when is something Woke vs when is it not?

[skykiii]

Okay so me and @SSj_Ness were having a discussion about video games that was threatening to get political so it seemed wise to move it here.

Sorry it took me so long to get back to you on this Ness, my brain was somewhere else this week.

Actually it could be, if the programmers are DEI hires. You just don't think deeply enough about this stuff. If a dumb gay black pilot crashes a plane you'd just see an accident, whereas I'd see the fruits of Wokeism.

The key word is "could."

That's the thing: I tend to want evidence first.

Like going with this example: how do you know the pilot was gay and black? What if no news article names the pilot at all? At that point, you're just assuming.

I had originally used the example of a badly-coded video game. And sure, it could be a DEI issue, but plenty of non-wokes have also fucked up coding significantly, and I've got the DOS4GW error screens to prove it (and I've also heard that Notch, creator of Minecraft and who has a reputation of being pro-Trump, also kinda sucked at coding).

Heck.. this forum has lolcow topics on people like Sargon and Ben Shapiro. You don't have to be woke to be a complete fuckwit.

It's just like Scully said to Mulder: "If you spend all your time looking for extraordinary explanations, it blinds you to the ordinary explanations right in front of you." Just replace "extraordinary" with "woke."

And I'll just conveniently forget that Scully was usually wrong and/or stupid because she was probably a DEI hire.

 

[SpergioLeonne]

It’s cherry picking to declare something woke by the end result instead of by its origin

 

[The Last Stand]

The world went woke when women decided to want to have their own income, vote and have independent thoughts.

 

[David Brown]

Conservatives use "woke" today because they are unwilling to say what it really is: anti-White. Nobody can even define what "woke" means. I guess we could define "wokeness" in hiring as anything other than pure meritocracy, but it's not really applied that way.

 

[ArnoldPalmer]

It's just like Scully said to Mulder: "If you spend all your time looking for extraordinary explanations, it blinds you to the ordinary explanations right in front of you." Just replace "extraordinary" with "woke."

Mulder was right most of the time, and this isn't apt anyway, because wokeism/anti-whiteness/communist propaganda, IS the easiest, most ordinary explanation, with the fewest number of logical leaps. It's like you woke up from a coma you had in 2012.

To answer the thread title's question, all of it is "woke". It may not have been 8 years ago, but everything from the mixed race couple in every single piece of media, from big pharma commercials, to video games, to the casting choices, scriptwriting, preferential hiring practices of Hollywood. It's all woke now, and by law and/or corporate mandate.

Absolutely everything pushes an agenda today, and it is overwhelmingly leftist by default. The left has not only most of the institutional power, but ALL of the soft power. Soft power is more powerful than institutional power, these days. Of course they're going to turn everything into a propaganda mill. You'd be a fool not to. Thing is, the Left sucks ass at making propaganda, because they've never understood nuance, or how to persuade, or how to make their propaganda entertaining. There's also the critical flaw that each and every leftist talking point is predicated on a lie, a lie by omission, or emotional dishonesty by way of manipulation or coercion. That's always been their Achilles' Heel, the abject lack of humanity in all that they do, under the guise of an appeal to humanity. If they were people, they'd know how to appeal to people.

 

[God of Nothing]

Conservatives use "woke" today because they are unwilling to say what it really is: anti-White. Nobody can even define what "woke" means. I guess we could define "wokeness" in hiring as anything other than pure meritocracy, but it's not really applied that way.

anti-white and anti-heterosexual/normal basically

 

[Dysnomia]

Social justice and some woke ideas are not bad on their own. But wokeism has been pushed to an extreme that causes people to be desensitized to real world problems. Sexism and racism actually do exist. But it's not sexist because some big boobed polygons exist. It's not racist if your historically accurate work lacks black people. But this seems to be what a lot of woke people are focused on. Big nothingburgers in media they never intended to consume anyway.

The term has become a joke. I'm surprised anyone is using it seriously now.

 

[Mean Feen]

Social justice and some woke ideas are not bad on their own.

Yes they are. The idea that everything has to flow through the filters of modern politics is the cancer killing society. Identity politics is the most evil thing ever conjured by the Frankfurt school.

 

[Ultrapenguin]

Conservatives use "woke" today because they are unwilling to say what it really is: anti-White. Nobody can even define what "woke" means. I guess we could define "wokeness" in hiring as anything other than pure meritocracy, but it's not really applied that way.

It's just mainly intended to be anti-traditional middle class values, especially by emphasizing identity politics and de-emphasizing class issues to be as friendly to the institutional status quo as possible.

White people happen to make up most of the middle class, so they're usually the target.
I'm sure church going latinos are just as unhappy with gay shit being shoved everywhere as white people are, and the wokies only like Asians when they're a simpering Americanized version. They dislike the culturally Asian variety.

People don't call it anti-white because it's not specifically anti-white, not when stuff like feminism (the warped modern version) and pro-lgbt are major elements of it, and ones that exist even outside of predominantly white countries.

 

[007Eleven]

 

[skykiii]

Yes they are. The idea that everything has to flow through the filters of modern politics is the cancer killing society. Identity politics is the most evil thing ever conjured by the Frankfurt school.

See, I'm of two minds about this.

@SSj_Ness once used the analogy of a huge plant starting from a small seed (part of the same thing this topic began as a response to).... to that though, I counter that bananas eventually go rotten, but you can still eat them before that happens and they'll be good.

I've always said I was fine with the "wokeness" of the 1980s and early 1990s. A lot of that could be genuinely good advice. Even something like Captain Planet.... sure it was environmentalist propoganda but some of the ideas it espoused are actually good ideas just on a common sense/money saving level.

In the eighties "wokeness" meant mostly that shows started adding a girl to what had originally been an all-male cast, and in some cases had them doing "not traditionally girly" things. And yet, well... writers since the 30s had already been doing this (Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian, also wrote stories about woman warriors) and the end result is it allowed for more character dynamics. Teela's mixed feelings on He-Man/Prince Adam, her connection to Man-at-Arms, her being secretly related to the Sorceress and having a sort of rivalry with Evil-Lyn are all things that help give her depth and make the show rewatchable today.

A lot of conservatives have pointed out that the problem with modern wokeness is that in some ways it actively contradicts and even demonizes ideas it used to espouse, and in creative fields that means also its become creatively limiting. Teela can no longer care much about her dad or her male friends because modern feminism is all about hating men and cutting them out of your life (and portraying women as perfect and infallible). Same is true with, say, black characters--nowadays all black characters are raging stereotypes, when the standard used to be that black people didn't have to be just "that guy who listens to rap and talks in ebonics."

Like, from a certain perspective, it almost feels like an intentional attempt to sink the ship--that's the only way I can think of where you can go from Dungeons & Dragon's Diana (who is black but looks and acts like a normal fucking person) to that girl from Codename Kids Next Door (raging stereotype who I wouldn't be surprised if she likes chicken and watermelon).

 

[The Ugly One]

Something is woke when it is made deliberately worse in order to function more effectively as a propaganda piece and score good boy points with fat cat ladies on Twitter.

 

[Mean Feen]

I've always said I was fine with the "wokeness" of the 1980s and early 1990s. A lot of that could be genuinely good advice. Even something like Captain Planet.... sure it was environmentalist propoganda but some of the ideas it espoused are actually good ideas just on a common sense/money saving level.

Wokeness is poorly-defined (on purpose) but I don't believe we're thinking of the same thing. Ideas that could improve society are not inherently woke. Woke is not a synonym for progressive despite similar layman connotations. Captain Planet telling us we should reduce pollution so we don't live in China level conditions is not the same thing as Breadquanda being fast-passed through pilot school because slavery happened. There is a difference between a sincere desire to improve society and using ideas that seem good on the surface to embiggen your influence. There is a lot more of the latter than the former in the modern left. It's the difference between a program that provides a good library to the inner city vs. giving nigger mayors money for dem programz publicly so that the niggers will vote for you later.

 

[A Logging Company]

Conservatives use "woke" today because they are unwilling to say what it really is: anti-White. Nobody can even define what "woke" means. I guess we could define "wokeness" in hiring as anything other than pure meritocracy, but it's not really applied that way.

The thing that keeps woke around is ultimately white people. Even if you want to take the "It's jews" line, there are enough shabbos goyim buying what the Jew is selling to keep it going. It has more to do with social class, with upper class and rich whites trying to shut the door on social mobility for middle and lower class whites using darkies and other minorities as a proxy.

 

[grump]

Conservatives use "woke" today because they are unwilling to say what it really is: anti-White. Nobody can even define what "woke" means. I guess we could define "wokeness" in hiring as anything other than pure meritocracy, but it's not really applied that way.

My definition of woke is bigotry under the guise of antibigotry. A lot t of people against wokeness don't have a clear definition of it formulated in their head ready to spout out and the libtards like to harp on that but really you can say the same thing for any cause and it doesn't really diminish the validity of being against wokeness.

 

[Otterly]

Like going with this example: how do you know the pilot was gay and black? What if no news article names the pilot at all? At that point, you're just assuming.

No not really. Fifty years back a gay black pilot would have faced a lot of barriers, and you could assume that if they were flying they were good enough to overcome them. Nowadays you’d assume they were there via a quota and you’d be right more often than wrong. As @SpergioLeonne says, it’s the setup not the individual outcome.

What’s woke in the pilot scenario? It’s when the ideology of forcing equality of outcome has overridden the basic needs of the requirements for the role (competence) to the point it’s endangering all involved.

 

[skykiii]

No not really. Fifty years back a gay black pilot would have faced a lot of barriers, and you could assume that if they were flying they were good enough to overcome them. Nowadays you’d assume they were there via a quota and you’d be right more often than wrong. As @SpergioLeonne says, it’s the setup not the individual outcome.

What’s woke in the pilot scenario? It’s when the ideology of forcing equality of outcome has overridden the basic needs of the requirements for the role (competence) to the point it’s endangering all involved.

I feel like we're talking about a different scenario.

The way I understood it is the original argument was only talking about a singular plane crash, which could just as easily be because the pilot really wanted to see what hell looked like and figured going straight down was the quickest way there.

But if you suddenly have an epidemic of plane crashes, and this epidemic happened only when wokeness picked up, then yeah--I agree there's a connection.

 

[Not A Bunny]

When there is a concerted effort to point out that someone of arbitrary prominence, power, or authority (and in fiction: in a pre-existing property) is not a straight white male, without regard to their merits or qualifications, something is woke. When a character that isn't a straight white male shows up in something and nobody points it out or cares, it isn't woke. When it's not a pre-existing property, it isn't woke because nobody cares.

When that not straight-white-male is presented such that they cannot be met with even the slightest bit of criticism and the response is that you're some kind of bigot, something is woke. When criticism is allowed and even considered fair, it isn't woke.

When the criticism of bigotry is similarly raised because this thing where there isn't a straight-white-male at the head of it isn't garnering popular interest, because despite the fact that they were told it wasn't about them and they shrugged and agreed, they were only allowed to agree insofar as not spending money on it, something is woke. It's not woke when the filmmakers say, "all right, we did something wrong, lesson learned".

When the presence of not straight-white-male people is not just regarded as normal, but even profound enough to "save lives" (see: https://ideaspies.com/posts/marvel-actor-says-eternals-lgbt-representation-will-save-lives), or that there is specific reason for those characters to be straight and/or white and/or male and that it's disregarded without considering the implications (such as why the Lost Boys would be boys or why Dr. Liet-Kynes is a man), it is woke. It isn't if new characters are created in a new property or if a bad character is changed because the old one sucked (see Aquaman).

When villains are de-fanged or made to be incompetent because the heroes need some lame villain to beat in order to look good, specifically since the hero in question is a not-straight-white-male and needs to be propped up (see Rey Palpatine, Ursula from The Little Mermaid), it's woke. To see examples of not-woke, see the original versions of those properties.

 

[Gargamel]

Something is woke when a conservatard says so, just like how something is transphobic when a troon says so.

 

[legtard respecter]

i guess a work is woke to many if it has any left leaning or minority stuff in it but i'll dust off some old definitions to add to it:
politically correct, when it's trying not to offend any possible group in a panic of doing so, and SJW, when it tries to assert the superiority of these groups and their views, leaving them to fill up a vast amount of space in the work with The Message and that kind of content.
so wokeness is some combination of that on top of it all, in its most distilled form