[qual]

(Not the person you were replying to)

I'm curious what/how you define "woke culture", because the only definitions of "woke" I've ever heard are basically "thing I don't like" or "the left". Neither of those definitions have helped me understand what you are so vehemently against.

Can you help me understand what woke culture is to you?

This is a genuine question.

[waterhouse]

(Not the person you were asking, either)

In one sentence, wokeness is aggressively pursuing racial (and other identity-based) conflict above everything else, not caring what else you trample on (including even classic civil rights principles). "Microaggressions" is probably the most distinctively woke concept.

Censoring gun emojis is not woke in that respect, since it doesn't pursue any particular identity conflict (except, maybe, crusading on behalf of anyone with gun-related PTSD?). But the method (forcing people to sanitize their communication) and some aspects of the motivation (hand-wringing about some bits of language, acting like some people have extremely delicate sensibilities, using that to justify censorship) are similar to some prominent manifestations of wokeness and the corporate policies they push. So I can understand why the connection was drawn, though the term isn't quite appropriate.

[qual]

Thanks for taking the time to write this out, I think it helps me understand a bit better. Every definition seems to be sort of different and personalized but I think it's beginning to coalesce into something in my mind, rather than just leaving me confused.

Usually when I try to ask this question, I just have angry people being angry with me, and I end up more confused. So it's nice to have some legitimate explanations come my way.

[IanCal]

I'm a big fan of the Origin Story podcast, where they dig into words/concepts and look at where they started and how the use has evolved over time. They also cover some things like people, or conspiracy theories.

Their Woke episode might be worth a listen.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1ncWO9Aj1kMtQxBsHf0aYg

https://pod.link/1624704966/episode/0b0e2c363a94280fe0ae576b...

[waterhouse]

Sure, glad to help. I can give more detail including etymology.

"Woke" originally meant that a person has "awoken" to the true nature of society. They see the thing that others do not see! Unfortunately, it seems that that's also the only thing they see, or the only thing they care about. And that thing is racial / identity-group conflict. As I say, they cheerfully sacrifice principles like freedom of speech, meritocracy, proportionality, hard-fought civil rights ideals, etc., when it's inconvenient for the fight they want to pick in the moment. I think that, to a first approximation, when anyone says "Is this going too far?", they get accused of sympathizing with the oppressors and shamed or cast out, so the group goes farther, and we are seeing the results of iterating this process for decades. A peak moment was tearing down a statue of Abraham Lincoln, apparently in the name of anticolonialism.

That's the woke people themselves, a small, aggressive, highly vocal group with outsized influence. (There's also a larger group of relatively normal people with a surface-level understanding of it who go along with most of it; I think if they understood and believed all the details, most of them would recoil.) (Incidentally, most people instinctively understand that aggressively attacking others is bad, but via concepts like "microaggressions" and "privilege", the woke frequently find reasons to think that someone else attacked first.)

Then there's the legal and corporate environment. Civil rights legislation brought laws against discrimination and creating a hostile environment for identity groups in companies. In the absence of mind-reading, a claim of discrimination is difficult to prove or disprove, and a "hostile environment" could be interpreted in many ways. I think that the "game of telephone" chain from the text of the law, to the interpretation of the law (and evidentiary standards) in courts, to lawyers' understanding, to what company lawyers tell management, to what sticks in management's brain and gets implemented, has yielded essentially "If you offend the woke identity groups, then that puts you at significant legal risk, so best appease them. Also it's good to pay them lip service, host Pride events, etc., because that reduces legal risk." Additionally, some portion of management themselves are woke, and some additional portion earnestly believe in civil rights as a cause and tend to take the woke at their word when they claim their policies are the right and proper next steps. And finally, on a personal level, expressing dissent against a woke-aligned policy is, in many cases, perceived to put one's own career at risk (in some cases the lawyers may say it's a liability to keep a person like that; and, having seen cases of this, many people err on the side of caution, creating a "chilling effect").

So you get a lot of corporate policies meant to appease the woke. Some may be the exact policies the woke asked for. Others may be cynical appeasement, and by design they will be difficult to distinguish from the first type. Some policies are invented by well-intentioned people believing in civil rights principles. Some are the outcome of some kind of compromise.

It's not necessarily clear which of these should be called "woke policies", both in theory and in practice. It doesn't help that, whereas you could identify Democrat or Republican policies by looking at official websites, and probably get reasonable consensus on what are "conservative policies" or "progressive policies" based on prominent self-identified conservative figures and institutions, the woke do not call themselves "woke" (with occasional exceptions like "Woke Kindergarten") and object to anyone else calling them that; it's understood to be a pejorative. The woke will tend to call themselves advocates of civil rights or of specific groups' rights, and try to blur any distinctions between the classic civil rights movement which enjoys majority support (things like non-discrimination and gay marriage) and what they're trying to do (things like discriminating in favor of their identity groups and policing pronouns). This serves to make the case that anyone who disagrees with them is a 1950s Jim Crow racist, and anyone who isn't a 1950s Jim Crow racist must agree with them, which is useful for coercing acquiescence and support. It also makes it harder for the rest of us to notice the patterns and call out the damage that the woke have done and are likely to do. But I think we're getting there.

[consteval]

I think micro-aggressions are very real, but maybe the word is a little off. They're not aggressive necessarily, but they are micro.

What I mean is that definitely phrases and questions change meaning, a tiny bit, based off of historical understanding of race and gender. On the surface it seems like a wild proposition, but it's really true.

- wow you're so articulate! - your hair looks so clean! - don't you like this kind of music? - you're a better driver than I expected! - you're so nurturing!

To you, or me, innocuous. But people say these things for a reason. I've never heard a white man be told he's articulate, or that his hair looks clean. Do you know what I mean?

These things are racially charged and "othering", regardless of if the perpetrator knows it or intends it. I'd say the vast majority of ANY prejudice is unconscious, meaning people don't know they're it.

[philistine]

Should the App Store allow pornography? What about apps by terrorist organizations? Where does censorship begin to make sense to you?

[JumpCrisscross]

> Can you help me understand what woke culture is to you?

Within this context it’s replacing guns with water pistols, systematically and comprehensively, in the name of fighting gun violence.

On the same token, it’s replacing a water pistol emoji with a gun—in the aftermath of an armed assassination attempt on a Presidential candidate (and former President)—on a platform that regularly censors, in the name of free speech.

Performative nonsense designed to appeal to emotions instead of doing something about the implied problem. (Guns and censorship, respectively.)

[qual]

>Performative nonsense designed to appeal to emotions instead of doing something about the implied problem. (Guns and censorship, respectively.)

Thanks! This helps me understand it a bit more. Sort of a synonym for "virtue signalling" it seems?

[JumpCrisscross]

> Sort of a synonym for "virtue signalling" it seems?

I genuinely have no idea what that term means anymore.

[anonfordays]

"Woke" is best described as an umbrella term for overrighteous performative moralizing leftist authoritarian fundamentalism. It's effectively used opposite of "fascism" which has become an umbrella term for "things I don't like" or "the right".

[theultdev]

It's definitely an umbrella term and we'd be here for a while discussing all facets of it, but in this case in particular it's the movement to censor speech under the guise of anti-gun rhetoric (like an emoji will cause gun violence). That is no different than Christians trying to ban violent video games.

Note that I am not the one who brought up the term to the conversation. I did want to avoid the labels as there's always someone who comes up and ask you to define the label instead of talking about the issue itself. In this case, censorship.

[qual]

>Note that I am not the one who brought up the term to the conversation.

Of course, but since you said you were vehemently against it, I thought you'd be the better person to give me some perspective and help me learn.

>I did want to avoid the labels as there's always someone who comes up and ask you to define the label instead of talking about the issue itself. In this case, censorship.

I would have found it much clearer if your comment said "I am against censorship at it's core, vehemently", and as an added bonus you wouldn't be annoyed by me asking about it.

But, to be clear, the reason I asked about the label instead of the issue is because I don't understand what issue(s) woke culture represents to you. So trying to talk about those issues would be difficult.

My impression so far is that woke culture is more than just censorship. I'm very anti-censorship, but I've also been called "woke" in passing as an insult, so unfortunately I'm still left a bit confused. Thanks anyways, though!

[yamazakiwi]

Umbrella Term is a optimistic description for something so nebulous and used so frivolously. It is more commonly used as "anything I don't like is woke" and "any opinion that doesn't match mine is censoring me."

[blackeyeblitzar]

Censorship has a very specific definition. And changing the pistol emoji to prevent certain ideas or politics from being communicated was censorship.

As for woke - I don't understand why people ask for a definition. A quick search brings up many useful definitions: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Woke

[qual]

>I don't understand why people ask for a definition. A quick search brings up many useful definitions

Note how the definition there doesn't match any of the three definitions people gave me here, and none of the three here seem to match each other. Also, as your link says, the definition seems to have changed drastically in the past few years, so I can't even be sure that the link has the most up-to-date definition.

So, I was asking someone who seemed to be very passionate about being "against woke culture", to hear it directly from them. This is a conversational site, I figured it'd be fine, but seeing that my question is now downvoted I guess I need to better learn what conversations and questions are appropriate here.

I'm still new around these parts. Forgive me.