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Comment by feurio | Hacker News Reader

You can also fight noble cause in a wrong way, you go with the alert against racial prejudice and discrimination in a way that causes other issues, I am against woke because they want people banned or muted or offended from platform for saying things that they don't agree with

I think you're oversimplifying serious issues there, it's not being against or pro racial prejudice, it's being against racial prejudice but also pro freedom of speech, against moderation and censorship and pro conversation

Woke culture has alienated whoever was racist, and whoever had racist idea was removed from Twitter, the result? They just created their own societies on 4chan and other QAnon channels, away from conversation and from anyone who could tell them why their ideas were wrong, the result? Racist grew their support to the point where Trump was elected president, now that Trump is banned from Twitter, he is still growing his user base, away, unmoderated, and without the opportunity to discuss

so yeah I am against wokes

I don't think that I am oversimplifying anything.

Why are you conflating freedom of speech, moderation and censorship?

Freedom of speech means the government won't come and arrest you for saying something. That's got nothing to do with wokeness or Twitter.

Twitter (et al) are commercial businesses. They have terms of service and if you don't abide to them you get kicked. It's very simple. You're not paying for it - you're not the customer.

If a pig farm discovers that some pigs have started tail-biting and annoyng the other pigs then they'll take 'em out back. Letting a minority annoy the other pigs, resulting in a less valuable product doesn't benefit them. Twitter users are the pigs, not the supermarket. it's just good business.

I'll defend to the death your right to your freedom of speech even though don't agree with it, but I'm damned if I'm going to lend you a megaphone to express it. Particularly if you're going to, say, deny the holocaust and my granparents were exterminated in it.

And as for the idea that racists are going to stop being racists if theyre not on Twitter for people tell them that they are wrong, well bless your heart.

> now that Trump is banned from Twitter, he is still growing his user base, away, unmoderated, and without the opportunity to discuss

I thought that you were against moderation?

Just come forward and say that you're a trolling woke this thing about freedom of speech and governments is like one of your(theirs?) preferred point, but who cares? Governments are people elected by people, not coffee machines elected by coffee machine so I can also be a supporter of freedom of speech within people and their neighbours outside of the boundaries of the law, also yeah Twitter can do whatever it wants, I needed a mainstream platform which helped alienating people towards their circle

> this thing about freedom of speech and governments is like one of your(theirs?) preferred point, but who cares?

Anyone who cares about reality? Because that's all freedom of speech is. If you break ToS, tough.

I don't follow the coffee machine bit, sorry.

> also yeah Twitter can do whatever it wants, I needed a mainstream platform which helped alienating people towards their circle

Glad you agree that Twitter can do whatever it wants. Maybe it sucks, but that's a free market for you!

Can I take it that you were banned from Twitter? If so, why?

I was not on Twitter before the explosion of woke culture, but every now and then I go to read without an account and there's a lot of verbal violence

The coffee machine bit: Governments have regulations that protect freedom of speech, and government are made of people and elected by people, if we let woke culture go ahead in their ideas that freedom of speech is ok to be limited when some ideas are expressed, how long since a enough number of politicians get elected and put that into law/change the law? So yeah freedom of speech as-is, is from the government, but it has to be protected also between people as people have the power to form ideas that change laws, because we don't elect machines

> I was not on Twitter before the explosion of woke culture, but every now and then I go to read without an account and there's a lot of verbal violence

Wait, what?! "verbal violence" - I thought you were the defender of freedom of speech? Have we switched and you're now the woke-ist snowflake who is scared of words?

I'm sure you're aware that the next bit is practically the defintion of the slippery-slope fallacy. Given that we have:

* Brazil - Bolsonaro (not woke) * USA - Trump (not woke) until recently and the house likely to turn to the GoP (not woke) soon * UK - Boris Johnson (about as woke as Rip Van Winkle) * Russia - Putin (about as woke as Trump)

I dont think that we're in dange of falling into some Woke World Order anytime soon!

Can you give one soitary example (preferably your best) of a "woke" law being passed, please?

If someone is denying the holocaust you don't give him a megaphone to express it, but you also talk to him and show him proof and surely you don't kill him or censor him or incarcerate him

I don't have to talk to anyone - hey have their freedom of speech, and I have the freedom not to listen to their nonsense. Would you force me to

Has a "woke" person killed someone now? Incarcerated them? Examples, please! I mean, I know that in Germany you might get in trouble for holocaust denial, but they kind of have had some major problems with that whole area, so I have some sympathy.

> Going by the accepted definition what you pointed me to

The article you were pointed to contained far more information than that.

Choosing to treat that one sentence as a strict definition doesn't really hold up.

Your last sentence sound like a personal attack, which makes me think you aren't arguing in good faith.

OK, the actual definition on that page is:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/ WOHK) is an English adjective meaning 'alert to racial prejudice and discrimination' that originated in African-American Vernacular English (AAVE).

Google says: adjective: woke; comparative adjective: woker; superlative adjective: wokest

    alert to injustice in society, especially racism.
    "we need to stay angry, and stay woke"

Merriam Webster: chiefly US slang : aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)

So, that seems to be the accepted defintion. I can't really copypasta the whole Wikipedia page now, can I.

The last sentence was not a personal attack, it was merely the logical conclusion his own appraisal of himself; "I am an anti-woke"

If you have an alterative defintion that would refute the conclusion then I'm all ears.

Sorry for the late reply;

There is a whole section called "Woke as a pejorative term", also an earlier section states: "there is no single agreed-upon definition of woke".

The point is instead of interacting with the thread to find out the contextual meaning, you decided to settle one a definition simplistic enough to conclude "op is for racism/discrimination".

First, formal logical analysis of complex semantics (which that Wikipedia page implies is the case for the word "woke") doesn't work.

Even if it did, "anti-" can refer to any aspect of something; and since there is often no distinction between a-<something> and anti-<something>, this further illustrates why trying to guess the meaning of a word doesn't work.

> If you have an alterative defintion that would refute the conclusion then I'm all ears.

Given by wccrawford in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30349172

Which also calls into question your disingenuity:

> I'm just stuggling to see why being alert to racial prejudice and discrimination is bad thing

wccrawford pretty clearly explained it, but here you are reverting back to ignorance.

But still you're here getting only the definition that you want to take and ignoring all the other stuff about wokes fighting for their ideals by trying to censor, ban, fire those who have different ideas, instead of discussing... I already told you that their attention to those things is not the problem but is the attitude no?

Let's say that I am a guy, attentive to social justice, noble. Then I am that same guy who reads about someone trying to talk bad about social justice, I converse with him (good), I start calling him names, want his head, want him banned and alienated (bad)

So this is an invite to go further than the definition and that point that you egregiously understood

I've invited you to give me an alternative definition - can you just tack on an extra sentence to the Wikipedia, Merriam-Webster or Goole definitions please? Once you have defined what woke is then you can talk about what they do. Wanting people banned, censored, fired are actions that can be carried out by anyone. Vladimir Putin has people banned, censored, fired (and worse), but he's not woke, is he?

We're having a converstion, but for you to make a valid point that people are doing these thing then you need to present examples.

You couldn't/wouldn't present an example of the newspaper wokeness that you suggest is happening.

Give me just one (your best) concrete example of this woke culture in action and you'll have made a point, otherwise this is all just angels dancing on the head of pin territory.

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