8 ms·

I have a question. Is "woke" actually synonymous with cancel culture or "extremism"? because when I became aware of the term it just meant more or less socially

I have a question. Is "woke" actually synonymous with cancel culture or "extremism"? because when I became aware of the term it just meant more or less socially aware, particularly to the struggles of minorities. Then I tuned out for awhile and when I noticed it again it seemed to be a pejorative people like Tucker Carlson use to drum up fear that anyone who said their friend was gay in the 90s is going to prison. For instance my father in law frequently talks about how he can't say anything because of the woke people, if I ask him what he can't say he has no answer and if I ask him who's going to hold him accountable if he said it, he can't answer that either - but holy shit is he scared of the woke people. Anyway when I see people use words like "woke" or "transgenderfication" (of the children, of course) it really tips their hat. I guess my curiosity is did the woke people tarnish the word, or did opposing media re-define it?

memish 4y ago
- OOD 4y ago
  - memish 4y ago
    And here we see that it's blasphemous to even point that out.
  - phabricator 4y ago
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - OOD 4y ago
      I relent the loss of Tumblr because these tired takes on "chuds" and "literal nazis, tell ya whut" were mostly contained there and the shitty subreddits. Now they're getting posted on HN :(.
the_only_law 4y ago
> it really tips their hat. I guess my curiosity is did the woke people tarnish the word, or did opposing media re-define it? A bit of both, IMO.
fknorangesite 4y ago
> because when I became aware of the term it just meant more or less socially aware, particularly to the struggles of minorities. That is what it meant; i.e., that you open your eyes and start seeing the injustice around you. And then the right-wing media machine found out about the term and turned it into a catchall insult, like they do with so many terms they appropriate from the left. It's just the latest iteration of what happened with phrases like "trigger [warning]" or "politically correct."
- saas_sam 4y ago
  The funny thing is "woke" has the same connotation as "redpilled." The idea being you see the world the way it really is while everyone else is oblivious.
  - cestith 4y ago
    The red pill, of course, being estradiol and the blue pill being an antidepressant. The Matrix was a film about discovering you are not who the world told you to be by two trans women.
    - staticman2 4y ago
      That's an interpretation of the Matrix some blogger made up. As far as I can tell the directors never said the pills represent estradiol. It strikes me as a real stretch. The effect of taking the red pill is like an LSD trip.
      - cestith 4y ago
        Say what you want about the actual pills, but the film is canonically a trans metaphor. https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-53692435 https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-53692435 LSD by the way does not wake you up from hallucinations. It causes them. Are you referring to psychedelics raising one's sense of connection to the world around them?
        4y ago
349ecb77cd62 4y ago
- pjc50 4y ago
  > making 3 year olds trans and giving them genital surgery This of course does not happen, which is what makes it such a perfect bogeyman.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - BizarroLand 4y ago
    Exactly. In Umberto Eco's "A Practical List for Identifying Fascists", the one that is be being displayed here is this: The enemy is both weak and strong. “[…] the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.” https://www.faena.com/aleph/umberto-eco-a-practical-list-for-identifying-fascists https://www.faena.com/aleph/umberto-eco-a-practical-list-for... "Libs" (or whatever the villain of the day is called) are so terrifying we're cutting off baby penises with a lawnmower in full view of our cheering public but so weak that all we need is a single person to call us out in a nasty email to completely defeat us (please send money to our campaign against lawnmowing baby penises).
    - overrun11 4y ago
      Heuristics like this seem pretty useless. It's true for basically all political rhetoric. The right is made up of dumb, weak incels living in their parents basement but also are going to usher in an era of totalitarian control and fascism. It seems pretty natural to denigrate your enemies as well as play up the fear depending on your goals at that particular moment.
      - BizarroLand 4y ago
        I emphatically disagree with you. All arguments are not equal. If I had to boil it down to a single line the issue with "the right" from "the left"'s side, it would be that the right is "intentionally heartless". Not stupid or intentionally fascist, just, intentionally heartless. That's a far cry from the Right's rhetoric of "Commie loving tree hugging libs" and that "We should kill them all and let God sort them out", etc. I'm sure the reality is far more distressing than my imitation thereof. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/12/11/hatred-liberals-is-all-thats-left-conservatism/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/12/11/hatred-li...
pjc50 4y ago
> it just meant more or less socially aware, particularly to the struggles of minorities. Then I tuned out for awhile and when I noticed it again it seemed to be a pejorative people like Tucker Carlson use to drum up fear These are the same thing, and for the same reason.
braingenious 4y ago
>did the woke people tarnish the word, or did opposing media re-define it? It’s the latter. “Woke” is mostly used nowadays as a pejorative by folks who are worried that their “tits or GTFO”-style post histories might actually have real consequences and are involved in a harried attempt to rewrite contemporary social mores in their favor. It is also used (in the US) by naive, misguided, and mostly older people that are genuinely trying to signal some sort of connection to progressive politics, generally with limited knowledge of them. Either way it’s a word that I personally use as a sign not to engage with the person speaking because either way it’s somebody asking for (or demanding) a free education about stuff they refuse to google.
- OOD 4y ago
  - braingenious 4y ago
    - OOD 4y ago
carapace 4y ago
- OOD 4y ago
  - fleetwoodsnack 4y ago
    - OOD 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - fleetwoodsnack 4y ago
        OOD 4y ago
  - carapace 4y ago
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - OOD 4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - carapace 4y ago
    I don't have anything useful to add to this conversation (apparently) so I'll see myself out.
Veen 4y ago
You're not going to get a useful answer to that question, just lots of people from both sides of the argument caricaturing and insulting their opponents (as you will see if you peruse the responses).
Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
"woke", at its base, just means recognition of the struggles of minorities, both racial minorities and gender/sexual minorities (LGBT+). However, there's a VERY LOUD yet VERY SMALL minority of people that try to "out-woke" everyone else. On reddit, I recently had someone tell me not to use the acronym "POC" and to spell out "People of Color" because POC can also mean Piece of Crap. I whole-heartedly rejected their comment and told them it was a deliberate bad faith interpretation in an attempt to "out-woke" me and it just made them insufferable. I asked if they scolded electronics engineers for referring to a "surface-mount device" as an "SMD" because "SMD" can also mean "suck my dick", or if they even go a step further and say they shouldn't use the word "mount" because that can be a sexual term which might offend sexual assault victims. They deleted their comment. Back on topic, "woke" has also been hijacked by right-wing media to also refer to "Cancel Culture". CC is also another problematic term, because to some, CC just means "responsibility for your shitty opinions", while to others, it means "simple disagreement". The problem of course is what makes an opinion "shitty" is incredibly subjective. Certainly, someone who is very vocal about how they consider any non-white race to be inferior is shitty, and I think deserves to get "cancelled". But some people have genuinely learned and improved themselves, and yet people still try to cancel them.

memish 4y ago

OOD 4y ago
- memish 4y ago
  And here we see that it's blasphemous to even point that out.
- phabricator 4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - OOD 4y ago
    I relent the loss of Tumblr because these tired takes on "chuds" and "literal nazis, tell ya whut" were mostly contained there and the shitty subreddits. Now they're getting posted on HN :(.

the_only_law 4y ago

> it really tips their hat. I guess my curiosity is did the woke people tarnish the word, or did opposing media re-define it? A bit of both, IMO.

fknorangesite 4y ago

> because when I became aware of the term it just meant more or less socially aware, particularly to the struggles of minorities. That is what it meant; i.e., that you open your eyes and start seeing the injustice around you. And then the right-wing media machine found out about the term and turned it into a catchall insult, like they do with so many terms they appropriate from the left. It's just the latest iteration of what happened with phrases like "trigger [warning]" or "politically correct."

saas_sam 4y ago
The funny thing is "woke" has the same connotation as "redpilled." The idea being you see the world the way it really is while everyone else is oblivious.
- cestith 4y ago
  The red pill, of course, being estradiol and the blue pill being an antidepressant. The Matrix was a film about discovering you are not who the world told you to be by two trans women.
  - staticman2 4y ago
    That's an interpretation of the Matrix some blogger made up. As far as I can tell the directors never said the pills represent estradiol. It strikes me as a real stretch. The effect of taking the red pill is like an LSD trip.
    - cestith 4y ago
      Say what you want about the actual pills, but the film is canonically a trans metaphor. https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-53692435 https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-53692435 LSD by the way does not wake you up from hallucinations. It causes them. Are you referring to psychedelics raising one's sense of connection to the world around them?
      - 4y ago

349ecb77cd62 4y ago

pjc50 4y ago
> making 3 year olds trans and giving them genital surgery This of course does not happen, which is what makes it such a perfect bogeyman.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- BizarroLand 4y ago
  Exactly. In Umberto Eco's "A Practical List for Identifying Fascists", the one that is be being displayed here is this: The enemy is both weak and strong. “[…] the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.” https://www.faena.com/aleph/umberto-eco-a-practical-list-for-identifying-fascists https://www.faena.com/aleph/umberto-eco-a-practical-list-for... "Libs" (or whatever the villain of the day is called) are so terrifying we're cutting off baby penises with a lawnmower in full view of our cheering public but so weak that all we need is a single person to call us out in a nasty email to completely defeat us (please send money to our campaign against lawnmowing baby penises).
  - overrun11 4y ago
    Heuristics like this seem pretty useless. It's true for basically all political rhetoric. The right is made up of dumb, weak incels living in their parents basement but also are going to usher in an era of totalitarian control and fascism. It seems pretty natural to denigrate your enemies as well as play up the fear depending on your goals at that particular moment.
    - BizarroLand 4y ago
      I emphatically disagree with you. All arguments are not equal. If I had to boil it down to a single line the issue with "the right" from "the left"'s side, it would be that the right is "intentionally heartless". Not stupid or intentionally fascist, just, intentionally heartless. That's a far cry from the Right's rhetoric of "Commie loving tree hugging libs" and that "We should kill them all and let God sort them out", etc. I'm sure the reality is far more distressing than my imitation thereof. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/12/11/hatred-liberals-is-all-thats-left-conservatism/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/12/11/hatred-li...

pjc50 4y ago

> it just meant more or less socially aware, particularly to the struggles of minorities. Then I tuned out for awhile and when I noticed it again it seemed to be a pejorative people like Tucker Carlson use to drum up fear These are the same thing, and for the same reason.

braingenious 4y ago

>did the woke people tarnish the word, or did opposing media re-define it? It’s the latter. “Woke” is mostly used nowadays as a pejorative by folks who are worried that their “tits or GTFO”-style post histories might actually have real consequences and are involved in a harried attempt to rewrite contemporary social mores in their favor. It is also used (in the US) by naive, misguided, and mostly older people that are genuinely trying to signal some sort of connection to progressive politics, generally with limited knowledge of them. Either way it’s a word that I personally use as a sign not to engage with the person speaking because either way it’s somebody asking for (or demanding) a free education about stuff they refuse to google.

OOD 4y ago
- braingenious 4y ago
  - OOD 4y ago

carapace 4y ago

OOD 4y ago
- fleetwoodsnack 4y ago
  - OOD 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - fleetwoodsnack 4y ago
      - OOD 4y ago
- carapace 4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - OOD 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- carapace 4y ago
  I don't have anything useful to add to this conversation (apparently) so I'll see myself out.

Veen 4y ago

You're not going to get a useful answer to that question, just lots of people from both sides of the argument caricaturing and insulting their opponents (as you will see if you peruse the responses).

Sohcahtoa82 4y ago

"woke", at its base, just means recognition of the struggles of minorities, both racial minorities and gender/sexual minorities (LGBT+). However, there's a VERY LOUD yet VERY SMALL minority of people that try to "out-woke" everyone else. On reddit, I recently had someone tell me not to use the acronym "POC" and to spell out "People of Color" because POC can also mean Piece of Crap. I whole-heartedly rejected their comment and told them it was a deliberate bad faith interpretation in an attempt to "out-woke" me and it just made them insufferable. I asked if they scolded electronics engineers for referring to a "surface-mount device" as an "SMD" because "SMD" can also mean "suck my dick", or if they even go a step further and say they shouldn't use the word "mount" because that can be a sexual term which might offend sexual assault victims. They deleted their comment. Back on topic, "woke" has also been hijacked by right-wing media to also refer to "Cancel Culture". CC is also another problematic term, because to some, CC just means "responsibility for your shitty opinions", while to others, it means "simple disagreement". The problem of course is what makes an opinion "shitty" is incredibly subjective. Certainly, someone who is very vocal about how they consider any non-white race to be inferior is shitty, and I think deserves to get "cancelled". But some people have genuinely learned and improved themselves, and yet people still try to cancel them.