Yes I agree with your interpretation of what woke currently means. I’m saying that this is actually using woke ironically an insult. An unironic usage has no negative connotations.
The author James Lindsay has defined it in similar terms, as “a victimhood-based identity politics” whose “victim groups are whites, Christians, men, and straight people”. He argues that the movement is “roughly intersectional” insofar as it is obsessed with identity politics and a grievance relating to anti-white racism. “Like their counterparts on the Woke Left,” Lindsay writes, “the Woke Right have accepted as fact that there’s a conspiracy against people like them and that their only real hope is to lean into the identity grouping and advocate for collective power under that heading”. In these terms, the “woke right” is a kind of ideological doppelgänger, whose members exhibit the same precisionist and absolutist tendencies of their leftist counterparts.
Pierce Morgan uses it more and more often against right wingers to great effect.
Right. The right wingers are arguing (usually without knowing it because they don’t understand words) for people to stay asleep and not think or question
I think that ship has sailed. That word is at the moment a clear sign the person using it is an asshole. It can be reclaimed, but right now I don’t see that happening.
I would love to not let the nazis dictate how the swastika is used, but their perversion of the original meaning has permanently altered how it’s seen by the rest of the world. Claiming the moral high ground by trying to force something to mean what it no longer does is a pointless exercise.
It’s not about claiming the moral high ground, it’s just that you can’t have a word that can be used to mean its opposite, even if “sarcastically”. The word woke is just the past tense of wake, nothing else. It can be used to represent someone “waking up” from the hide-your-head-in-the-sand routine, or becomes able to see things from a new perspective. For the right, it doesn’t really mean anything, but they are pretty much using it as the new “sheeple”. Which doesn’t make any sense.
But the important thing is this: if someone is ridiculing people for wanting to be informed, involved in society, or generally just themselves, the only thing they’re actually insulting is their own intelligence and heart. If we let them have their use of woke as a generic mean insult, we lose sight of that.
More than swastikas, I think this case is closer to saying “you can use literally to mean figuratively because it’s common use” to which I also say no, fuck that.
But yes, swastikas forever symbolise Nazism. That doesn’t negate their original, positive meaning previously found in history, religion and culture. This is not an “achtually it’s ok to draw swastikas because they are actually good”. I’m just saying that context, and intent, matters. If you tattoo one on yourself as a westerner, you’re a Nazi - and it’s ok that everyone treats you like one. But should those original uses be stopped because it’s now “forever bad”?
I won’t. Nobody is able to define what “wokeness” really means to them because it’s mostly code for “subset of people I don’t want to exist around me”.
Surprisingly, that doesn’t sound very good when said out loud.
“Woke” has had a consistent meaning since its introduction into the English language almost a hundred years ago. It means “Aware of systemic racism.”
When blues legend Lead Belly ended a show in 1938 by saying, “Stay woke,” he meant: “Stay aware of systemic racism.”
When some chud on YouTube in 2025 says “‘Woke’ is ruining gaming,” he means that awareness of systemic racism is ruining gaming. For him.
And when an American politician calls himself “anti-woke”, he’s saying that he opposes the awareness of systemic racism. Not that he denies the existence of it, but that he’d prefer no one talk about it, so that it can continue.
When some chud on YouTube in 2025 says “‘Woke’ is ruining gaming,” he means that awareness of systemic racism is ruining gaming. For him.
I don’t think it even goes that far tbh. Especially for less political, more gamer-type “conservatives”, it just means “the other side”, forcing so many girls (1) into their game. Maybe it’s just to deflect having to admit to being a misogynist.
And when an American politician calls himself “anti-woke”, he’s saying that he opposes the awareness of systemic racism. Not that he denies the existence of it, but that he’d prefer no one talk about it, so that it can continue.
Yes, exactly. No sane person would call themselves “anti-woke”. Unless they’re successful in subverting its meaning to be “those we’ll put in concentration camps”. Oh wait, that still wouldn’t make you sane.
Woke means being aware that an interaction with a cop is a life or death situation. Cops aren’t your friends, they’re not here to protect you. They’re a threat, motivated by cruelty and love of power. When dealing with a cop, you have to speak gently, keep your hands visible at all times, and declare your intentions for every action. Or you could die. You could still die even if you do all that.
Any person who unironically uses “woke” is a complete douche canoe and can go get fucked. Change my mind.
Wrong way round. The unironic woke is the BLM socially aware activist.
It’s since around 2020 woke is mostly used as an insult by douche canoes.
Woke is now a synonym for Social Justice warrior.
A person or movement prioritizing moralizing outrage about minor grievances over actual effective societal change.
As my half Nigerian cousin likes to say on issues like white people wearing dreadlocks: “That’s something only white privileged women care about.”
Yes I agree with your interpretation of what woke currently means. I’m saying that this is actually using woke ironically an insult. An unironic usage has no negative connotations.
The best new use of woke is the woke right.
Pierce Morgan uses it more and more often against right wingers to great effect.
Right. The right wingers are arguing (usually without knowing it because they don’t understand words) for people to stay asleep and not think or question
Don’t let the alt-right dictate what “woke” means
I think that ship has sailed. That word is at the moment a clear sign the person using it is an asshole. It can be reclaimed, but right now I don’t see that happening.
I would love to not let the nazis dictate how the swastika is used, but their perversion of the original meaning has permanently altered how it’s seen by the rest of the world. Claiming the moral high ground by trying to force something to mean what it no longer does is a pointless exercise.
It’s not about claiming the moral high ground, it’s just that you can’t have a word that can be used to mean its opposite, even if “sarcastically”. The word woke is just the past tense of wake, nothing else. It can be used to represent someone “waking up” from the hide-your-head-in-the-sand routine, or becomes able to see things from a new perspective. For the right, it doesn’t really mean anything, but they are pretty much using it as the new “sheeple”. Which doesn’t make any sense.
But the important thing is this: if someone is ridiculing people for wanting to be informed, involved in society, or generally just themselves, the only thing they’re actually insulting is their own intelligence and heart. If we let them have their use of woke as a generic mean insult, we lose sight of that.
More than swastikas, I think this case is closer to saying “you can use literally to mean figuratively because it’s common use” to which I also say no, fuck that.
But yes, swastikas forever symbolise Nazism. That doesn’t negate their original, positive meaning previously found in history, religion and culture. This is not an “achtually it’s ok to draw swastikas because they are actually good”. I’m just saying that context, and intent, matters. If you tattoo one on yourself as a westerner, you’re a Nazi - and it’s ok that everyone treats you like one. But should those original uses be stopped because it’s now “forever bad”?
Let Doechii do it for you 😛
I won’t. Nobody is able to define what “wokeness” really means to them because it’s mostly code for “subset of people I don’t want to exist around me”.
Surprisingly, that doesn’t sound very good when said out loud.
“Woke” has had a consistent meaning since its introduction into the English language almost a hundred years ago. It means “Aware of systemic racism.”
When blues legend Lead Belly ended a show in 1938 by saying, “Stay woke,” he meant: “Stay aware of systemic racism.”
When some chud on YouTube in 2025 says “‘Woke’ is ruining gaming,” he means that awareness of systemic racism is ruining gaming. For him.
And when an American politician calls himself “anti-woke”, he’s saying that he opposes the awareness of systemic racism. Not that he denies the existence of it, but that he’d prefer no one talk about it, so that it can continue.
I don’t think it even goes that far tbh. Especially for less political, more gamer-type “conservatives”, it just means “the other side”, forcing so many girls (1) into their game. Maybe it’s just to deflect having to admit to being a misogynist.
Yes, exactly. No sane person would call themselves “anti-woke”. Unless they’re successful in subverting its meaning to be “those we’ll put in concentration camps”. Oh wait, that still wouldn’t make you sane.
Woke means being aware that an interaction with a cop is a life or death situation. Cops aren’t your friends, they’re not here to protect you. They’re a threat, motivated by cruelty and love of power. When dealing with a cop, you have to speak gently, keep your hands visible at all times, and declare your intentions for every action. Or you could die. You could still die even if you do all that.