The "Black Hole" of woke....

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Hi everyone, I'm struggling with wokism at the moment. I'm not struggling to understand what it means to be woke but I'm struggling because I'm worried that the more woke society becomes then the more things it might find to be woke about and that in turn will mean that it will become a kind of "black hole" that will just suck the life and soul out of society.

For me personally woke is about as important as having a mutual respect for my friends, neighbours, acquaintances, associates and the general population etc.

I hate the thought that at some point in the future every P and Q that I dare to utter will be under some kind of big brother type scrutiny and it bothers me that cancelling out so much of history and culture due to wokism could also lead to people losing the very essence of who they actually are whether that be good bad or somewhere in the middle.

Anyway, just wondering what you guys think of this.

Do you think that too much woke could have a detrimental effect in the future?

Also I'm here to be educated and not to start a fight.

Thank you in advance for your input.

I've opposed wokeness since 2016.

A movie with an all female lead cast would release every now and then and marketing would go "If you don't watch this movie then you're sexist."
And then I would go "Fine then, I really won't watch it because I will not threatened with labels just to watch a film I most likely won't enjoy."

Other times the marketing would go "This film isn't for men!"
I would go "Okay then. See ya."
When the film bombs at the box office, they run damage control saying "WHY DIDN'T MEN WATCH THIS FILM?! !!"
I answer with "you're the one who marketed this film saying it wasn't for men like me."
They can't have their cake and eat it in this situation.

For years they've tried to control the direction of popular culture. They've taken established characters and made them gay, trans, race swapped, etc. instead of creating their own. They've marketed first gay character in an animated film even though they've already done it a dozen times before. It doesn't feel all that special anymore. Men in female led films are portrayed as either Simps, submissive, or stupid. Your social identity is being marketed as a product and sold back to you. Do you enjoy it or do you find it annoying? Rainbow Capitalism is what it's called and more it continues to market diversity with no substance, diversity itself will diminish in value.

It's like the same people who are advocates of woke are the same people who are advocates of diversity.

I'm not against either but I can see how woke could inadvertently cancel out diversity because woke seems to be slowly stamping out freedom of thought.

Personally I hadn't even heard of wokism until the last 12 months. It certainly wasn't a thing when I was at college and that wasn't all that long ago.

Popular culture has been fought over for decades -- by the right as well as by the left.

My question is why a centralized mass pop culture industry still even exists, in the first place, instead of just lots of small subcultures, each creating their own smaller-scale entertainment media.

In my opinion, centralized mass media made sense during most of the 20th century, when the mass media were limited to small numbers of radio and TV stations transmitted by radio waves that had to be strictly limited to specific bandwidths doled out by the FCC (or the equivalent government agencies in other countries besides the U.S.A.). But then along came the cable era, and then subsequently the Internet era, both greatly expanding everyone's possible options.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 21 Aug 2022, 1:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Could you please define exactly what you mean by "woke"?

As far as I can tell, the word "wokeism" is a right wing buzzword referring to a right wing caricature of culturally left wing sensibilities.

Anyhow, it sounds to me like you are worried because we are now living in an era of rapid cultural change.

I grew up during an era of even-more-rapid, drastic mass cultural change: the 1960's. I remember how disoriented a lot of older folks felt when I was growing up.

I see some people here on WP, apparently including you, feeling similarly disoriented now.

I personally am not too disoriented by most of the recent cultural changes, because, as far as I can tell, most of them are just a popularization of ideas I've already been familiar with for decades due to my occasional involvement in political activism of various kinds. (I do feel disoriented by some other, non-political cultural changes, though, but that's a separate topic for another thread.)

Anyhow, it's likely that the rate of cultural change will slow down in the near future, just as it slowed down in the 1970's through the end of the 20th century. So I don't see much reason to panic about it.

OK, I always took Woke to be a more punishing, extreme version of Political Correctness.

I don't really fear change as long as it is progressive but I can't see how a political movement that seeks to punish freedom of thought, expression and human emotion can be at all progressive.

I don’t have a problem with “wokeism.” Can people go too far with it sometimes? Sure, but I think, in general, we are seeing growth from where we were before.

I feel like the right wing media is making this into a much bigger deal than it actually is.

A few years ago, Fox News had a headline that political correctness was “ruining Christmas.” I looked at the article, and it was just a complaint about radio stations choosing not to play “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” due to its problematic lyrics.

I just think that people are blowing things way out of proportion. I like the current trend overall because it helps foster inclusivity.

Yeah I'm not keen on the fact that Gary Glitter a convicted paedophile still earns thousands in royalties because certain radio stations and movie soundtracks are still using his music.

https://www.yourtango.com/2019328711/wh ... song-joker

I do agree that there are some dodgy lyrics as well from a bygone era that would now be seen as extremely politically unsound but I'm not in favour of these songs being completely deleted from history. I think it's important to understand where we have been and how we have got here and culture is a massive part of our journey, dodgy lyrics and all.

First off, who are you worried about being punished? Politicians, entertainment celebrities, and other major public figures? Or ordinary people?

Politicians, etc., have always been fair game. That's a necessary consequence of our crucial right of freedom of speech. People who want to be major public figures just need to accept this as an occupational hazard.

As for ordinary people being "punished" -- ordinary people who never sought major publicity and can't afford bodyguards -- that's a real and growing problem these days. But I see it as being primarily a consequence of the structure of today's major social media, not a result of any political ideology. Lots of people are getting "punished" or otherwise harassed these days, and not just for political reasons. (See my own page of warnings about online harassment.) And, for those who are getting harassed for political reasons, the harassment is at least as likely to come from right wing sources as from left wing sources, as far as I can tell.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 21 Aug 2022, 3:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It worries me that at some point we will all be punished in a sense that we will all have to adhere to a particular way of thinking, speaking and feeling as a result of wokism. I'm not just talking about having to tone down your use of language in public. I'm talking about a restriction of language and a uniformity of thought. So I don't mean being punished as an individual. I'm talking about society as a whole.

Maybe my imagination is running away with itself but I can see its already happening. I believe its got worse over the last couple of years. Either that or I've just been in an unfortunate situation in my own personal life.

Anything taken too far is bad.

If I misgender, I don’t feel I should get a tongue-lashing; I should just be corrected in a civil way.

I believe we had racism in the past. And there still is racism today. It bothers me that I’m automatically considered a racist based on my background.

I’m not going to check my privilege. Most of my life, I wasn’t privileged. I had to work hard sometimes to obtain my limited success.

Woke seems to mean anything reactionaries don't approve of so forgive me for not becoming hysterical.

Political correctness as a snarl word started losing impact so they borrowed a new word (woke) that immediately lost credibility among the people who were formerly using it. Regardless, the goal is to fear-monger and pretend to be victimized by having to respect other's dignity.

This is an example of the slippery slope logical fallacy, and it’s super common with this topic in particular, so I don’t blame you for it. We aren’t anywhere close to such a situation and I think it’s extremely unlikely to happen due to having checks and balances in place.

Excellent points!

I was brought up to be prejudice and to discriminate. I worked hard to fight against that but somehow black in people in particular can still smell it on me. Its a cross I will always have to bare I suppose.

The thing with gender is that the language changes so often that it's hard to keep up. I have known homosexual people all my life. I was going into gay bars at age 14 and I suppose if I'm honest I would identify as gender neutral but I'm a bit old school so tomboyish will suffice for me.

I think that hard core wokists should make more allowances and not come down so hard on people who may only have access to limited use of language through no fault of their own but it just feels like sometimes there is no margin for error and wokism is pushing even the most politically awake people into an impossible and confusing situation.

Sorry that was addressed to wolfie

OK thank you. It doesn't exactly keep me awake at night but it is on my mind quite a lot. If I think rationally about it there is actually no real evidence that this will happen but I have a big imagination. I suppose there is actually more evidence that it won't happen.