Wow, I really hated this article. Thanks for the bad opinion, Paul.
The Origins of Wokeness
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Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#92[flagged]
I believe we are at last seeing the person for who they really are.
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#93it's not about the "meaning" of the word but more the way people use it and its connotations.
it is often code for a racist or homophobic sentiment the speaker doesn't want to own up to.
when people say "things are getting too woke" - let's be honest, they are often saying that people who were once unfairly marginalized (black people, gay people, women) are getting less marginalized.
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#94He is attacking a straw man, by defining "woke" in a far narrower sense than it is actually used. Any objection to any form of prejudice, or any indication that the speaker is aware that members of some groups are better off than others, will be labelled "woke" by many commenters. It's to the point where some bigots say "woke" in the exact same places that their grandparents would say "n***-lover".
But instead Graham focuses on people who are overly concerned with specific language because those people are easier to criticize.
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#95From the article: "Twitter, which was arguably the hub of wokeness, was bought by Elon Musk in order to neutralize it, and he seems to have succeeded — and not, incidentally, by censoring left-wing users the way Twitter used to censor right-wing ones, but without censoring either. [14]" Then follow to the footnote: "[14] Elon did something else that tilted Twitter rightward though: he gave more visibility to paying u…
You raise good points. I’m optimistic because i think the quieting of some voices (while bad) is much better than their complete silencing, as has happened through deplatforming, shadow banning, and even White House requests in the past. I also think the gruellingly slow death of legacy media and rise of bluesky and X (and mastodon) is a net positive for society, if only for the reason that ~tweets can be immediately…
> I also think the gruellingly slow death of legacy media and rise of bluesky and X (and mastodon) is a net positive for society, if only for the reason that ~tweets can be immediately and transparently rebutted, whereas brainwashing ‘news’ programs can’t.
The problem with this logic is that for the most part, new media isn't replacing legacy media; it's simply placing new layer of filtering in front of it. The vast majority of people sharing information on these platforms aren't journalists doing their own research. Instead, they're getting their information from journalists and just applying their own filtering and spin. "Rebuting" usually just involves linking to different news sources. You were always better just reading the legacy media in the first place.
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#96[flagged]
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#97From the article: "Twitter, which was arguably the hub of wokeness, was bought by Elon Musk in order to neutralize it, and he seems to have succeeded — and not, incidentally, by censoring left-wing users the way Twitter used to censor right-wing ones, but without censoring either. [14]" Then follow to the footnote: "[14] Elon did something else that tilted Twitter rightward though: he gave more visibility to paying u…
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Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#98I think there’s a fascinating throughline from older Christian moral enforcement to what the essay calls “wokeness.” Historically, a lot of Christian movements had the same impulse to legislate language and behaviors—just grounded in sin rather than privilege. For instance, the 19th-century American Puritans famously policed each other’s speech and actions because the stakes were framed as eternal salvation versus da…
The difference here is people are trying to address people’s actual life experiences instead of something they believe based on faith.
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#99I think the word “woke” means very different things to some people.
As an example I think people from the American political left to somewhere(?) in the middle see it as what it has been introduced as, that being looking past the status quo and instead looking at your own values, i.e. the morality of homelessness and not having a disdain for them but empathy for them instead.
and then on the other side it feels like the people on the American political right see it as what this website describes it as “ A self-righteously moralistic person who behaves as if superior to others.”
I think the divide has originated from taking unlikeable behaviour and labeling that as ‘woke’ (in bad faith of course) and some people have just bonded to that definition so much that they see it as that.
At least that’s what I’ve noticed online over the past few (bonkers) years
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#100> a mob of angry people uniting on social media to get someone ostracized or fired
Worth noting that this arose by the specific design of the social media ownership. The "correct" side was artificially boosted and the incorrect side was censored. The outraged would have just cancelled each other out otherwise.