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“Woke”

Blue Mountain

Resident Skeptical Hobbit
Blue Mountain
Joined
Jul 2, 2005
Messages
8,589
Location
Waging war on woo-woo in Winnipeg
Is it just me, or do others here when they see the word “woke" to describe people or institutions see it as shorthand for “I don't like people telling me I shouldn't hate on blacks and treat women as sex objects”?

I view the “woke” criticism to be invalid, since to me it implies the person or institution being targeted has simply said “we want to take steps to ensure people feel welcome here instead of being marginalized based on attributes such as gender, gender identification, race, colour, creed, country of origin, or sexual orientation.”

I added “politically correct” as a tag because, in contrast to “woke,” I view it as inclusiveness gone wild, to the degree where it's used a cudgel to shut down discussion because some snowflake somewhere might be offended. Certainly having one's ideas being challenged can sting, but people should be encouraged to separate criticism of their ideas from criticism of their person.

I'm interested in hearing the thoughts of others on this.
 
"Woke" is a term for people who take their liberal virtue signalling to a comic extreme. They were not "Woke" to anything. It's a cheap act performed by cheap people.

A lawyer taking a pro bono case for a minority getting screwed is not "Woke". A college kid lecturing anyone they can find about pronoun usage while not doing a damn thing of consequence is "Woke"
 
Thermal said:
"Woke" is a term for people who take their liberal virtue signaling to a comic extreme.
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That is the way I see it. Sometimes I think the real "woke" is being able to see through that routine. Which many can't do.
 
I only hear the phrase from people who complain about "wokeness" because they feel constrained from being dicks.
 
I despise racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry, but I dislike the term "woke", and decline to use it.
 
"Woke" is a stupid term on a linguistic level and just another of those weird, annoying, twee words that just popped up out of nowhere and got overused.

I also remember the ultra-brief "I believe in conspiracy theories" version of the term that got drowned out by the more common usage pretty much out of the gate.

Literally every single person I've ever seen actually bothered by it on any level beyond "the lowest possible level of measurable annoyance" has been a horrible person.

TL:DR. If you're annoyed by it fine, if you actually used "woke" as a criticism or insult, you're almost certainly horrible.
 
IIRC, it was originally used by its sincere advocates. "Man, I'm woke now" which became such a laughing stock way of calling yourself "awakened to injustice" that it immediately became a slam.
 
Thermal said:
"Woke" is a term for people who take their liberal virtue signalling to a comic extreme. They were not "Woke" to anything. It's a cheap act performed by cheap people.

A lawyer taking a pro bono case for a minority getting screwed is not "Woke". A college kid lecturing anyone they can find about pronoun usage while not doing a damn thing of consequence is "Woke"
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I think that's what it might have meant originally but the right wing has captured the term and now it seems to apply to anything that even hints at social justice or equality or progressive values.

I tend to agree with Blue Mountain and Eerok on this, it's an ugly and misleading term best not used at all. Then again, I think many of those buzz words are best not used, since they imply far more than they started out to. Like "politically incorrect," "social justice warrior," "virtue signalling" and so on, they become shortcuts for accusations of hypocrisy and wrongness without the inconvenience of having to acknowledge the accusation.
 
JoeMorgue said:
"Woke" is a stupid term on a linguistic level and just another of those weird, annoying, twee words that just popped up out of nowhere
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It's not from "nowhere", it came from a dialect of English sometimes called African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). It has since taken on additional baggage since crossing into other dialects of English. As a word and as a concept it probably does not deserve the level of hatred directed at it.
 
bruto said:
I think that's what it might have meant originally but the right wing has captured the term and now it seems to apply to anything that even hints at social justice or equality or progressive values.

I tend to agree with Blue Mountain and Eerok on this, it's an ugly and misleading term best not used at all. Then again, I think many of those buzz words are best not used, since they imply far more than they started out to. Like "politically incorrect," "social justice warrior," "virtue signalling" and so on, they become shortcuts for accusations of hypocrisy and wrongness without the inconvenience of having to acknowledge the accusation.
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I'm not entirely hip to its popular current use, so I'll take your word for it. I hear it used semi seriously by my college kids friends, lampooning in a friendly way when one is going over the top, even when well-meaning, so I mostly think of it as a friendly ribbing. If it is getting a more aggressive use, it's probably better to stay away from it.
 
TragicMonkey said:
As a word and as a concept it probably does not deserve the level of hatred directed at it.
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It may not have originally. And in all fairness, most targets don't deserve it used as an insult.

HOWEVER, for the last couple of years, there are plenty of people who just have the schtick of whining about X, even if they have to invent a reason to. Whining about, say, social injustice is like their brand and their reason to have followers. They have to invent some to whine about, if no sane injustice presents itself, lest some other whiner steals their spotlight.

I mean, for example, I may have mentioned it before, but I was watching someone do a Let's Play of Kingdom Come: Deliverance. And the game had a perk called Troubadour that gives you +50% reputation with women and lets you score some free sex off prostitutes. You'd think anyone looking at even just the title of the perk, or that it's in the charisma section, and deduce that you might use some, you know, charisma and maybe a bit of song, to seduce them. I mean, you're not threatening any of those, nor anything, shall we say, GTA-like. And I mean, there even is an in-game precedent of one who's happy to be with another guy just because he treats her nicely instead of how the other villagers treat prostitutes. But anyway, you'd assume it's some consensual seduction, since nothing in the game indicates otherwise. Not our justice warrior. He was appalled -- APPALLED, I tell ya -- at the misogyny of the devs, and how unjust it is for those NPC women if you can just seduce them instead of paying for sex. You're stealing their livelihood!

And THAT is what I'm talking about. The guy just had to join in a whine that didn't even make any sense, to protect NPC women from consensual sex, just for the sake of not losing his SJW cred. (And again, there are plenty of other people who don't deserve SJW used as an insult. But then some do deserve all the hate.)

And just to make it clear, the same goes for any X the other side of the political spectrum. There are, for example, people whose schtick is to whine about "ethnically diverse female" or "The Message" in every movie, even if they have to invent a reason to whine. If they didn't, why someone else might, and steal those precious subscriptions.

You'd have thought that mass communication would have cleared misunderstandings, made people better informed, and generally solved these kinds of problems. Instead it just created a race to the bottom, for pretty much the glory of being the biggest whiner.

And by now that noise is drowning most of the useful signal.
 
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Wokeism is a form of cargo-cult social justice activism. It's a highly performative, functionally inert display of Correct Thought, without any actual critical thought about what steps should be taken towards what goal, or whether the steps being taken are actually getting there.

For instance, casting a black man in the role of the whitest of the Aesir is peak wokeness. Doesn't actually mean anything other than "look at what we're doing here!", but will give good feelings to people who get off on the idea that something is being done. Even if the only thing actually being done is the manufacture of that feeling.

That feeling, and the manufacture of that feeling, is the essence of Wokeism.
 
"Woke" probably means a different thing to each person who uses it. So there's no "Webster's Definitive" definition at all.

But people who use the term "woke" as an insult are simply looking for an excuse to be nasty crap-heads to people, or classes of people, they don't like. It's the same method as Trump calling information he doesn't like "Fake News!" It's code for "false equivalence I am prepared to do". By labeling a person in some fashion such as "woke", whether correctly applied or not (usually not), they can then be categorised, then comfortably demeaned, despised or dismissed.

The same can be done just as well with the words "liberal", "left-wing", "antifa", "socialist" and "communist". And, frankly, "right-wing", "fascist" and "Nazi", if care is not taken.
 
@theprestige
Well, what annoys me the most is how often it actually makes the opposite case.

Like the social justice YouTuber I just mentioned, essentially just showed an underlying belief that a prostitute basically stops being a woman, or anything else than a hole for sale. Any other kind of sexuality, like having a boyfriend or affair on the side just because she really likes the guy, and he's charming, did not register for him. Once she went down that path, it's either for money or some kind of theft of service. I'm really not sure he wasn't the one actually more bigotted than those he was defending those NPC women from.

Or since you mention the whitest of Aesir, thing is, well... what do racist companies actually do? Well, stuff like hire a black receptionist or two to fill the quotas, and no other black in the whole organization, is pretty much a stereotype at this point. What did they make Heimdall in the beginning? Yep, the flippin' black receptionist of the gods. Other gods can do intrigues, go to war, and other glorious stuff, he gets to be the token black guy at the front desk. Bonus point for also (at least at first) being the movie trope of the token black guy who dies first and at most serves as motivation for the properly white heroes to fight. Well, only NEARLY die in his case, but still, same trope.

So like, why were the keyboard warriors even defending that?
 
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Blue Mountain said:
I view the “woke” criticism to be invalid, since to me it implies the person or institution being targeted has simply said “we want to take steps to ensure people feel welcome here instead of being marginalized based on attributes such as gender, gender identification, race, colour, creed, country of origin, or sexual orientation.”
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That's the writing on the front of the glossy brochure but when you get into the fine print you'll realize you're being sold an entirely different product.

As a for instance...I noticed that you didn't capitalize the word Black in your opening sentence and were I wanting to go all woke I'd point that out and tack on something about what that says about you, or outright call you a racist.
 
I recently wrote this on another forum:

arthwollipot said:
Rai said:
Desert Fox said:
The thing is that "Woke" really is a placeholder for "Something I don't like."
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It is much more sinister, considering the things the fascist who use the term like and don't like
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I agree.

I used to say that the unironic use of the term "woke" was a clear indicator to me that it was safe to absolutely ignore everything that person said, but I've changed my mind. Now I pay really close attention to what they say, because I'm very concerned about what other things they may be saying. The unironic use of the term is so strongly associated with social attitudes that I consider extremely and directly harmful - authoritarianism, alt-right ideology, white supremacy, MGTOW and incel culture, and yes, anti-gay and anti-trans bigotry, that I want to be alert for it and call it out when I see it.

I'm not saying that everyone who uses the term necessarily holds or endorses those social attitudes, but there is a strong correlation. Some people may simply be ignorant of the baggage that their use of the term carries. To them I would say take a look around. Look at the harm that other users of the term cause. Do you really want to be associated with that?
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JoeMorgue said:
"Woke" is a stupid term on a linguistic level and just another of those weird, annoying, twee words that just popped up out of nowhere and got overused.

I also remember the ultra-brief "I believe in conspiracy theories" version of the term that got drowned out by the more common usage pretty much out of the gate.

Literally every single person I've ever seen actually bothered by it on any level beyond "the lowest possible level of measurable annoyance" has been a horrible person.

TL:DR. If you're annoyed by it fine, if you actually used "woke" as a criticism or insult, you're almost certainly horrible.
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Origins aside, it certainly has become just a faster way to say 'you think you're better than me!' by people insecure about the potential ramifications of their own views.

It's well on it's way to be just another marketing term to forbid thinking about what anyone called it says. They're just an other. In fact, acknowledging that Trump's lies about an election are false is now 'woke bias' that needs fought against. This from a state where 'stop woke' is the name of a bill.

Anyone who wants to keep using the phrase for whatever reason, for whatever justification you tell to yourself, has to deal with the fact it's being used by authoritarians to dismiss political opposition. If you want to fight it back from them, good luck. Can't see why it's worth it to try that, but some people just have to let everyone know they have the virtue of getting pissed off at people who are center or further left sometimes. Seems there's another highly misused phrase for that too...
 
Thermal said:
I'm not entirely hip to its popular current use, so I'll take your word for it. I hear it used semi seriously by my college kids friends, lampooning in a friendly way when one is going over the top, even when well-meaning, so I mostly think of it as a friendly ribbing. If it is getting a more aggressive use, it's probably better to stay away from it.
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I'm thinking, for example, of Governor De Santis, who has outspokenly railed against "woke" culture, a pastiche of everything he doesn't like from CRT to transgender athletes to imaginary arithmetic.
 
bruto said:
I'm thinking, for example, of Governor De Santis, who has outspokenly railed against "woke" culture, a pastiche of everything he doesn't like from CRT to transgender athletes to imaginary arithmetic.
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Looking at d4m10ns links above and clicking on #StayWoke, peeps are still using it to describe their wokability quite seriously. So there are still at least two opposing meanings, depending on who uses them and how.
 
Craig4 said:
I only hear the phrase from people who complain about "wokeness" because they feel constrained from being dicks.
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100% correct. You never hear people calling themselves "woke" - the word is nothing more than a pejorative used by racists, homophobes, misogynists and other MAGA morons to insult decent people who possess a fully functioning moral compass.
 
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Thermal said:
"Woke" is a term for people who take their liberal virtue signalling to a comic extreme. They were not "Woke" to anything. It's a cheap act performed by cheap people.

A lawyer taking a pro bono case for a minority getting screwed is not "Woke". A college kid lecturing anyone they can find about pronoun usage while not doing a damn thing of consequence is "Woke"
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It therefore becomes an insult when used by by people who equate saying "we should be nice to those around you" with the college kid.
 
Stout said:
Blue Mountain said:
I view the “woke” criticism to be invalid, since to me it implies the person or institution being targeted has simply said “we want to take steps to ensure people feel welcome here instead of being marginalized based on attributes such as gender, gender identification, race, colour, creed, country of origin, or sexual orientation.”
Click to expand...

That's the writing on the front of the glossy brochure but when you get into the fine print you'll realize you're being sold an entirely different product.

As a for instance...I noticed that you didn't capitalize the word Black in your opening sentence and were I wanting to go all woke I'd point that out and tack on something about what that says about you, or outright call you a racist.
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To me, people using the word "woke" to describe a person or an institution are implying the target is the one pointing out the missing capitalization, extrapolating for it and potentially being racist. The target is, in fact, doing nothing of the sort; it's the attacker doing that behaviour. The target isn't being "woke;" the attacker is being a jerk.
 
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I see a bit of a strawmanning going on here.

I don't know of anyone who seriously objects to statements like "we should be nice to those around you" (sic).

For example, I don't think John McWhorter has any objection to being nice to others as a general rule of thumb. And yet he wrote a book on the topic.
 
theprestige said:
Wokeism is a form of cargo-cult social justice activism. It's a highly performative, functionally inert display of Correct Thought, without any actual critical thought about what steps should be taken towards what goal, or whether the steps being taken are actually getting there.

For instance, casting a black man in the role of the whitest of the Aesir is peak wokeness. Doesn't actually mean anything other than "look at what we're doing here!", but will give good feelings to people who get off on the idea that something is being done. Even if the only thing actually being done is the manufacture of that feeling.

That feeling, and the manufacture of that feeling, is the essence of Wokeism.
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Do you therefore agree that it's an insult to use "woke" to describe an institution with a code of conduct that says, in essence, "Don't be a dick"?

I'm seeing this on places like Slashdot nowadays. "This university has a gender studies course. The woke idiots running that place are ruining it!" "This company disciplined a worker for making a comment to a female who didn't like it, so she reported it to HR. That place is so woke I'd quit if I was working there." (Not real examples, unfortunately. I can post some actual ones if you request them; it's just right now I don't want to revisit a couple of Slashdot threads and where a few comments out of thousands got me thinking about this.)
 
Puppycow said:
I see a bit of a strawmanning going on here.

I don't know of anyone who seriously objects to statements like "we should be nice to those around you" (sic).
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I'll keep this comment in mind, for I believe I've seen examples where institutions were being accused of being woke simply because they posted policies asking just that, or who disciplined people who made comments others found offensive. And by that I mean clearly offensive as opposed to "you disrespected me by not acknowledging I'm <x> when my great-great-great-aunt on my mother's side as <x> as well."

Now, if I can't find any, it rather puts a dent into my contentions.
 
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theprestige said:
Wokeism is a form of cargo-cult social justice activism. It's a highly performative, functionally inert display of Correct Thought, without any actual critical thought about what steps should be taken towards what goal, or whether the steps being taken are actually getting there.

For instance, casting a black man in the role of the whitest of the Aesir is peak wokeness. Doesn't actually mean anything other than "look at what we're doing here!", but will give good feelings to people who get off on the idea that something is being done. Even if the only thing actually being done is the manufacture of that feeling.

That feeling, and the manufacture of that feeling, is the essence of Wokeism.
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That's a useful perspective, and one I'll keep in mind when I see accusations of "woke" being brandied about. Is the target simply trying to clamp down on racist, misogynistic, and other forms of speech intended to demean people (that's using "woke" as an insult,) or is the target doing, for lack of a better term, silly or provocative things like casting a black person to fill a role that's traditionally been viewed as being filled a white person? That will give me a perspective on both the person calling "woke" and the target of that accusation.
 
Blue Mountain said:
I'm seeing this on places like Slashdot nowadays.
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Well, I suppose Slashdot would be the place to go if you want some of the more illogically extreme opinions from some of the most entitled man-babies (from both sides of the political spectrum.) I must have stopped reading it like a decade ago, but at least that used to be the case back then. I have literally seen ancient slave owners in the Roman Empire described unironically as "job creators" on Slashdot, for example, back when that was the buzzword of the year.

It's probably not a representative sample of society at large, is all I'm saying.
 
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There are two short Radio 4 programmes that folk may find interesting:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000gkwc - The Roots of Woke Culture: “Wokeness” has become a shorthand for one side of the culture wars. But where did it come from? Journalist Helen Lewis uncovers the roots of woke.

And an episode from a brilliant series called "Antisocial" - 'Woke' police" The claim that police care more about political virtue-signalling than catching criminals. looks at how "woke" is often used in criticism. The programme covers much more than only focusing on the particular example of the police. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001bl3g

(For anyone interested in the current social hot-topics, from triggering to online justice to climate change to drag queens and libraries Antisocial is a good programme, there are 12 episodes available. It is not a judgemental programme, it attempts to discuss these hot-button topics in a factual manner rather than from a particular viewpoint of its own.)
 
Blue Mountain said:
That's a useful perspective, and one I'll keep in mind when I see accusations of "woke" being brandied about. Is the target simply trying to clamp down on racist, misogynistic, and other forms of speech intended to demean people (that's using "woke" as an insult,) or is the target doing, for lack of a better term, silly or provocative things like casting a black person to fill a role that's traditionally been viewed as being filled a white person? That will give me a perspective on both the person calling "woke" and the target of that accusation.
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Or they (and I mean either of the two involved) may simply be a twit trying to find something to whine about, mostly for their own benefit, rather than actually helping anyone or solving any actual social problem.

Probably the canonical example are the guys who whined and campaigned to have Speedy Gonzales removed as a stereotype offensive to Mexicans. Turns out that actual Mexicans found him funny and wanted him back. The ones taking offense were some White Anglo-Saxon types trying to feel good about themselves by playing the white saviour of the Mexicans.

I'm not sure I'd even call them "woke", really.
Edited by zooterkin: 
<SNIP>
Edited for rule 9.


But generally, you know it's bad when it's not just some kind of alt-right neonazis telling those guys to take a hike, but actual black people asking them to stop playing white saviour. E.g., https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ours-thanks-how-to-be-a-true-anti-racist-ally Yeah, that's right, it's not the supposed reactionary alt-right telling them to, shall we say, travel and copulate, but an actual black anti-racism activist. And saying pretty much the same I was saying above: those guys don't even listen to what the blacks actually want, on the contrary, they will TELL an actual black what they should be offended by, and what they should do about it, and how wrong they are if they see things differently than the white saviour. And not just as in write their own opinion too and you can take it or ignore it, but think they're entitled to the time and attention of an actual black, and get offended if she doesn't answer.
 
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The Great Zaganza said:
9 or of 10 times, being "woke" is the same as being considerate and polite.
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Nice fantasy, but I don't think many people got called "woke" for just being considerate and polite themselves. Nobody is following you around to call you "woke" or anything else if you gave your seat to a black woman, or were polite to a black waiter, or called someone by whatever funny pronouns they fancy, or anything.

Most of the time it's about people making a butthurt toddler act about how you're not just inconsiderate and impolite, but verily some jack-booted fascist oppressor, verily the worst human... nay, verily, worst mammal ever, if you don't bend over backwards to give them a lollipop. Or better yet, to give some other guy a lollipop... regardless of whether that other guy actually even wants one or not. Nor having established in any logical way (other than their own personal postulates) that it's your duty to give anyone lollipops.
 
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The problem is that it is not a natural phenomenon, it is astroturf. If all the huge companies suddenly raise the rainbow flag, you know that there is an agenda behind it, not just some confused "gender studies" academics at some universities who otherwise nobody would pay attention to.

I'll leave it open what that agenda is, but I can offer you a term that I think is better than "woke", which I think is just a placeholder in lack of a better term. That term is "Empörium" which is a combination of the German language terms "Imperium" (aka Empire) and "empören", which means being outraged. The Empire is making the people who fall for it outraged about utter nonsense.
 
uke2se said:
I'd say it's way more often than that.

It's a word used by angry little boys that lack the capacity for self reflection.
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And typically about angry little boys who make arguments appealing to their supposed black friend in the same way as the guys going, "I'm not racist, I have black friends" do :p
 
Childlike Empress said:
The problem is that it is not a natural phenomenon, it is astroturf. If all the huge companies suddenly raise the rainbow flag, you know that there is an agenda behind it, not just some confused "gender studies" academics at some universities who otherwise nobody would pay attention to.

I'll leave it open what that agenda is, but I can offer you a term that I think is better than "woke", which I think is just a placeholder in lack of a better term. That term is "Empörium" which is a combination of the German language terms "Imperium" (aka Empire) and "empören", which means being outraged. The Empire is making the people who fall for it outraged about utter nonsense.
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I think you give them too much credit with even assuming they have any other agenda than "It is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money." My money still is on the Keurig effect, aka trolling to cause a deliberate $#!& storm on the internet for free publicity. Make some inflammatory statements or whatever, get a bunch of idiots on the right wing to go butt-hurt about it, which gets a bunch of wankers on the left side to rally to whatever flag lets them stroke their own ego about putting those reactionaries in their place, repeat. After a couple of months, everyone and their cat couldn't go anywhere without hearing about your product everywhere, several times a day. It used to take tens of thousands of dollars spent on marketing to get a fraction of that exposure. Nowadays idiots will do that for you for free, by assuming you actually even HAVE an agenda they need to either support or fight against. Laugh all the way to the literal bank, repeat the next time you need free publicity.

Basically, yes, Empörium all right, but with the only agenda being "give your attention and money to the Empire." Which otherwise doesn't actually become more progressive or anything. You know, stuff that would indicate them actually having a social agenda. It just waves some funny coloured flags to get idiots to rally to them the next time it's time to collect the tithes.
 
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HansMustermann said:
And typically about angry little boys who make arguments appealing to their supposed black friend in the same way as the guys going, "I'm not racist, I have black friends" do :p
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Do you have a black friend?

Seriously though, I think this is yet another thing that divides those of us who want an inclusive world where people aren't singled out for their gender, sexuality or race, and the people who don't want that world. It's quite telling who is arguing for the use of Woke as a pejorative term and who is arguing that it's a stupid term. In other words, it's just more culture war BS.
 
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