How Prevalent is Wokeness in Society Today?

[Joshe]

I would currently define woke as an ideology that recognizes injustice and unfairness and seeks to address them in misguided and immature ways. These approaches stem from underdeveloped egos that derive purpose and meaning by entrenching their identity in the cause, resulting in outward expressions and solutions rooted in self-righteousness and moral indignation.

These often cluster:

• Identity politics
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)
• Cancel culture
• Virtue signaling
• Language policing
• Privilege checking
• LGBTQ activism
• Social justice activism

I live on the east coast of the US and it doesn't seem very prevalent here. It seems to mostly be embraced by younger, less mature, and undeveloped people in cultures where religion and conservatism aren't the norm. But those cultures are not the norm. So I'm just curious, how prevalent is it really? 

I wonder if woke TV shows, advertisements, and social media make it seem larger than it is. 

I realize it's hard to quantify, so I'm just looking for opinions, really.

Edited November 26 by Joshe

[What Am I]

I don't have much to add, except to say I think I agree with your impression of the average woke adherent. I'm sure some are more sophisticated, but at that point, it may be appropriate to say that they've graduated from the "woke" label.

It is strange, because despite the concept of wokeness being so prominent, it's not as if everyone you see in public has blue hair and a Che Guevara t-shirt. In fact, as you said, it seems like quite a rare occurrence to actually run into anyone who's outwardly of the ideology. Though it could just be a matter of where you spend your time. You and I are older fellas, and the woke population may drop off significantly at age 35+.

It's also possible that we're dealing with a top-down pushing of ideology. Maybe it was never really popular with the people to begin with. And if entertainment and corporations stop pushing it, perhaps it'll fade away altogether. I noticed Walmart is backing down from DEI, which seems pretty relevant.

https://apnews.com/article/walmart-dei-inclusion-diversity-34b06922e60e5116fe198696201ce4d9

[Schizophonia]

It’s almost non existent in my world, these kinds of archetype exists because they are denied.

The projected world is you in deny, the more you tend to emotionally, energetically consider something, the more it means this thing is you in deny.

The less something is noticed (let’s say breathing) the more it means it’s accepted, you identify to it without resistance.

If what i say is clear.

Edited November 26 by Schizophonia

[eos_nyxia]

To my awareness, what you're describing originated and peaked the most strongly in the early 2010s, especially with the use of "woke" in a nonsarcastic, non-ironic way (i.e. these days you hear it used more to insult people rather than hearing people use it as a positive self-identifier).

I was an undergrad when this peaked.

3 hours ago, Joshe said:

I would currently define woke as an ideology that recognizes injustice and unfairness and seeks to address them in misguided and immature ways. These approaches stem from underdeveloped egos that derive purpose and meaning by entrenching their identity in the cause, resulting in outward expressions and solutions rooted in self-righteousness and moral indignation.

Well, most of these people were young adults and probably not much older than their mid-thirties, even back in the 2010s. The people who hold onto it the longest and the hardest, and go into it the deepest, are those with the most to lose if they lose their grip. It's power. It represents survival, and they believe they are fighting for their right to take up space, and exist and speak freely. It's understandable, right?

About 15 years ago, when I was the most plugged into these type of communities, I concluded that it is a combination of the following things:

• oppressed people want to oppress people (but want the power to control the language around it, to define it as non-oppression in every sense). Invalidated people want the power to invalidate. The use of it is often very blunt and overt and not subtle at all. People tend to not be realistic about the effects of such strategies long term on both individuals and communities, and many don't care. I am talking about the most vocal, most aggressive people. It's talk or be talked over.
• the obsession with surface-level things (i.e. "virtue signalling") is first about some combination of fitting into and arbitrating social dynamics in a group. Even if it doesn't actually start out that way and people truly do pursue social activism in good faith, it often devolves into this.

Quote

I wonder if woke TV shows, advertisements, and social media make it seem larger than it is.

Why do conservative people so often need a boogeyman? If there isn't one in sight, they might just make one. And if there is one, why not some embellishment here and there? 

In my grandpa's generation, it was the Red Scare, the commies, and those hippie university kids. My dad sometimes dryly brings up that most of those progressive hippie kids of his generation (the ones with the long hair that did anti-war protests about Vietnam) graduated, put on the suits, and became corporate CEOs who couldn't give a damn less about their children and grandchildren's generation, whether it was about the environment we'd have to live in or our comparative lack of economic prospects. AKA. Those were the boomers.

In my great grandfather's generation, it was the left-leaning, actually communist intellectuals, artists, and philosophers. (Communism used to mean something different back then lol, as it seems to every 20 years or so.)

Edited November 26 by eos_nyxia

[Basman]

I go to a university in a progressive town and in my experience you don't really see anyone who's outwardly "woke" unless you seek out those spaces. The vast majority are completely normal. They do exist and you can usually tell when I've found. They are generally wimpy and gay looking, no offense. Nerdy types and typically peak millennial (they love ironic "quirky" humor, ALA Marvel).

There might be some merit to "woke people" not being the coolest kids on the block. In fact, I got written up by one of them for a rape joke at a party. Had to go through the whole rigmarole of uni hearings and shit instead of just telling to my face that they had a problem.

[What Am I]

13 minutes ago, Basman said:

I go to a university in a progressive town and in my experience you don't really see anyone who's outwardly "woke" unless you seek out those spaces. The vast majority are completely normal. They do exist and you can usually tell when I've found. They are generally wimpy and gay looking, no offense. Nerdy types and typically peak millennial (they love ironic "quirky" humor, ALA Marvel).

Jeez, I assumed they were at least numerous in your type of environment. If they're rare at a progressive university, we may all be under some kind of illusion as to their overall numbers. Especially considering that many believe excessive wokeness was a determinative factor in the last election. Corporate America and a relatively small number of super-vocal social media sectors may have played themselves. With right-wing amplification playing its part as well, of course.

13 minutes ago, Basman said:

There might be some merit to "woke people" not being the coolest kids on the block. In fact, I got written up by one of them for a rape joke at a party. Had to go through the whole rigmarole of uni hearings and shit instead of just telling to my face that they had a problem.

Pretty classic.

[Joshe]

25 minutes ago, Basman said:

I go to a university in a progressive town and in my experience you don't really see anyone who's outwardly "woke" unless you seek out those spaces. The vast majority are completely normal. They do exist and you can usually tell when I've found. They are generally wimpy and gay looking, no offense. Nerdy types and typically peak millennial (they love ironic "quirky" humor, ALA Marvel).

Nice. Thanks for the info.

5 minutes ago, What Am I said:

If they're rare at a progressive university, we may all be under some kind of illusion as to their overall numbers.

This is what I've been wondering. It doesn't seem like a very appealing ideology. I mean, I can see how people get on board with it, but it doesn't seem to have any real staying power. That combined with I don't see it much IRL, makes me question it's prevalence. I don't get out much these days so it could be widespread AFAIK, but something about that idea just doesn't seem right. 

[What Am I]

18 minutes ago, Joshe said:

This is what I've been wondering. It doesn't seem like a very appealing ideology. I mean, I can see how people get on board with it, but it doesn't seem to have any real staying power. That combined with I don't see it much IRL, makes me question it's prevalence. I don't get out much these days so it could be widespread AFAIK, but something about that idea just doesn't seem right.

lol agreed, same here. When I've seen conversations between adherents on Youtube, it always seems so tense and tortured. Like you have to walk on eggshells to communicate, never being sure which verbal slip-up might get you exorcised from the group.

But I certainly don't get out much either, and definitely not into those spaces. Hopefully more people chime in with their experience.

[Emerald]

The term Woke has always been an imaginary boogeyman of what a leftist is like, as a means to brand jam the left so that the general populace never considers their perspective as worthy of consideration.

It's just like a company might attempt to brand jam their competitor to discourage people from ever considering doing business with them. 

It's kind of like if McDonald's put out a bunch of ads that showed a bunch of unhinged crazy people eating at Burger King.

And then, they advertised McDonald's as "The place where sane and logical people eat."

This brand jamming of "wokeness" discourages people who may otherwise hold Christ-like Golden Rule values from continuing to support them and from coalescing together with others who support them.

This means values like accepting your neighbor, wanting people to be treated fairly, being kind to the foreigner, and embracing the principle of non-judgment.

And it's especially to make sure that they don't join the left because... you wouldn't want your friends to see you as an illogical little effeminate snowflake, would you?

And it even encourages them to get more mean and anti-social, because the more mean and anti-social you are the less illogical and unhinged you are... and the more sane and logical you are. And the more sane and logical you are, the more you will be accepted.

And it's easiest to find cringy examples of 18 year old college kids with blue hair. So, they work very well for the brand jamming to convince open-hearted people to close their hearts to those who are different from them in order to avoid being like the cringy 18 year olds going through a phase and screaming that speaking Spanish as a second language is cultural appropriation.

[Joshe]

@Emerald haha, yeah, that’s definitely going on, but it does exist. Someone like Vaush comes to mind. He once invited another YouTuber on for a chat and Vaush asked for the guy’s name and pronouns. The guy respectfully responded with his name only and redirected quickly as to avoid awkwardness. Vaush immediately pushed him again for his pronouns and the guy tactfully redirected again and Vaush went for a third and final push to get the guy’s pronouns. Lol. 

This is the type of person I would call woke. I know it’s largely used as a bogeyman, but it does exist. What I’m trying to figure out is how prevalent it is. Since I first became aware of it, I’ve believed it doesn’t exist in large enough numbers to warrant a top spot in public discourse, but I sometimes wonder if my intuition is wrong when I hear people like Sam Harris discuss its dangers. 

[Joshe]

4 hours ago, What Am I said:

When I've seen conversations between adherents on Youtube, it always seems so tense and tortured. Like you have to walk on eggshells to communicate, never being sure which verbal slip-up might get you exorcised from the group.

Yeah, it’s not very appealing. It seems well-suited for anal retentive sadists. 

[zazen]

Here Sam Harris speaks on how much the far left have captured institutions and levers of power that the far right haven't (time stamp: What radicalised the right)

Regarding the rise wokism - it seems to be a combination of a grassroots movement co-opted by power to deflect criticism away from those who abuse that power. The reason it rose so rapidly in the 2010's was because the occupy wall street movement was speaking up to power after the 2008 crisis and gaining traction - this was a challenging threat. Power (corporate) had to co-opt and pacify this revolutionary energy and channel it into a cul-de-sac of performative corporate approved wokism ie hashtag activism. So it became a top down-bottom up movement which is why it feels imposed, in-authentic and hollow - whilst having kernels of truth.

They changed the game board people were fighting on, which was a vertical one challenging those above them (elites) - to a horizontal one (between left and right) where people fight among each other over socio-cultural issues as a deflection. They pacified real concern targeting the core power structure, and amplified peripheral concerns to deflect people away from it. The Democrat establishment elite don't challenge power, they contain challenges to it. It's the party of pacification, a pressure release valve for discontent - that re-directs rage towards identity politics rather than the realities of in-equality. The Republican right on the other hand amplify rage like a pressure cooker and direct it to fake solutions of de-regulation and minimal government - but they at least acknowledge the problem of safety and security ie borders, safe streets etc.

The directing of real concern over inequality, towards socio-cultural issues - emboldened them into a social contagion of absurdities that the centre now feel hostage to and has everyone walking on egg shells for. Wokism is a threat in the sense that it's captured cultural, institutional, and bureaucratic power - and that it doesn't have a single tyrannical figure we can challenge because its a social contagion that's simply referred to as ''they/them'' pun intended. 

It's pervasive and stretches from academia to social media, from corporations to mainstream entertainers. They cancel, censor, lecture, and condescend.  They emotionally black mail people who aren't as ideologically pure as them - and because in their world they can identify as anything - they'll call emotional terrorism emotional cardio thats just good for your heart.

When a state and society starts being overly restrictive (whether it’s conservatives or wokies doing the restricting) - the natural response is to side with the side who will unburden them from those restrictions. In the words of Kamala - to be unburdened by what has been. Of course, not all freedom is freeing, nor are all restrictions restricting. Some freedoms are given up for larger freedoms - some restrictions can be more freeing than some so called freedoms.

But the general sense among many people is that some essential freedoms have been breached - and so they swing to the side that claims to uphold them. What they perhaps don't realise is that the libertarian ethos (minimal government overreach) among the right blinds them to the fact that de-regulation can lead to corporate and oligarchic domination. They conflate the idea that less state power means greater freedoms and wealth creation for all - when it can far too easily mean wealth consolidation for the few. Trump's populist appeal is more built around naming problems, rather than solving them.

Getting more philosophical on wokism, liberalism and conservatism:

Wokism is a misdirected and misplaced expression of the souls yearning to transcend the limitations of form - they destroy or deny form instead. The truth is we are biologically conservative (form, boundaried), yet spiritually liberal (formless, boundless). We are lost in translation between two worlds, the duality we are - and this manifests in many ways including politics.

Liberalism honors the formless (God / soul) within each form - thus calling for justice and equality for all. Conservatism honors the stability of form (Gods creation / structure) - thus calling to conserve it. Liberalism taken too far into what we call wokism denies form all together. Conservatism gone too far into what we call fundamentalism see's nothing beyond form even though they claim they do - their literalist interpretation of God contradicts this.

Edited November 27 by zazen

[Emerald]

15 hours ago, Joshe said:

@Emerald haha, yeah, that’s definitely going on, but it does exist. Someone like Vaush comes to mind. He once invited another YouTuber on for a chat and Vaush asked for the guy’s name and pronouns. The guy respectfully responded with his name only and redirected quickly as to avoid awkwardness. Vaush immediately pushed him again for his pronouns and the guy tactfully redirected again and Vaush went for a third and final push to get the guy’s pronouns. Lol. 

This is the type of person I would call woke. I know it’s largely used as a bogeyman, but it does exist. What I’m trying to figure out is how prevalent it is. Since I first became aware of it, I’ve believed it doesn’t exist in large enough numbers to warrant a top spot in public discourse, but I sometimes wonder if my intuition is wrong when I hear people like Sam Harris discuss its dangers. 

I'm sure it exists. You can find examples of all kinds of crazy people on the internet.

But it's mostly randos with no power that get used for brand jamming.

The same thing happens occasionally with lefty influencers who look up the worst people imaginable and show them as an example of conservatives.

Like, in one video a couple lefty influencers got this video of a guy who lived out in the woods and was super conservative and was using his hyper-conservative beliefs to justify his attraction to pubescent girls.

And he was claiming it was most natural for grown men to be the most attracted to 11 and 12 year olds because of a variety of different ideologically conservative reasons... and that all men are most attracted to 12 year olds.

And he would post all these videos that were all about this topic.

But the guy had like 10 followers. It wasn't like he was Ben Shapiro of something. (Though to be fair, Matt Walsh has shared some creepy pedo-ish perspectives on teenage marriage in the past before he became a conservative influencer.)

But in this instance with Vaush and the other person, are you saying that Vaush is the unhinged woke lefty for continuing to ask for the pronouns? Or that the other person who was refusing to give their pronouns for some kind of woke ideological reasoning?

I ask because Vaush doesn't really fit the stereotype of the crazy blue haired woke SJW image that the right tries to evoke to brand jam lefties. He's too intellectual, stoic, and Masculine to be an effective target for that.

His vibe doesn't match the vibe that conservatives use to repel people from the left.

[Joshe]

7 hours ago, Emerald said:

But in this instance with Vaush and the other person, are you saying that Vaush is the unhinged woke lefty for continuing to ask for the pronouns? Or that the other person who was refusing to give their pronouns for some kind of woke ideological reasoning?

I ask because Vaush doesn't really fit the stereotype of the crazy blue haired woke SJW image that the right tries to evoke to brand jam lefties. He's too intellectual, stoic, and Masculine to be an effective target for that.

Not unhinged, but kind of trying to force his way of life or his crusade onto another who clearly didn't want to answer the question of what his pronouns were. I too would be caught off guard if someone asked me what my pronouns were. It's too presumptuous, intrusive, and even disrespectful. A more respectful question would be "Do you prefer specific pronouns?".  

Vaush isn't an example of the blue-haired SJW Ben Ship likes to belittle for profit, but he is an example of wokeism and I think maybe even more representative of the ideology than the blue hair caricatures. 

I somewhat like Vaush for his candor and quit wit, but he's clearly a culture warrior. Also, his masculinity mostly disappears in social settings, which is interesting. He turns from hardass to cheerfully giddy. 

[ricachica]

I live in California, finishing up university as a 27yo right now. When I first attended in 2015, it was definitely talked about in certain contexts, especially because Trump polarized those green stage issues. For the most part though, the majority of the campus blended together…sororities and fraternities were still popular.

Now when I returned to college campus, on the 1st day I saw a freshman wearing a shirt that simply said “OPIOID CRISIS” on it, I was gobsmacked. I really enjoyed seeing that specific shirt tbh. No one was that blatant about social issues back then. The rest of the campus has a grungy/alternative/goth feel to it as a normal vibe. Lots look upset with the world and are aware of social issues. That was less common back then, and now Greek life is dead and unimportant…see if you see the correlation with that too.

The younger Gen Z are definitely especially riled up, though of course, they are also young and inexperienced in mobilizing still. The passion is there at least, so it’s nice to see.

 

[Brittany]

On 11/26/2024 at 0:53 PM, Joshe said:

• Identity politics
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)
• Cancel culture
• Virtue signaling
• Language policing
• Privilege checking
• LGBTQ activism
• Social justice activism

Well, Social justice activism and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are part of the backbone of the United States. The effects of these, are everywhere, even if you don't notice them. Without these, the United States won't be the United States anymore. 

Social justice activism = If a certain group of people are being treated like crap, we need to do something about it.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) = People from all backgrounds, ways of believing/thinking, different desires, different goals, different dreams and walks of life ..... all belong in the United States

Even companies that don't have an official DEI program, are often still very diverse. Just because a conservative employer doesn't shove DEI programs down your face, doesn't mean they are prejudiced. And a conservative employer may still be hiring people of all different backgrounds if they are qualified for the job.

The issue with the "woke agenda" is everything else you added on the list.

Woke People are preachy and expect immediate obedience.

And if you don't immediately comply with them, they call you a "bigot, racist, sexist, homophobic, ageist, ableist, etc."

It's like a "Obey me now!! Otherwise you are a bigot, racist, sexist, homophobic, ageist, ableist, etc."

They also don't leave room for people to have 1 foot in something more conservative, and 1 foot in liberalism.

For example, even if someone is Liberal in everything besides for Abortion, they push them out. 

Or even if someone is Liberal in everything besides for Gender Pronouns, they push them out.

They don't allow any middle ground.

Any disagreement at all, and you are kicked out.

This is a very ineffective strategy long term.

It is prevalent in major cities in "Hipster" areas. haha

If you google "most hipster cities in the U.S.", that's where you will find these people.

Woke and Hipster are not the same thing. But you will find many woke people, amongst hipsters.

Edited November 28 by Brittany

[DieFree]

Wokeness is much bigger than race or sexuality stuff.

Your manager being told to not monitor your MS teams status and loosen up dress standards is also being "woke."

The image of the white woman attacking the enslaved woman her white husband attacked in-front of her.

Abstract from that and you see "stuck" in dysfunctional situations, Dasein lashes out at the wrong target. 

We need to "release" the targets of our rage in order to free ourselves. 

You thought this was being done to be just "nice" to the gays and blacks?