Woke? WTF?

Sure, it's used the same way as the phrase," Trump Derangement Syndrome" is used as an excuse for anyone who despises Trump.
 
Gawdzilla Sama said:
I'm unclear on "woke". Help a brother out?
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No consistent or universal definition. Traditionally, it referred to social justice awareness (dating back to circa 1930s Black civil rights activity and resurrected during the New Left era of the '60s and '70s). But today, it's used to both broadly refer to everything off-shooted from critical theory to narrow reference to specific aspects of DEI .

By the late 2010s, the left stopped employing the term due to the negative hijacking or construing of it. (Prior to that, the political "awareness" of systemic oppression had expanded to include LGBT+ and marginalized population groups in general.)

Arguably, its current pejorative usage is a way of demarcating the old left (and its fixation on the class struggles of Marxism) from the contemporary left's focus on achieving radical equality in a capitalistic world that is now grudgingly accepted as not disappearing anytime soon.
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The technical definition is "aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)".

It has (somehow) been corrupted into A Bad Thing.
 
A new iteration of do-gooder as a derogatory term? Whilst the road to hellishness on Earth might be paved in good intentions not having any is the sure shortcut.
 
What's the opposite of "woke"? "a-sleepin' ", I suppose, seeing the term was taken from Brer Rabbit - style, Deep South black dialect. I'd far rather be considered "woke" than "a-sleepin' ".

Personally, I try to avoid the term, as to me it has connotations of belittling black civil rights - and hence of racism.
 
DaveC426913 said:
The technical definition is "aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)".

It has (somehow) been corrupted into A Bad Thing.
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Deliberate labeling as a bad thing by the opponents of reason and sanity. Nothing new there. Kneejerk reaction leads the hard right sheeple.
 
A decade ago, social justice warrior was the big pejorative term used by the Right, but then woke came along and didn't have so many pesky syllables. And, being an adjective, was easier to attach to other terms, e.g. woke brigade. And easily noun-ified as wokeness.

Just as people would reasonably ask when hearing SJW, "well what's wrong with fighting for social justice?," now they can ask, "well what's wrong with being awakened?" But don't expect a thoughtful answer or real engagement from anyone using those terms. They are thought substitutes (Dennett, or someone like him, had a term for such, but can't recall it atm).
 
Ignorant, delusional, incompetent, hypocritical, lying, angry, hateful, bigot, morally bankrupt, deplorable...

While the right may have the loosely defined term, "woke" to throw around when they get triggered, the above well-defined terms can easily and definitively be assigned to the right whenever they open their mouths.
 
My hillbilly cousins could turn "good morning" into a pejorative. Gets tedious at times. I do get to write letters of intro for some of the kids when it's time to go to Uni.
 
A bit cheeky of me but I have used the term a bit provocatively here and there, especially about the "need" for Mars colonies for ephemeral feel good motivations like species immortality and achieving "multi-planet species" status - being reasons too woke for most taxpayers.
 
Reading the Thunder and Lightning books, by John Varley. Teenagers, a drunk, and a brain-damaged Cajun go to Mars. I read this set about every 3-4 years.
 
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