertainment is not relevant to its status as propaganda; it gains that status by having a perfect propaganda-like effect on the public. The content of the media that's consumed by the public is less important than what the public believes about the sources putting out the media, and what authority the public lends to the media it consumes.
Here is an article by an anonymous psychiatrist who writes a great deal about how the effect of media is less related to the content, and more related to how media dissemination of information infects and shapes its viewers' model of reality. They are taught how to learn, rather than what to learn, and the how always includes "more listening to the source putting out the information".
https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/04/im_not_the_one_you_s...
But it's a very loaded word. One should avoid using loaded words where a less emotional description is applicable. One could as well argue that the use of loaded words is propaganda itself.
You could say "Fox News is a conglomerate of acting/direction/production teams managed by a central financial-focused corporate structure who release carefully curated entertainment segments in order to maximize views from certain demographics", and then describe its effects by saying "People who unironically consume and believe what is said by Fox News representatives typically end up believing verifiably false information".
That would be a very emotionless and more strictly accurate phrase to say than "Fox News is one of the propaganda arms of the broadcast media cartel", which is how I would say it.
Unfortunately, saying it your way allows people to believe they understand it and are protected from its effects. This is not true, in the same way that people are not protected from the propaganda-like effects of advertising just because they can see an ad and not immediately want to go buy the target product.
Fox News is not benign entertainment; do not underestimate its handlers so.
The (literal) billions described in the NYT article above are just one aspect of the woke, they have many more. They don't just have the money, they have tons of money.
I think the past efforts were pretty blatant. I think we just know more about how they operate and so it becomes easier to see.
> wokeism
Would love to know what this means.
https://twitter.com/raytheontech/status/880497266255175685?l...
It's not that there's something wrong with gay rights, or any other specific social cause powerful organizations adopt. It's just that it's a very cheap way to win a positive image for things that ... would have trouble getting a positive image if focus was on their core business.
Also, I don't really see the connection between this tweet and Holywood.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/09/yemen-us-made...
Raytheon lobbies for Mideast arm sales. In the hierarchy of shit they need to be ethical on, LGBTQ rights is not really top of the list. It’s nice though, nonetheless.
No connection to Hollywood of course, Raytheon would love nothing more than war never being mentioned. The more they can sell outside of the US and not have anyone know it’s causing genocide in places like Yemen, the better.
Twitter is a lot of posturing, and the tweet is posturing "look how progressive/ethical/whatever I am". GP is simply pointing out that yes, supporting gay rights is a good thing, but the person overall is still a piece of shit for all the atrocities they implicitly support. The gay rights stance, even if genuine, simply can't balance that out.
You may view the tweet as 'posturing', but we have seen no evidence that it is not the expression of a sincerely held belief. This is the sort of attitude that I was talking about when I said that HN seems to like to spin complex narratives around LGBTQ rights advocacy. Sometimes people speak out for LGBTQ rights because...they support LGBTQ rights. And that's all there is to it.
If you don't like other stuff that Raytheon does, then it makes a lot more sense to criticise them for doing that other stuff than it does to spin speculative narratives around the motivation behind their pro-LGBTQ tweets.
Imagine, in the age of chivalry, a lord who arrives at every battle with his forces - but who delays his arrival until the battle is already won, and always joins the winning side.
You might well say arriving late is better than not arriving at all. Perhaps there are some last pockets of resistance, you wouldn't turn down his help sweeping those up.
Alternately, you might say they are cowardly, insincere opportunists. They ended up on on the right side, but the timing calls their sincerity into doubt.
To some people, all LGBTQ 'activism' by Fortune 500 companies looks like this. Especially if their 'activism' doesn't extend to their middle east or russian divisions.
I do wonder just how early people are required to come to the 'battle' in order to escape your scorn. If someone was an adult in the 80s, are they an insincere opportunist if they weren't speaking out in favor of gay rights then? What if they were an adult in the 1960s and didn't support the Stonewall riots?
As a gay person, it means something to me that a company is willing to speak out publicly in support of its LGBTQ employees. No-one is perfect and no-one is free from hypocrisy. All of us have probably blown with the wind on certain social issues where we could have spoken up earlier if we'd had more courage and moral clarity.
This holier-than-thou cynicism about corporate LGBTQ activism is extremely destructive, in my opinion. In the final analysis it only gives succour to those who are opposed to LGBTQ rights. For actual gay people, the massive shift in corporate attitudes to LGBTQ employees is a huge deal, and has real practical benefits in our lives.
Edit: By the way, a little bit of internet research suggests that Raytheon are actually pretty above average in their support for LGBTQ rights. E.g. they have been praised by the HRC: https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/defense-giant-raytheon-pr... And here's some news coverage dating back to 2006: https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006...
I find the rest of your post a little bit confusing. I don't think you are saying that you want Raytheon to stop making tweets in support of LGBTQ rights. But also, you seem to be hinting that there are somehow potentially bad consequences arising from Raytheon, or other corporations, making these sorts of statements. As the bad consequences are only sketched in the vaguest terms, it's difficult to know what to make of the idea. For example, you seem to suggest that people might be more alert to the bad things that Raytheon does if they didn't publicly support their LGBTQ employees. But you don't have to wind back the clock many decades to get to a time when they didn't do this. It doesn't seem that people had much more success in compelling Raytheon to stop making arms sales in the 70s or 80s than they do now.
I do agree that people back then appear to care less about arm dealings. I beleive they care more today then back then. And that people also care about a lot of other unethical practices certain large corporations get involve with. I think people always cared, but information didn't flow as fast, broadly, and independently as today, and even that is being fought against (again by large corporations). If you don't think diversion coupled with virtue signaling is a thing and that it is elaborated precisely for their desired effect, fine. I shared my perspective and the one many people beleive is undoubtful at this point.
Weapon dealing / wars are beside the point perhaps but directly relate to the whole thread: Hollywood propaganda.
Gay rights and a few other issues satisfy both groups.
Whenever I see someone use “woke” as an insult… it’s been an inconsistent mishmash that matches what was called “political correctness gone mad” when I was a kid — stuff the user doesn’t like but knows better than to say plainly that they don’t like.
Of course, I know plenty of people who have used the word “woke” positively, in the same way I know people who respond to “X is PC gone mad” with “X & PC is just being polite to people”.
Hard to tell what the common current use is though, given the lack of social connection during the pandemic and living in a non-English speaking country. Online polls have a self-selection bias, but I wouldn’t know in which direction that bias alters results.
Once it stops being about fighting back against the black community being murdered in broad daylight by police or striking for $15/hour and starts being about "unthreatening-to-state-and-capital" topics like pronoun choice and diversity quotas in the C suite it starts to look a bit ridiculous.
And thats the point where a lot people start to hear about it and reject what they see.
Urban dictionary can help you out if you really don't know https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woke
Pretending to be bravely battling fascism and tyranny on behalf of the oppressed while censoring for theocratic and communist dictatorships is Hollywood's bread and butter. Not just Hollywood for that matter, a lot of multinational corporations in other industries too.
Giving black actors roles in areas normally dominated by white actors? That’s awesome! But whenever this happens loads of people online will claim that is “wokeism”.
Representation for gay, lesbian, queer, and trans people in media? Wow that’s great! Many complain this is “wokeism”.
Recognizing that trans women are women and trans men are men? 100% that’s the bare minimum and I am happy to see it. “Wokeism”
The real reason I asked was to get people on here to reveal what kind of progress they are against.
Of course there is sometimes an element of hypocrisy suggested in the “wokeism” complaint. But there’s always hypocrites. Sometimes accusations of hypocrisy are used as a smoke screen to simply complain about there being gay people on the television.
Forgive me if you were being genuine, but frequently when I see the word used on the internet, I see replies from people who seem utterly bewildered and claim that they really want to know what the word means. But it's trivial to find out what this or any other word or slang word means with a simple internet search, so it doesn't really seem like they care to learn what it means but rather they are trying to make a statement or trying to use cheap rhetoric to cast aspersion on the post being replied to without actually addressing it in any coherent way. Then when definitions are proffered, they are often not met with gratitude and understanding but with argumentation -- suddenly they do know what it means.
EDIT: Ah I misread your post you indeed were not asking sincerely, you were actually feigning ignorance as I thought. Worse, you're misrepresenting what the word means and baselessly attacking the parent poster as a bigot, and you have refused to walk that back or provide any evidence for these insults. This is a good example of behavior that is described as wokeism.
> they’re complaining about things that I think are good.
That's not what woke means though, it's clearly about hypocrisy and insincerity and performative pointless acts or gestures. Did you not read the definition I gave you, or were you being insincere when you asked about the meaning of the word in the first place? Also, the parent poster did not seem to be complaining about any of the things you are talking about here, if you are making that claim that they are bigoted it's very serious I hope you have some good reason to do so. I would go so far as to say it's totally against the site rules so you need to clarify.
I mentioned the bigotry because honest to god that’s the times where I hear people use it - complaining about the most basic progressive representation. It really seems (to me) like people who use it tend to be straight white men who don’t like that some spaces are making room for people who aren’t like them. But the term isn’t used in my circles, so I really don’t know what the “common” use is.
You seem to be the one asserting that the word has only one true meaning. That is absolutely false. The word originated with one meaning and has been co-opted by other groups including onew that have used word in ironic or sarcastic ways that have twisted that meaning.
It is thus perfectly legitimate to ask people, especially those who you think are using the ironic meaning, what they mean when they use the word
I am not the GP but this sort of "this is good"/"you are a bad person" litany is exactly what is off-putting to many people.
I won't even comment on "The real reason I asked was to get people on here to reveal what kind of progress they are against."...
And as for entertainment strong moral undertones are enemies of fun.
Nothing is 100% objective-truth. Recognize this, and get over it.
I mean, sure, for all I know the common use where you are really is exactly what you’re saying, but one thing I’ve never noticed (caveat: easy to miss when it’s text and no faces) is a member of a minority saying “stop being woke, you don’t get us at all” (everything after the coma, yes, but never calling that “woke”). Given how big the anglosphere is (and the fluid nature of language), I don’t don’t that this use has happened at least once by someone in a position to actually use it appropriately, but I mainly see one majority person saying something and another majority person saying the first guy is woke without any apparent involvement from whichever minority is the topic. Or, indeed, the “that’s just woke” accuser insisting that the token minority person who agrees with the first person that $thing is bad is wrong and needs to shut up.
Of course, I also accept that what I see on news shows is basically entertainment these days, so I don’t trust even that experience much either.
> You don't let trolls dictate what you understand of any other words, do you?
Well, the derogatory use appears to have been created by those I would call trolls, but as for other words? Heathen, do-gooder, bleeding heart, papist, yokel, redneck, fag, nerd, socialist… trolls have [re]defined words as insults throughout history.
Wikipedia absolutely does not list it as a hypocritical or insincere thing. Wikipedia defines it as "alert to perceived racial prejudice and discrimination"
The Wikipedia definition you quote funnily enough is the one I described, "Opponents of progressive social movements often use the term mockingly or sarcastically, implying that 'wokeness' is an insincere form of performative activism."
So you're confusing me quite a bit, first you tell me I shouldn't let trolls dictate what words mean, only for then doing exactly that yourself, citing the definition trolls and opponents use.
And another thing - Urban Dictionary can certainly be used to get to know what online slang, memes mean. Using it as an official definition for a word is a bit wrong though, seeing as how UD is more about tongue-in-cheek joke definitions.
So in the end, I frankly don't really know what you want to tell me, not meaning this in a rude way.
Wikipedia absolutely does.
"using the term woke, often in an ironic way, as an insult for various progressive or leftist movements and ideologies perceived as over-zealous, performative, or insincere."
Which is basically what the top urban dictionary results say. I use that because it reacts a bit faster to contemporary usage. And it's obvious that is the definition was being used here.
> And another thing - Urban Dictionary can certainly be used to get to know what online slang, memes mean. Using it as an official definition for a word is a bit wrong though, seeing as how UD is more about tongue-in-cheek joke definitions.
That's not how English works, there is no "official" definition except how people use words. Dictionaries, whether Urban or Oxford, record their observations about the language, they do not define it. Woke is widely used exactly as urbandictionary and the quoted part of the wikipedia page say.
Don't take this in a rude way, but I'm frankly flabbergasted that people have such a difficult time comprehending this usage of the word. I suspect a lot of it is insincere, and all of it stems from not liking the definition or the people or comments that tend to use the word.
Well, yes, I wrote myself that Wikipedia quotes it as a negative thing, but in the chapter where they list examples of people using it wrongly. The official definition they write in the beginning of the article is not negative. The section we're both quoting from is literally called "Woke as a pejorative term".
> I'm frankly flabbergasted that people have such a difficult time comprehending this usage of the word
I know how people (mis)use the word. There's the original and official meanings,
- "aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues" - Merriam Webster
- "alert to perceived racial prejudice and discrimination" - Wikipedia
Then there's people who use woke as an insult and changing the meaning of the word completely, the definitions we now both talked about and can be found on UD and on Wikipedia, and I'm repeating myself here, but in the section where they list the pejorative(!) usages.
One other funny detail of using UD as official definition is that it has 60 pages filled with different interpretations.
Even funnier to me is that the 6th most upvoted definition is a quote by Paul Joseph Watson, a far-right conspiracy theorist.
I still don't understand why you pretend like I don't know the different meanings of woke. I was complaining about people using the word woke to just complain about anything left from them they don't like, which is as embarrassing and childish as people on the left labeling everyone they don't like as a fascist and thus also completely misusing a pretty well-defined word.
But it seems to me that this is exactly the strategy of someone like Paul Joseph Watson. Taking a word which is used positively by people he doesn't like, start to use it negatively while hoping that this trend catches on until the word has the opposite meaning of what it once meant, while at the same time discrediting people who used it in a positive way.
And probably everybody in this thread knew all that full well from the start.
All I said was that it's a red flag for me when people use the word woke to slander anything politically left they don't like. When they once used "marxist", "communist", "liberal" and other words to just quickly dismiss things they simply don't like (without these things relating at all to the word they're using), now it seems to be "woke".
Basically, woke started out as a way to say that someone is aware of social issues. You seem to like to talk about what Wikipedia has to say about this word, so let me summarize,
In the 1930, woke was first being used as "referring to an awareness of the social and political issues affecting African Americans". In 2014 the meaning slightly transformed to "raise awareness about police shootings of African Americans" and in 2017 it was added to the Oxford English Dictionary where they (still) define it as "alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice".
Only then, in 2020, did it change. "parts of the political center and right wing in several Western countries were using the term woke, often in an ironic way, as an insult for various progressive or leftist movements and ideologies"
People certainly used woke negatively before 2020, but pretending like this is 100% the meaning of it is just a lie. Is it negative in the context of this comment chain here? Yes, of course, but your statements about "'woke' has a definition that is basically insincerity and/or hypocrisy" are not true. It's one of the definitions some people use, but it is not "the" definition of the word.
Yes, today this word has a pretty negative meaning, but that's because right-wing reactionary trolls started to purposefully misuse it to put this word in a bad light. It was used in a positive way for almost 90 years apparently, and I first heard it being used in a positive way on TikTok and other social media platforms.
I don't even know why I am writing so much about this freaking word, and I still don't know how any of this relates to my original comment ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That's what you can read in my comment: "The Wikipedia definition you quote funnily enough is the one I described, "Opponents of progressive social movements often use the term MOCKINGLY or SARCASTICALLY, implying that 'wokeness' is an insincere form of performative activism."" and then I mentioned that this is the definition for PEJORATIVE uses.
At this point I can only assume that you act in bad faith or have severe struggles with reading, seeing how you ignore most of what I say and misenterpret the cherry-picked rest.
If women are a group historically discriminated against by virtue of their sex (female, different physicality, different reproductive role) rather than by their gender (feminine, caring, pretty, submissive, domestic, …) then is the fusing of sex and gender truly progressive? Is it medically, scientifically or philosophically true to assert TWAW, or is it a well-intentioned social fiction?
Like you, I believe there’s much to be commended in “woke” (including the full acceptance of people who wish to live as if they were the other sex, or of no sex) but I think the mechanism (identity politics, intersectionality) and the philosophy (postmodernist) are unhelpful and irrational.
Are they? And is that the definition of gender? submissive?! It's hard to think of someone I know now, who identifies as female, who fits your definition.
And if true, what does some historical discrimination have to do with someone's personal belief of themselves? If I think I'm non-binary, does the historical reason for discrimination against women change me somehow?
And who are you or I to tell someone else what their identity is? That just seems bizarre to me.
> postmodernist
Ironically, most people criticizing post-moderinism are using it as the mechanism of their critique - which is especially post-modernist!
Accepting trans people is about separating gender and sex, not fusing them.
Wokeism is in part an ideology and a set of political goals, but it is also a means of competition. It is the foundation for a system of verbal duelling that determines who gets the limited number of spots at the top of our hierarchy. Like the Edwardian's preoccupation with gossip and scandal or the Aztec's ritual sacrifice of losing ullamaliztli players, it's a means for an overproduced elite to thin its ranks. An excellent example of Wokeness-as-duelling is the story of Annamie Paul, a Canadian politician. Annamie Paul was a woman and lawyer from a dark-skinned Jewish family - this will become important later - who won leadership of the Canadian Green Party. From a Woke standpoint that was the desired outcome, a black woman can become leader of a political party, aren't we wonderful. But winning a position of power and wielding it well are two different things, and Annamie Paul faced a leadership challenge over her position on Israel-Palestine. It was quite mainstream for a western country, but not for Canadian Green party voters. As the back-and-forth turned acrimonious, she alleged her critics were motivated by racism. Public support for the Green party, which had been making slow advances over the preceding years, collapsed spectacularly in the next election.
It's not hard to see, with the benefit of standing outside the fray, what Annamie Paul's mistake was. A Jewish woman, asked about the situation of the Palestinian people, can only acknowledge her privilege, and if she wishes to make no concessions she must pay the political price of not using her privilege to benefit the less fortunate. She could not, in that context, allege racism because in the context of that particular debate, she was of the privileged race - technically religion, but in that context the distinction wasn't important. The rules of Woke competition are by design self-contradictory, but they are still taken seriously, and everyone could see that she had violated them. So she lost the position she had attained, and given the hit to her reputation will need more effort and luck than she spent to get it if she is to attain another as lofty.
Now, what is wrong with any of that? In my opinion, nothing. For Annamie Paul I can only say 'live by the sword, die by the sword', if she'd been able to demonstrate genuine compassion for Palestine she could have walked out of that trap as easily as she walked in. As for the broader effect on society, Woke competition actually selects for the qualities I'd want in my elite. Verbal intelligence, compassion, and tolerating paradox are all good qualities for an elite class to possess. Further, while it's easy for a hypocrite to use it to attain higher rank, it's very hard to retain said rank unless one genuinely displays the virtues Wokeness demands. But, and of course there's a but, it is a system that produces winners and losers, and the losers get to have a say. In particular, straight white men are shut out of a lot of targeted benefits and mutual aide societies others have access to, while being discouraged from forming our own. It takes the arrogance of a rich white man to look at a system like Woke competition and say, "I can win that". So of course, poor white men don't think it's a game worth playing, and when they denounce the structure of the game, any rich white man - or rich white woman for that matter - who tries to argue against them finds themselves in the same position as Annamie Paul, punching down in public. That, of course, makes it worthwhile for people winning the game to use said PWM as a vector to demonstrate their own compassion and attack their competition.
This only changes when the rules of the game adjust to be more reflective of the actual difference between rich and poor. Woke competition does allow for a change of the rules, but it's currently not clear whether such an adjustment would require an overhaul or a tweak. People who think it would require an overhaul often allege that a key goal of woke competition is to fracture the poor along intersectional lines to prevent them making common cause against the rich. If true, that's of course an unforgivable transgression that may require replacing Woke Competition with something else entirely. Those of us who think it might require only a tweak think that this is an artefact of the unconscious privilege of the rich, which they will remedy with all haste once it is brought to their attention.
However, that would be sufficient if it was just talk but there seems to be plenty of walk there as well.
Whereas look at the actual positions of political power. Biden/Harris -- they're both horrific in many wokeness metrics. Rich old privileged straight white, war monger, sexual assault allegations, top cop whose record on imprisoning black people is problematic, descendant of slave owner, and of course staunch supporters of Israel just to name a few (I'm not saying these are fair or valid criticisms but it's all prime woke ammunition).
Yet somehow it doesn't affect them. For all the dueling and competition among the elites (or at least their political representatives) you're imagining, very little wokeism was used against them as far as I could see. They also required very little verbal intelligence, compassion, or tolerance.
What they had is an elite and their corporations who consolidated around them and protect them, don't ask the wrong questions and don't bring out the woke attack dogs. The opposite of dueling and infighting.
And in your last paragraph you're acting like the systems are set up by (or at least is able to be changed by) and for the benefit of people who are not the rich elites. The evidence points to the opposite. It is clearly a tool to divide the underclass and insulate the ruling class.
I disagree with the idea that even the kind of elites you mean aren't affected though, and I'd point to the example of Andrew Cuomo for evidence. It's very plausible that Andrew Cuomo's calls in the early days of covid cost a number of people their lives, that's all the reason any party would need to remove a prominent member. But when he was removed it was through a set of sexual assault allegations that someone had clearly been sitting on for some time. When infighting did erupt, woke competition was the weapon of choice.
As for my last paragraph, that was in small part assertive optimism, in large part a rhetorical device, and just a touch of sarcasm. People like you after all don't need convincing there's a problem with woke competition, it was addressed to people who buy into it. That woke competition is only intended to divide the underclasses can be easily dismissed as the author hiding from his racial privilege, that it has that effect unintentionally because of unconscious privilege by the rich... the rules of the game practically require believing that.
We are. I have no doubt that "woke" is used by lots of people to attack one another. It's a great tool that divides people against one another and insulates the ruling class.
>The way I use it I'm thinking more of the most influential 10% than 1%. People who have it better than most citizens, but their position is precarious. So more the democratic party insiders Biden/Harris bullied into tilting the odds against Sanders/Yang/Gabbard than just Biden/Harris themselves. Of course, my theory does require that Biden/Harris spent a long time in the trenches honing their skills in this kind of dominance struggle. If you don't think they thrived in that environment for so long through being better at earlier versions of woke competition I'd be curious what you think the selection mechanism was. Another thing you might not have noticed about Woke Competition is that it's not about being a perfect person or having no skeletons in your closet. One of the presuppositions is that we all have something undeserving about us and need to keep that fact constantly in mind.
I'm not sure what you mean. Biden and Harris simply weren't attacked with any of the woke stuff which they both have ample material including support for Israel! It's not that other people didn't want to be president or other big donors did not want others to be president.
> I disagree with the idea that even the kind of elites you mean aren't affected though, and I'd point to the example of Andrew Cuomo for evidence. It's very plausible that Andrew Cuomo's calls in the early days of covid cost a number of people their lives, that's all the reason any party would need to remove a prominent member. But when he was removed it was through a set of sexual assault allegations that someone had clearly been sitting on for some time. When infighting did erupt, woke competition was the weapon of choice.
Well firing someone for sexual assault is not woke. Covering up the sexual crimes so it can be used as leverage and/or blackmail while at the same time contgratulating yourselves about how you're the hero of women and denouncing others is woke, but it's that hypocrisy. Using blackmail and little black books to sink politicians who outlive their usefulness is just standard operating procedure in politics and predates woke by centuries.
> As for my last paragraph, that was in small part assertive optimism, in large part a rhetorical device, and just a touch of sarcasm. People like you after all don't need convincing there's a problem with woke competition, it was addressed to people who buy into it. That woke competition is only intended to divide the underclasses can be easily dismissed as the author hiding from his racial privilege, that it has that effect unintentionally because of unconscious privilege by the rich... the rules of the game practically require believing that.
I didn't get that. It sounded like you thought woke was good (selects for qualities you want in your elites, only needs small tweak to improve), and that you thought your elites are interested in your interests ('which they will remedy with all haste once it is brought to their attention').
I've seen it being tossed around on Reddit when there's post about US politics/US social issues and it always looked to me like a generic insult thrown at somebody who doesn't like the more conservative "side" of the US political spectrum. I basically got the impression that it's a shorthand for "You think your opinion and views are modern and hip but I don't share the same view on the world and you are stupid due to that". Reading now Urban dictionary, I see that I was.. kinda on the right track?
US is really weird :)
Let's take the most popular definition there:
Woke - The act of being very pretentious about how much you care about a social issue
Behaving in an attention-seeking manner via presenting oneself on the surface as being intelligent, provocative, important, avant-garde, humorous or significant, yet harboring ulterior motives, typically involving some form of personal gratification or material gain (e.g. advancement in social status, career, wealth, etc.).
Note that using this word is often conflated to be a pretentious act in and of itself, as this word is frequently used as a way to easily discredit people, works of art, ideas or statements while simultaneously boosting one's own status.
So somebody who calls someone else "woke" looks to be, often, trying to discredit the other person, while simultaneously boosting their own status by making the statement that the other person has ulterior motives and does not actually hold the beliefs that they are saying that they hold.
Idk.. it looks like I'm too far from the US culture to really understand this. When somebody says that they think that gay people should not have equal rights to non-gay people, then I see no reason to assume that they don't actually hold that belief and that they would be pretentious. When somebody says the opposite - that gay people should have the same rights than non-gay people then again, I see no reason to assume that they don't actually hold that belief and are pretentious.
Nothing about this looks to have anything to do with progressiveness or hypocrisy or insincerity as far as I can tell but for some reason there's a made-up word to tell the other "side" that "I know you are full of shit and you don't actually believe in what you say".
I am sure your language does have a word that is pretty similar to "pretentious" though it may not have all of the conotations. I recommend a real dictionary that has multiple good definitions or a good cross-language dictionary that can give you several alternate words in your language that map to the various uses of "pretentious".
"Woke" is even more complicated. It is a word that originated over half a century ago in African American culture as part of the civil rights movement. It meant being aware of and working to fight racial injustice. It was then coopted a decade ago by progressive people working on a broader range of social justice issues to describe awareness of those issues. It was then further co-opted by conservative people to mock progressive people as pretentious.
The poster is trying to pretend that only this last meaning is real and valid. They are either ignorant or a racist troll working to further the co-opting of the term.
I used Urban Dictionary for "pretentious" due to the OP explicitly referring to it to understand the meaning of woke.
But this got me intrigued now :) I still can't think of a phrase or word in Estonian that would convey the same (or even similar) meaning. I searched through a couple of dictionaries now and the translations provided there are really not useful. They mean either "complains a lot" or alternatively "has unreasonably high standards / is high maintenance", "braggy" and "pedantic". And these doesn't sound even remotely close to the English explanation of the word.. at all.
Any fellow Estonians wanna help me out here - is there a phrase or word that would capture the essence of "pretentious" in Estonian? :)
Another English word that is very similar in meaning is "ostentatious".
If I had to write out my own definition of "pretentious" it would be: Pretending to be higher class, more refined, more educated or more moral than you actually are and implying that makes you superior to other people.
You could argue that accusing a target of being pretentious is being pretentious, except that it may be a fact. So we have to keep digging, a quest for the truth rather than just adopting one of the existing interpretations.
Also to note, being pretentious doesn't imply conscious act. Like arrogance, the subject isn't necessarily aware, although it may be.
Are woke supporters pretentious? Either way, let's accept some may well be, and if so, it wouldn't be reasonable to dismiss anyone calling that out as pretentious. Not dismissing the fact some of the wokes opponents may well be the ones being pretentious, or as pretentious as the woke. In any case it has become a sided political clash, we will only settle to a predominant interpretation on this matter once fight is over.
It doesn't imply "deliberately trying to appear pretentious", but it does imply "deliberately pretending to be something"
Calling someone woke is discrediting the other person. Its like a signal to other people (especially the people who also often use this word), 'this person is politically aligned with X, this person cannot be right'. Its an insult, but so is the term 'wappie' (used in The Netherlands for people 'who don't believe in corona'). Faggot (when not in UK referring to gay person), nazi (when the person clearly isn't). These are all examples of insulting terms. They're polarizing. Even calling someone a communist when they clearly aren't is insulting, because communism is historically related to dictatorial regimes as well as purges (Stalinism comes to mind).
If they call themselves a communist (or a liberal, or a conservative, a nazi, woke, or whatever), fair game. But calling someone else that way when they did not identify with such is uncalled for. Because you put them on a political spectrum, with all kind of strings and assumptions attached to it.
Now, interestingly, calling someone a nazi or a faggot gets you downvoted or banned on most forums, but with a term like woke people still get away with. Not sure why.
According to Google Translate, pretentious translates to pretensioonikas in Estonian as the most popular translation, so it seems like it got borrowed from English (not implying it originates from English, I don't know about the etymology).
[1] $ dict pretentious
3 definitions found
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Pretentious \Pre*ten"tious\, a. [Cf. F. pr['e]tentieux. See
{Pretend}.]
Full of pretension; disposed to lay claim to more than is
one's; presuming; assuming. -- {Pre*ten"tious*ly}, adv. --
{Pre*ten"tious*ness}, n.
[1913 Webster]
pretentious
adj 1: making claim to or creating an appearance of (often
undeserved) importance or distinction; "a pretentious
country house"; "a pretentious fraud"; "a pretentious
scholarly edition" [ant: {unpretentious}]
2: intended to attract notice and impress others; "an
ostentatious sable coat" [syn: {ostentatious}, {pretentious}]
[ant: {unostentatious}, {unpretending}, {unpretentious}]
3: (of a display) tawdry or vulgar [syn: {ostentatious},
{pretentious}]
[...]
pretentious translates to pretensioonikas in Estonian as the most popular translation
"pretensioonikas" means basically "one who has high demands / expectations" in Estonian :(
For what it’s worth, I am a native English speaker from the UK and living in Germany, and I kind of agree with you about how the word “woke” appears to get used in practice. I’ve certainly never witnessed a member of a minority saying “your support for people like me is just insincere woke nonsense, stop it”, despite my ex being a stereotype of Champagne socialism and therefore getting the opportunity to see what happens when she did make mistakes while trying to support minority causes.
If this is a US cultural thing, that might also explain it.
Over time, as some of this progressive-minded population became more extreme/absurd, the term came to represent that absurdity and became more of an epithet. Students protesting because they believed the proprietor of a shop on campus was racist when he physically stopped some students attempting to shoplift, because they were black. A rich black female college student who entered a cafeteria was asked to leave, and became the center of a large movement (with ACLU support) outraged at being targeted for eating while black, resulting in the staff members being fired. Members of the ACLU supporting a campaign to censor a book for trans-related wrongthink. These sorts of excesses began to be associated with the term, so now, while it can be used both ways, is more commonly associated with the loud, militant, and extremist portions of the progressive movement, and is generally used as a derogatory term.
I can't speak for the other person, but the term is so loaded that it's lost meaning, and it seems important to define your meaning if we are going to talk about it. I agree that it's a bit disingenous to just ask for a definition rather than say, 'that term is so loaded; what do you mean by it?'
It basically means hypocrisy and/or insincerity toward popular progressive causes. That's the meaning. There's also an older one which has mostly been displaced as far as I'm aware, but if it's still used it also has a pretty well defined meaning. In context, at least in this context, it was not ambiguous which meaning was being used.
A bizarre claim only made by people who attack progressives.
You saying you’re completely baffled by this term, or asking for the poster’s particular meaning?
I’d draw a parallel to “White supremacy”. Given the wild range of applications for the term, you need to get a sense of what any one wielder really means.
But it’d be quite obtuse to reply “what’s White supremacy?”
No one in my social circles uses “wokeness” at all, certainly never seriously. It always seems like people upset at “wokeness” are actually just upset that people producing popular media support very simple concepts of diversity. Like when black actors get representation in media previously dominated by white people, to me that is just a good thing, but I see reports that many think this is “wokeness”, which they think is bad. This ultimately reveals that they simply do not like it when white people have to share space with people of other skin tones. Their concerns always seem to me to be… misplaced. In other instances the person may be unhappy about female representation, or trans, queer and non-binary representation. Those are all thinks I think are great. I’m non-binary and it’s really meaningful to me. So when someone calls those things “wokeism” I don’t actually see “wokeism” as the problem I see that persons ideas as the problem.
Hope that answers your questions!
In the 90s Will Smith starred in Independence Day, and absolutely no one complained (as far as I know) because Will Smith is awesome and he deserved the role. See also Blade from the same era.
People get upset when it's clear that a person has been chosen for a role/position just because of their skin colour/gender/sexuality rather than their talent. I can't actually think of any movies that have done this, but plenty of TV shows (Star Trek Discovery).
Obviously some roles require the person to be of a certain race for it to appear authentic. Lots of older films used white actors for middle Eastern roles, which is seen as "white washing" and is therefore wrong. The latest Ghost in the Shell race swapped the main character to be American, and was rightly called out for doing so.
Basically we should be allowed to criticize both ways...
https://www.indiewire.com/2021/07/independence-day-studio-re...
In this case, though, the roles are reversed. The supposedly "woke" studio system didn't want to put a black guy in the lead, whereas the public were more open to the idea.
Could you prove to us in some way that these actors are chosen because of their skin colour/gender/sexuality, and not because of their skills?
I'm not sure any amount of acting talent could save Discovery. The problem is the writing.
The Dark Tower was a sore spot for me. The protagonist was a character inspired by Clint Eastwood and was depicted as fair skinned in every piece of cover art and spinoff before Idris Elba was cast in the role. Blackwashing a character fans of the story all imagined as white really underscored how little appreciation the movie makers had for the source material.
It is a headstone marking the semantic battlefield where competing definitions killed the possibility of clear communication, and now it means nothing.
I’m wondering what specifically you disagree with and why that is a cult?
There are many long magazine articles discussing whether wokeness is a religion or cult. Either way, it has completely derailed all political discourse for the benefit of the most privileged (as defined by money).
And in the media world, it means that everything is now over-the-top preachy, and that scoring political points has become more important than making good art. Sucks, but at least there are plenty of classic movies to re-watch.
It was also used in stoner / party culture around that time to describe being in on the secret that the government was bad, capitalism was bad, etc.
Maybe directly influenced by the movie “waking life” but not sure on that. I was a stoner party kid and my memories of that time are pretty hazy. The culture was super accepting, early advocates for lgbtq before it was an acronym, etc. I also remember that group being very very accepting of everyone who had good intentions regardless of views. “___ is good people” was what we used to say. Probably why I dislike the modern version of woke so much.
"The terms woke capitalism and woke-washing have arisen to describe companies who signal support for progressive causes as a substitute for genuine reform. By 2020, parts of the political center and right wing in several Western countries were using the term woke, often in an ironic way, as an insult for various progressive or leftist movements and ideologies perceived as over-zealous, performative, or insincere."
But perhaps you knew that already.
And by the way, any cult of group of thoughts, will define themselves as "we are for the good and against the evil; therefore, what exactly do you disagree with ? are you for the evil ?"
What's the case for not removing them?
[1] https://www.history.com/news/how-the-u-s-got-so-many-confede...
[2] https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544266880/confederate-statues...
What movies are you thinking of?
Wokeism in mass media is big corporations' fear of missing out and losing customers. Those ideals were shared values of the younger generation decades before the industry adapted to it. Now that these kids have grown up, they are valued as consumers.
Propaganda != opinion that you disagree with
And I didn't say I disagree with the point they wanted to make. It just seems like a point made so poorly it was painful to watch.
But I don't think the problem was that it was so "thick" so much as that it was so poorly done. Instead of being funny, it just reminded me of school bullies and general idiots, and was far too easy to write to be good satire.