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America is becoming less "woke"
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- talldayo 2y agoCounterpoint; we are in a downwards-facing economy with war on our doorstep at eastern and western fronts. Companies have less money to spend on virtue signalling, governments are less discriminate about the results they want, and individuals have higher priorities than expressing uniqueness online. "Woke" is a byproduct of the entire political spectrum being steeped in it's own head-up-ass echo chambers, leading to QAnon and queer marketing strategy respectively. America is pretty much guaranteed to return to a woke status-quo if we're sold enough luxury goods and convince ourselves that everything is fine again. Wokeness is the masturbatory pattern of self-assurance that both the left and right rely on to convince themselves they have absolute control over an irreconcilably apolitical reality.
- JoeAltmaier 2y agoOr it's simple empathy. Folks are fond of denying it's existence these days, which simply marks the speaker as fond of ranting, addicted to the outrage culture so popular these days. Don't like the word? OK use another one. But to tout hatred-of-the-other as some kind of natural normal efficient state is preposterous and ignorant.
- talldayo 2y agoIt's not empathy. Gay people (myself included) don't feel "empathized with" when we see gay people reflected in modern advertising. We feel targeted, and rightfully so - people are preying on the unintelligent reactionary masses that empathize with or want to empathize with queer identity. It is fully and wholly virtue signalling - queer media was better when it was an underground identity! At least then the concept wasn't being abused for brownie points by C-suite executives that profit off the manipulation of their audience. On the flip side, the wanton "wokeness" of the right is equally abusive. Right wing grandstanders say exactly what their party wants to hear, absolve themselves of responsibility ("oh i'm anonymous" or "i don't believe this but it's my right to say it"), and then get thousands of unironic adherents that fully believe in their hyperbolic attention-seeking. It's the exact same mechanism on either side of the aisle, jerking off precisely the same insecurities for almost exactly the same reason. At some indeterminate point in the future, all Americans will end up being conservative. Not because it's the right choice, but because the way politics are headed nobody will be encouraged to think outside marketing and empty platitudes. We already spend more time defending our echo chambers than we spend engaging with policy.
- cdelsolar 2y agoI will never be a conservative.
- talldayo 2y ago"never" is a conservative word.
- jrflowers 2y agoI like this sentence because it is gibberish. One could similarly say “Forbes is a raucous breakfast” in a solemn tone and accomplish an equal amount of meaning
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ta1243 2y agoYou may be a progressive liberal aged 20, but with your views not even changing you will be a moderate conservative aged 60. Even if you become more liberal as time passes, no doubt your historical comments will show you up to "be conservative"
- cdelsolar 2y agoI am 40, but you're partially right, I may have been slightly more left in my early 20s.
- standardUser 2y agoGrown gay men and the queer youth of today are not the same people. Look at the trends of gender and sexual identity of the under-30s. Look at trends in religious activity. Society continues to move inexorably in one direction and the direction is not conservatism.
- ProfessorLayton 2y ago>Gay people (myself included) don't feel "empathized with" when we see gay people reflected in modern advertising. We feel targeted, and rightfully so - people are preying on the unintelligent reactionary masses that empathize with or want to empathize with queer identity. Speak for yourself. Some people just want to see themselves represented in media (Advertising or otherwise) just like the rest of the population. Even if it's just for their money, it's still better than being swept under the rug and forgotten about. >queer media was better when it was an underground identity! There's still plenty of great underground queer media, and it's also great to see some of it go mainstream.
- caseyy 2y agoPerhaps virtue-signalling is recognised more in society now. I and people around me have developed an eye for performative outrage, posturing, and politics in the last several years. The hurting ego is often thinly veiled by grandstanding and incendiary language. You give the person what they need — security, community, direction; and their 500 grievances previously lodged in every direction suddenly disappear. Unfortunately, this is rarely what these people get. There are many others willing to take advantage of their rage, too.
- ThrowawayR2 2y agoAlso posted a few days ago at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41625358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41625358
- dredmorbius 2y agoBelow the dupe threshold as there was little discussion (< 20 comments).
- mpweiher 2y ago[flagged]
- briandear 2y ago[flagged]
- krapp 2y ago[flagged]
- ManuelKiessling 2y ago[flagged]
- falcolas 2y ago> Remember COVID, the lockdowns, the suppression of dissent? This occurred under Trump during his first attempt to "poke the establishment in the eye." > How about the left that used to be opposed to war yet now seem to support continual escalation of the Ukraine conflict? Because 1) we're bound by treaties to do so (we promised to protect them if they dismantled their nuclear arsenal, which they did). 2) The Ukraine is, according to pretty much everybody with knowledge on European politics, acting as the first line of defense against Russia. It's why so many European countries are also supporting the Ukraine. > The danger of Russia is directly proportional to how much money can be made from it. The danger of Russia is there's a dying megalomaniac with nuclear codes and a desire to conquer Europe no matter the cost to Russia. > I’m not voting for the party that supported school closures, coerced “vaccinations,” and funding endless wars. So, you're not voting for trump? Again, all of these happened under his watch as president, and many were backed up by his executive orders. > anyone that has faced two assassination attempts By his own party, by people who voted for him in the past.
- rsyring 2y ago> This election is a simple choice — do we want more of the Snowden-revealed evil of the establishment or do we want to poke the establishment in the eye? I agree this election is a simple choice, but not the one you proposed. It's the choice between electing someone to power that we can be fairly confident will release that power when the time comes and someone who is, by his own admissions and actions, an aspirational autocrat envious of and enamored with despicable world leaders like Putin. As for the other issues you raise, as long as democracy survives, we have a chance of addressing them. When we start electing non-democratic leaders to fix our democracy, we have, by definition, lost.
- highwayman47 2y agoIt never was, however the mainstream media wanted you to think so
- LtWorf 2y agoIt was. But in the posturing way, not in the help anyone way. edit: lol at the downvotes. Check the gini coefficient around the world and get back to me.
- api 2y agoThe main criticism I’ve always had about it is this: that it’s fake. Take San Francisco as a prime example. It’s a place full of people who style themselves as progressive or “woke” or whatever but a starter home is unachievable to anyone without an exit event or a $400k salary. It has one of the widest rich/poor divisions of anywhere I’ve ever seen in the USA. Major industries include mass surveillance and addictive forms of media, and I have no idea how anyone who isn’t in a high six figure job can live well there let alone raise a family. SF is not progressive at all, except in rhetoric.
- briandear 2y agoThe greatest wealth inequality is always in the bluest of cities. See New Haven, CT for dramatic examples.
- api 2y agoI think the arrow of causation goes both ways. Cities tend to be blue. Places with a lot of knowledge work or academia tend to be blue, have higher salaries, and thus have runaway housing costs due to the fact that America has chronically under built housing for over 30 years. Still I don’t think that lets them totally off the hook since they obviously don’t care that much, otherwise they would advocate for better housing and zoning policies to make housing more affordable. So I do think this issue points to a fundamental un-seriousness in the supposed commitment to equity. The right is not necessarily better, e.g. blaming housing costs on immigration instead of underbuilding. But they are not the ones posturing as deeply concerned about equity. Some red areas do accidentally have better housing policies because they tend to be pro development, but this isn’t because they care about the poor. It’s because they are okay with building and that has a side effect of controlling prices. Example: Texas. Summary: both sides suck, but blue areas are also hypocrites.
- neonate 2y agohttps://archive.ph/5LIZC https://archive.ph/5LIZC
- danesparza 2y agoThe article is tracking irrelevant information over time and calling it significant. Please don't publish this stuff on Hacker news.
- qeternity 2y agoTo say nothing of the article itself, calling something that makes the front page of HN irrelevant is sort of how the US ended up in the situation it finds itself in today. If your only response to a counterpoint is to disparage it, you will find yourself with a large cohort of people that believe they have been shut out of the conversation.
- RandomThoughts3 2y ago[flagged]
- linotype 2y agoNo, being permissive of nonsense is what caused the US to arrive at where it is today. The tea party patriots nonsense should have been the end of it.
- boredpeter 2y ago[dead]
- qeternity 2y agoWhat do you mean permissive of nonsense? You mean permissive of views you disagree with? Yeah, I absolutely don't agree with that, and a cursory glance at history will show you that stifling dissent is the quickest path to ruin. And for the record, I largely disagree with the nonsense I suspect you are referring to. I also respect that there a bunch of people who don't, and in a democracy, that matters.
- linotype 2y agoQanon and birtherism were both nonsense at the time and it’s still true today. Lying to score political points should never be tolerated. I’m surprised I have to say this.
- noworriesnate 2y agoThe movement is still coalescing but I noticed this too in my church--people were leaving churches that were more strict about lockdowns towards churches that were more right wing. A steady trickle of people leaving and people arriving.
- CydeWeys 2y agoSame with people fleeing from school systems that were still locked down to ones that had since reopened. I don't think this is about wokeness per se though, just people literally leaving institutions that are closed in favor of ones that are open. Like switching up your regular bar if it stops being open on one of the main nights you used to go there.
- AStonesThrow 2y agoBut suppose that your regular bar served absinthe, and offered 12-hour/day child care?! I'm coming around to the thesis that compulsory education is fundamentally systematic child-care to enable parents to participate in post-industrial employment and labor without needing to be around too much, attempting to raise their bothersome kids at home. We had "latchkey kids" in the 1980s or so, and nowadays we've got parents ignoring their children at home while working from the kitchen table, or in the den. With the rise of feminism, "equal pay for equal work", and girlbosses, there's basically nobody left who knows how to raise children, or wants to do it for free (not merely free, but the opportunity cost of skilled employment), so it makes sense for the State to expand public education as much as humanly possible so that children are mostly out-of-the-way and never home, except to sleep.
- CydeWeys 2y agoParents are spending like 2X of their time on their children now than they did decades ago, so your overall thesis is exactly backwards. Parenting is perceived as a much more intensive activity now, which is so many people are having fewer (or no) kids. The reason seems to be safety culture: Despite society actually being much safer than it was back then, parents don't perceive this to be true, thus children aren't allowed out to play on their own like they used to be. It used to be common that children would be out all day every day planning amongst their own, and only came back for dinner and then bedtime curfew. And that included getting themselves to and from school when school was in session.
- yapyap 2y agoyeugh, nonsensical article
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tomlockwood 2y agoThe economist has published some absolute dreck recently. What happened?
- master_crab 2y agoUsually tended to be moderate but from a free-trade perspective and usually making points blindly obvious to everyone. They’re still late past the post but now they’ve gone weirdly Neo-con.
- g8oz 2y agoExactly why I canceled after many years of subscribing
- Loughla 2y agoLook. Even here people are engaging with this. That's what happened.
- FrustratedMonky 2y agoDon't think you can fault people for engaging in a subject that half the country is willing to sink it for. Can at least talk about it like "wow, the right is really willing to die for this, what are they on about"
- Loughla 2y agoRight or left that wasn't really my point. I didn't intend for anything political at all. The original question was, essentially, why the economist published this. My answer was because people engage with it.
- FrustratedMonky 2y agoI see now, your response was the same as what I said, so we agree. The economist writes about what is happening in the world, this subject has gripped the US, thus it is worth writing about. Sorry. It was the parent comment that had the political tones and calling Economist crap for engaging.
- e-clinton 2y agoI hate the term “woke”… and pretty much any other term that takes a heavily nuanced subject and condenses into one word for lazy minds to use and misuse. I hated the term when the left introduced it 10+ years ago, and I hate it now that the right has taken it over.
- dredmorbius 2y agoThe term dates to the 1930s in its current social awareness usage: <https://scientificorigin.com/origin-of-the-word-woke https://scientificorigin.com/origin-of-the-word-woke> <https://www.npr.org/2023/07/19/1188543449/what-does-the-word-woke-really-mean-and-where-does-it-come-from https://www.npr.org/2023/07/19/1188543449/what-does-the-word...>
- TeaBrain 2y agoBoth of those articles reference only a single historical quote using the term, that being the 1938 song "Scottsboro Boys". The way the term is used in the song also isn't the way that is used today, but as a way to communicate to stay vigilant.
- superb_dev 2y agoAt least woke had a real meaning when it started, now the right just uses it as “anything the the other guys do that I don’t like”
- standardUser 2y agoIt's hard to argue this is inaccurate. The origin of the term isn't really up for debate. And the way the conservative movement uses the term is overwhelming well-documented at this point.
- spinach 2y agoIt's usually used to mean identity politics, isn't it? The origin of the word has it's roots in racism, but now it's come to basically mean all forms of identity politics.
- einpoklum 2y ago1. America contains many countries other than the USA. 2. Regardless, one might rather say that the "America is going woke!" fashion among media pundits is being replaced by "America is rejecting wokeness!" fashion.
- khazhoux 2y agoThe Economist originates and has primary readership, in the USA. In that country, the term "America" is used to refer to "United States of America." When referring to the American continents, the common terms are "Americas" (note the plural form) or the explicit forms North, Central, and South America. Most people in the United States are aware that the United States does not span the entirety of any or all of the American continents. As a simple example, most Americans are aware of the country north of the USA border called Canada, which is also in North America. Hope that helps.
- timruffles 2y agoThe Economist is a British newspaper. HQ London, editors British. That said, ‘America’ is synonymous with the USA in writing and conversation here (and elsewhere in Europe in my experience).
- mastazi 2y ago> The Economist originates [...] in the USA The Economist is a British publication.
- School-Cotton 2y agoSomeone will probably downvote you for making the irrelevant mistake saying US vs UK, but your point is absolutely correct that “America” is colloquially the name of the USA, not a continent or set of continents, in both US and UK English. I suspect OP knows this, and is fighting a battle to try to change how Americans speak their own language — it’s not rare, in my experience, for people in other countries of the Americas to be annoyed by this usage.
- HL33tibCe7 2y ago> 1. America contains many countries other than the USA. Are you a native English speaker? "America" in the singular is universally understood to be equivalent to "the US". You have to use "Americas" with an "s" to refer to the two continents combined, or "North America"/"South America" to refer to them individually.
- lr4444lr 2y agoCan't read the article, but I think this became obvious with the sharp decline in corporate DEI officer job listings.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- shaneofalltrad 2y agohttps://archive.ph/5LIZC https://archive.ph/5LIZC
- falcolas 2y agoAt least a portion of the DEI officer job decline was caused by major investors becoming intolerant of DEI. I don't personally have a causal link for the change in investor's minds, but it happened at about the same time that fighting against DEI became a republican policy. And for what it's worth, DEI's environmental cousin - ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) - reporting for investors is still going quite strong.
- SAI_Peregrinus 2y agoAlso DEI officers are a thing only at companies large enough to have an HR department. Their entire purpose is to ensure that the company doesn't get sued or fined for making illegal race-based hiring decisions. Once all the big companies have filled that new title there's not much reason to expect lots of job postings for the title: the market is saturated. Even if no company eliminated their DEI officer position you'd still expect the number of job postings to drop! Hiring for new positions follows a sigmoid curve, not an exponential or even linear one.
- ravenstine 2y agoIs it really intolerance of DEI, or the fact that those jobs are basically horseshit? It's one thing to incorporate aspects of DEI into company culture and to have policy around it, but do you really need a role dedicated to DEI? I really doubt it. I've worked at a few companies with these DEI officers, and the value they bring to a company is extremely dubious, if existent at all. My last company let theirs go, despite the administration being highly leftist at the time, and it was painfully obvious why. It's insulting to everyone that a DEI officer makes more than a burger flipper considering their cushy duties. DEI-based roles were destined to fail.
- sirmike_ 2y agoA good thing. "woke" is a marketing term used by people who can make a buck from it. For it or against it.
- Animats 2y agoSee also "The rise and fall of the DEI movement" on NPR.[1] [1] https://www.npr.org/2024/09/06/1198913319/consider-this-from-npr-draft-09-06-2024 https://www.npr.org/2024/09/06/1198913319/consider-this-from...
- ElonChrist 2y ago[dead]
- zug_zug 2y agoEvery chart shows a trend down from peak but still way up from 2019. Seems like what I’ll call a tee-up article - very fact-light with a provocative title so people can vent their preexisting frustrations after skimming it.
- eatonphil 2y agoThis is my impression of Economist articles in general. They very rarely give you enough historical context (for me) to understand what they're talking about. It's why I ended my subscription with them.
- cbrpnk 2y agoAny alternatives?
- eatonphil 2y agoCouncil on Foreign Relations is pretty good. Also longer-form documentaries on YouTube from DW, Al Jazeera, CNA Insider, Bloomberg Originals.
- raxxorraxor 2y agoCouncil on Foreign Relations might have good content, but it is a special interest group. It is not equivalent to a news outlet, they are more like consultants. DW is pretty reliable, don't know about CNA/Bloomberg. Al Jazeera is very questionable to say the least. Worth it to read as you should also read biased news and validate content for yourself of course and on some topics their content is decent.
- Jensson 2y ago> They very rarely give you enough historical context (for me) to understand what they're talking about It gave the charts so you could make your own conclusion, so seems like the opposite of what you said for this article.
- wturner 2y agoWoke was initially a phrase coined by black Americans to express awareness to racism
- VoodooJuJu 2y ago[flagged]
- dragonwriter 2y ago> Can we not put woke in quotes? We can, but in the sense used here it is appropriate not to. > And when someone says woke in a discussion, do not ask them to define it. Given that there are at least three, distantly related, uses to refer to social phenomena in current use, and the single most common or those actually is a simple handwavey pejorative, no, I absolutely will ask people to define what they mean, if nothing else to give them the opportunity to overcome the presumption that they are using it in the empty pejorative sense.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- 0xbadcafebee 2y ago> Stand up for what you're doing, own it, and have some courage & stand up for it when someone calls you out as a supporter of it. Okay. What are you trying to do with this comment? What's the purpose? I honestly can't even tell what your opinion is, or if there's even a specific outcome you want. Your statement is so generalized that it could be said by anyone about anything. So it would seem there's something that's bothering you, but you won't come out and say it. You did mention having a problem with the idea of "woke" or "woke people", and that opinion tends to carry some significant baggage. So I would tend to assume you're "anti-woke". If I googled that phrase, what tends to come up is a whole lot of hatred. But ask people about specific things about this opinion, and they back away from it, as if admitting to it would get them into trouble. So what are your specific opinions about ideas related to race, sex, gender, nationality, etc? Do you have the courage to stand up for what you're talking about when I call you out on it?
- mjfl 2y ago[flagged]
- mjfl 2y ago[flagged]
- hoppyhoppy2 2y ago>Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- fakedang 2y agoAs a Muslim who also spends considerable time in the Middle East, I am so totally confused by how America decided that wokism and pro-Palestinianism go together. I mean, literally one is in support of a proposed country where they kill gays or throw them off of rooftops, not to mention the religious backdrop that encourages them to carry out such shit. The other is a movement in outwardly strong support for those gays. Like how? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_State_of_Palestine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_State_of_...
- mjfl 2y agoPalestinians, both gay and straight, are being carpet bombed in Gaza. The Western left tends to support the weak and oppressed. Being carpet bombed is a form of being weak and oppressed.
- lolinder 2y agoThe US has got into a place where for most people political opinions are a package deal that you get shipped to you in a box from a major political party. You don't think through each issue and come to a conclusion, that takes too much time, you just subscribe to the bundle of your choosing and accept everything they offer. Are you strongly pro-life? Well, that comes bundled with an isolationist foreign policy these days, so let's just check that box for you while we're at it. Are you in favor of gay rights? Well, that comes bundled with opposition to Israel and support of Palestine. It's not about what makes coherent sense, it's about groupthink.
- acrabcaba 2y ago[flagged]
- jspaetzel 2y agoExamples of poor polling data for $200
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoDEI mentions in earnings calls sounds solid to me fwiw
- mike_hearn 2y agoThat doesn't follow if you assume that promotion of an idea is highest when it seeks to establish dominance, and goes away if it becomes hegemonic / the "new normal".
- biorach 2y agoWell maybe that is a bad assumption in this case
- vuln 2y agoA bunch of people are mad that their “white guilt” was weaponized and provided mansions for nonprofits, while doing absolutely nothing to attempt to fix the issue.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- karmasimida 2y ago[flagged]
- mike_hearn 2y agoThe Economist has a style guide rule of always explaining who someone is no matter how famous. The description they chose for Elon Musk in this article is "billionaire conspiracy theorist". And their thesis is that corporate wokeness is in decline - how ironic. Also interesting how much more biased their headlines are in the print edition than online: > This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline “Back to sleep” I wonder why they do that. Presumably they know online articles will be seen by a more diverse audience?
- b3ing 2y agoThe main benefactors of DEI are white women, not sure if this is what "woke" is to mean or not.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- anonfordays 2y ago[flagged]
- raxxorraxor 2y agoUniversal humanism is just so much more effective than what DEI brought forward and bad ideas have to die at some point. You cannot keep them alive forever, even if you are not allowed to criticize them. But yes, this was their most egregious failure and in my opinion completely disqualifies them to bring something worthwhile to the table on these issues.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- anonfordays 2y agoMy post above got flagged, here it is for future readers: >“Raise your hand if you’re a racist.” Guests may often have broken down in tears when told that their claims to be colour-blind were simply another brick in the edifice of white supremacy The fact that society collectively thought that not only was this OK, but those voices were the ones to be amplified was hysteria. Anyone who spoke up against this was immediately shouted down and called racist. The fallout from George Floyd and "The Summer of Love" will be studied as a moral panic in the future. People are slowly coming back to their senses. You can only deny reality for so long. Truly Orwellian.
- klipklop 2y agoI feel like this article is gaslighting. The woke cycle is a long way from being over. The culture war still wages on.
- NoPicklez 2y agoThere are a number of articles online with this sentiment. Perhaps "woke" behavior has become more of a cultural norm as opposed to being considered "woke". Gaslighting is probably taking it too far, just because an article has written something you don't agree with, or perhaps doesn't prove itself enough doesn't mean it's gaslighting.
- incomingpain 2y ago"Woke" is a code word for a political movement that hates being labeled. Regularly rebranding because they are a dead political movement. If they were somehow forced to go by their appropriate label, they'd disappear in a week. This article is simply denoting the most recent label of 'woke' has been burnt and they'll be rebranding again. In the long term this political movement will become a religion. Might be next year, might take another 25 years.