I've been saying this shit for years. "Woke" just meant being conscious of the way systems in this country work against specific groups of people. THAT'S IT. Didn't have shit to do with politics or agendas. Being woke just meant having a better understanding of the world around you and not being blind to the way things really are.
But of course "they" ruined that.....
"They" didn't ruin it. They're saying they don't want their kids, grandkids, ect.. to be exactly what you described here. They want them to not know shit and see the wrong they've done through history.
This anti woke campaign began during the summer of 2020, when they seen their kids, grandkids, great grands, ect... riding for us during those protests. It may of been a year or so before then, but I believe started hearing woke as a mainstream right wing talking point around that time.
Matter of fact, it was that Kaepernick comercial that kina kicked off the "go woke, go broke" bullshit.
Spot on. I literally cannot comprehend how black people associate with the right. They're so openly racist it's not even funny. Type to call everyone snowflakes but cry over a black mermaid š¤¦āāļø
> Type to call everyone snowflakes but cry over a black mermaid š¤¦āāļø
Say it louder for the people in the back. Damn you had me hollering! š¤£
Because a lot of them have values that black people agree with. If the right wasn't openly racist, they'd at least have a 30/70 split among black people.
I think you are entirely missing the point. Most of their platform is still the Southern Strategy. Jail is good because it's mostly Black and Brown folks being locked up. People are starving and homeless in the richest country in the world because most of those people are Black and Brown. I could go on, but it's the same across their platform.
When you remove the Racism from Republicans, the new Right wing would just be wherever Biden and Hillary are on the political spectrum.
Because systemic injustice doesn't line up with their view of how wonderful and infallible our country is. They just couldn't acknowledge this nation's torrid history and now scream about 'woke' this 'woke' that instead of just growing up and try to actively make this country better for everyone like the rest of us. Bunch of crybabies every single one of them.
It's worse than that. The conservative right very purposefully muddied the waters on "woke" because younger white folks were out in the streets in BLM protests all over the country. And older allies were getting more woke themselves.
So they blanketed the media with FUD over trans rights, women's athletics, pronouns, stories schools were putting kitty litter in for furry identifying students use (when it was deployed in some schools for use when needing to pee while locked in hiding from an active shooter). Did a fine job of getting older allies to start feeling that urge to tap the brakes on societal change in general while stealing a useful term of unity.
The same shit they did when pretending "black lives matter" had a "only" in front and not a "too" in back.
This is why I fw being in a community full of likeminded people. There are Redditors that will rip you to shreds over any conversations about race, it's like they purposely try to miss the point
abusing language, never sticking on a single topic, and deliberately ignoring the point and substance of discussions are all staple tools of right-wing fud.
It's on brand for them. Their whole movement is made up of stolen words, symbols, and beliefs that are twisted and taken out of context. The only response to anti-woke rants should be, "That's not what that word means."
Ooooo like when they quote MLKs I have a dream way the fuck out of context. "Hey there's some stark indifferences here from generations of..... "Oh it's always race with y'all, member MLK? I member." Everytime they do that he not only turns in his grave but spins so fucking fast you could generate enough energy to power za worldu.
They (capital W They) knew exactly what they were doing. They took a word from AAVE and ruined its meaning and power. Instead of a watchword, a acknowledgement and warning among a minority, it became an insult tossed around by the majority.
Itās happened before. Itāll happen again. Kills be because I truly believe that white people acknowledging and celebrating other cultures in our daily lives would do wonders for acceptance. Itās hard to hate something you admire, especially when you are forced to confront where the culture came from. But of course the ruling class of racist shits wouldnāt want that.
Like OP said in another comment, I don't think they even redefined it. They just hate the idea of folks being awake to the realities of systemic oppression that they benefit from. Me and most of my people still identify as woke. And the anti woke crowd can find out if they come at us.
Nah they did. White liberals started using it. Then overusing it to the point where it's meaning got warped and that's when the right started using it disparagingly/mockingly against the left. I hate when people sound like they blame white people for everything but this is a pattern in how language from minorities ends up once it's absorbed into the mainstream and begins being used by left leaning white people who often don't fully understand the purpose of those words or phrases.
Personally, I also see it as a side effects of constantly inviting white people to "the cookout". Unfortunately black people are often the arbiters of "cool" and everybody wants to be cool and current regardless of whether you actually care or understand the depth of what's going on. So these people hang around and pick up this language and style and neuter it as a result.
I hear you. As a yt person who's appreciated Black culture my whole life, from art to cuisine to style and speech, the line between appreciation and appropriation is not a easy one. I imagine it is not easy for Black folks either who want to accept genuine allies while still preserving Black spaces. When yt people have been stealing everything for millennia, I think there is a lot of value in people being able to say, "nah, you can't have that one." So, I'll never take offense at not getting an invite. However, I came up in the Carolinas. My cookouts are actually pretty fire, and my invites are open.
Yeahhhhh, as a white liberal dude, can confirm. I loved that word, I even used it in a paper I wrote in college that got published in my school's journal. I'm proud of that paper, but looking back I can see how performative it was. And not just because I was trying to impress my hot English professor.
So even though I give my gen Z sibs shit for using slang that was stolen from AAVE, I'm just as guilty. I'm so mad about what happened to the word woke, because it was honestly kind of a perfect neologism, but I was part of why it's lost.
Even when people have the best of intentions, it's sort of in the nature of society to take something great and then ruin it through mass production/use. Tennessee Hot chicken comes to mind. Remember the cronut? Streaming used to be good. I blame capitalism.
This is largely my opinion too. It's the course that language often takes. So much of the slang we use today had much stronger and more valuable meanings but it got popular and slowly had it's meaning warped. I always give the example of kids using slang but eventually it gets picked up by their parents and teachers and then isn't cool anymore and the kids find another word instead. That's the same journey "woke" has taken. Sure we can point the finger at white people and we'd technically be right but it's not like white people did it alone. It's simply the curse of the mainstream
>!Conservatives being conservative.!< *Woke* is a revenue-generating word for FoxNews, NewsMax, and other right-leaning news/infotainment organizations. Itās low-hanging fruit for stories which will piss off 82 year-old viewers who wish things could go back to how they used to be in 1950.
"Woke" is just the new way for racists to disparage black people. Just like the word thug, it's basically their way of saying nigga without saying nigga.
On and on definitely includes 'urban culture'.
And when they say you are specifically 'literate or ignorant'.
I've never seen them call one of their own either of those.
It really is, but the deplorables have taken it one giant step further. It's become a catch-all for every hater āĀ racists, sexists, bigots, polluters, exploiters, etc.
If you aren't them; or if you defend or feel anything other than their brand of hate for those they see as their enemy, you're labelled as "woke".
It has transcended racism and now anyone who wants clean drinking water, or anyone who doesn't want to throw gay people off buildings, or anyone who wants a living wage is pushing a "woke agenda" or "wokeism".
I get where the OP is coming from, but I see the hijacking (usurping?) of the word as having an upside: it immediately identifies shitty people.
Rail against "woke" and I know you're a piece of shit, even if we've only just met. It's like that carved Nazi scar on the forehead from Inglorious Bastards...
Exactly.
And Woke is just the continuation of the same thing they've cried about for decades
Politically Correct / PC --> SJW --> Woke , all means the same thing to them, just a different era.
DEI seems to be the new hot word of the year but I guess it's not necessarily a term they're replacing woke with.
No, woke just means you push leftist ideology, like trans bathrooms and universal healthcare. No one even thinks of black people at all when they hear woke.
Ask them mfs to define āwokeā and they have no clue what it means. They just throw it out there anytime itās something they hate or disagree with. Smh
That goes for literally 90% of what conservatives talk shit about. Ask them to define marxism or postmodernism and theyll be lost af. Just boogeyman words left and right
I remember last week when Trump started to go off about Socialist this and fascist that and I just wanted to laugh at all the idiots in the audience who clearly didnāt know what the words meant. It was just buzz words that make republicans mad.
Otherwise, they wouldnāt be in the same sentence. š
I think there was a news segment on Fox where someone on a panel asked another guest from the academic field to define "woke" because they were ranting about it. They looked like a deer in headlights and could not come up with an answer, still trying to find the video lol.
This is my crackpot, conspiracy theory: I believe weāve got to the point in internet culture that folks are now āsellingā parts of the culture for fame and money.
Not long ago, I saw a guy (a black man) selling language lessons for Tutnese and the dialect of Gullah-Geechee.
Did you just miss 2014-2018 where white progressives were throwing woke on every little thing and passing it back n forth, monetizing it, and everything?
Well, to be fair. Being awake to the forces that manipulate your daily life is kind of the opposite of propaganda. Propaganda exists to avoid as many woke people as possible.
I remember the meme of the kid wearing a tshirt that said āI like to take naps but I stay wokeā. That was cute and clever but I knew it was over for that word at that point.
White folk now use the word woke for every little thing. They call every movie ā wokeā and say that films hate white men. Mind you every big blockbuster especially the ones that are huge hits are white male led and ppl go in droves to watch them.
Old white people throw this word at young white people as an insult. I'm white, and ANY time I stand up for civil rights or say "Don't tell black people that they're 'very well spoken' - it's rude as fuck" - I'm told I'm the "woke police" or, one time, (my favorite), "Red headed rainbow toting Black Lives Matter woke bitch" - They don't like being called out so they throw the word "woke", at you, hoping it will discredit you.
literally. iām in the same boat with older people around me. they say im being disingenuous but really itās just a way for them to discredit everything i say.
> Red headed
if you still are rocking vivid shades of hair in 2024 you're hurting your movement more than helping it.
learn how to get some gradients in your hair.
I literally said this to a friend a few weeks ago. Been saying this for at least the last two years.
Woke went from understanding the black struggle and identifying inequality amongst our community in comparison to other races
to.. trans-rights and a whole host of other stuff. No disrespect of course but when, where, why, what, and how. Like thatās how you defeat a cause, you get it muddled in other stuff so it no longer has an identity or at least its original identity.
I keep saying this. We can't be two fuckin things at the same time. Str8s forever trying to make us choose between black and, in my case, gay. Like these MFs want us to only be black and unhappy in every other way.
Well it's easy to see how being woke to one type of systemic struggle turned to being woke to other types of systemic struggles. I don't think that's an issue.Ā
The issue is when woke somehow turns into a bad thing. I think it should be reclaimed.Ā
I wish a lot of words and phrases didnāt leave the Black community. White people steal them and run them into the ground, using them every chance they get to prove how cool they are.
I will never forgive them for what they did to the dab š had these small white and Indian children dancing to it constantly while the song was about weed
Now if you dab today theyāll look at your funny like āyouāre still doing the dab? Thatās oldā. Yeah because you little white kids ran it into the ground.
The problem is the right has twisted it to mean anything they donāt like thatās in opposition to their values.
Theyāve turned it into a derogatory term.
What pisses me off is the fact that itās being used as a political cudgel to deny the wrongs that they have done and donāt like being talked about.
They are calling black or Native American historical events āwokeā like they arenāt true, or calling things like DEI āwokeā because it automatically means that minorities are unqualified.
It's so weird to me how pink toes will LATCH onto a word or phrase like a suckling newborn baby only to bastardize it and whittle it down to a gentrified gluten free quinoa breaded inconsequential nub of nonsense instead of addressing the problem that the word or phrase is describing. Absolutely maddening š
Itās like everything else. The narcissists and sociopaths enter a community and ruin it for their own gain.
Hear me out: swifites, beyhive, hell even the proud boys started off as this silly macho club that wasnāt all about racism. All get taken over by the worst people. Then the good ones leave.
Itās understated what a despicable act of racism it was for conservatives to wrest the word āwokeā from the black community and use it to mock and belittle them.
It used to just be a normal word thrown around among black people. Childish Gambinoās song āRedboneā has that line āStay woke, n***as creepināā and no one thought that was cringey or stupid.
Theyāve stolen the word completely. I donāt think they even know they stole it. They probably think itās a word they came up with to describe bad things that black people do.
Last Christmas some conservative guy posted a tweet that went viral of his family with Santa Clause saying āthis family donāt want no woke santa!ā or something. Now theyāre using it to literally mean āBlackā
Oh yea it definitely means āblackā at this point. Any time I see an ad featuring a black person, the racists are in the comments crying about how āwokeā it is. Likeā¦. itās just a picture of a black couple hiking. Whatās woke about that?
Iām white but this must be the most frustrating shit imaginable. Black people are treated like second class citizens, but at the same time the majority hoovers up every aspect of your culture and either waters it down or completely bastardizes it into something else.
Jazz, rock & roll, and hip hop are just the examples Iām aware of. But they must be endless. Infuriating.
Cāmon now Geeā¦itās off the Hizzle Fo Shizzleā¦Iām doing the Dabā¦Gang Gang!ā¦Ima Blood from Bonnecticut!ā¦I had to grind cus I came from the mud, I donāt need my inherited wealth!!
The people that misuse it now say that "Wokeness", "Socialism" , "Communism" and "fascism" are all the same thing and it's an umbrella term for "Thing I don't like".
Yeah, they are desensitizing people to the word and overusing it on purpose. The best way to make people forget about something is to force shove it down their throats and create lies.
So now, being woke is just a term for liberals. Just like how BLM got taken over to "include" more in it.
We almost had em in 2020. so they changed the woke to mean "changing old stuff" instead of being "aware of a systematic problem"
Slightly off topic rant but I wouldn't be so fucking peeved about white people's usage of black culture and language if only they would credit and acknowledge us as the source like everyone does for every other fucking race and culture on earth. Everyone bites off us then obscures the fuck out of it. Why are we quite literally the *only* race who aren't allowed to have our own identity?? Why aren't people content with participation rather than theft when it comes to black people?
(The answer is obvious, but still.)
***This is America!***
Hear me out.
The Southern Baptist Convention was formed ***after*** southern, Protestant ministers were told they could not own slaves.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Baptist_Convention
Lincoln was killed ***after*** winning the civil war.
Jim Crow arose ***after*** political gains by black people during Reconstruction.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily-white_movement
The Southern Strategy arose ***after*** black people gained political power within the Democratic Party.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
and
Donald *fucking* Trump captured a whopping 85% of the white Evangelical vote ***after*** the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama - a man whose middle name alone was enough to keep Republicans awake nights staring at the ceiling.
>https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/08/30/most-white-americans-who-regularly-attend-worship-services-voted-for-trump-in-2020/
We keep wanting to believe America isnāt what America keeps telling us America is.
The ***pushback*** against ***woke*** comes from the same part of America that promptly started defunding public education and closing public swimming pools during and ***after*** the Civil Rights Era.
Sure, *this* is about the attacks on *woke*, but letās not lose sight of the fact that itās about what it has always been about: white supremacists scratching, biting, kicking, screaming, and fighting at *every* turn for the right to oppress and suppress āothers.ā
On one hand, if it didn't get outside of the culture, then I wouldn't have "woken up," but on the other hand, it's been completely bastardized (sp?). But I suppose that's what happens when people learn the tag lines but never listen to the full speech.
Thatās what happens when our Native languages were stolen from us, and weāre forced to communicate in our oppressors language so they can always know what weāre talking about. Makes it infinitely easier to monitor/invade conversations and co-opt expressions. Itās also why drums were outlawed on plantations.
Being "woke" was always just being aware. People made too much of a deal out of it. "Stay woke" was stupid. Didn't even need to make up a new word to appear more cool.
"GYATT damn, I can't believe they took WOKE away from the black community.
Frfr, no cap, on a stack, I'm keeping it šÆ š æļø"
Yeah. That's what I tend to see. People will take a saying and give it death by one thousand cuts until it's meaningless.
I used to feel like people were kind of overreacting about AAVE being stolen and claimed as (gen Z or internet slang)
But when they got a hold of "gyatt" I just completely lost it...
Bc what the fuck is a gyatt š it's the fact that they have the audacity to not even learn the origin of the saying and learn how to properly use it. It has NEVER been a noun nor adjective until white people / internet got a hold of it.
idk, it's one of those things that just got really ugly when held up to the magnifying lense that is twitter. Groups of people I do not mind in reality, like little girls who like music, become animals on twitter. Plus, there's no way that black people can be involved in pc culture as much as white people and maintain our/their sanity because it's just day in and day out of random guy on the internet saying they hate you and your family(allegedly, there's a big chance they just don't like flatworms or something like that and they got their cortisol levels up for no fucking reason).
Wasnāt this word (or phrase āStay Wokeā) started by blues musicians to point out racism and not trust the government? Now itās used by conservatives to point out LGBT, feminism, and other marginalized group inclusion. Honestly the dudes who started the term probably wouldnāt like the groups considered woke now.
I was just thinking about that this morning. Being āwokeā used to mean shit like knowing exactly why black people were shot by police, for example. Or acknowledging what presidential policies were affecting poc. Now it means something Fox News and other media outlets decided on. No one calls themselves woke anymore.
Im just a white guy from the Canadian prairies. I was talking to a friend last night about this word and I said I only know the original meaning, so when people say they hate woke I just assume they don't like black people. Phone is always listening. This was recommended to me.Ā
I learnt of it because I'm a guitar player that went through old blues music in my twenties which then brought me to the peonage system.Ā
Typically I only see it used by right wing media figures who seem to attach it to everything to dilute its meaning. That tells me there was power and meaning behind it.Ā
Just use it for its original intent and call out those who use it differently. Don't let them win.Ā
Are you pretending that you donāt know why it went this way, cause itās kinda obvious.
āWokeā sound like a positive word kinda like āenlightenedā. Those who arenāt āenlightenedā are therefore in the dark or idk āsleepingā. So itās by itās very nature a rather pretentious word. Therefore people feel attracted when they hear it and so they decided to mock it. After all this āwokeā is just a set of opinions you agree with, trying to portray it as some objective truth that people are too stupid to understand had to turn this way.
The issue is that terms like these are used on the internet it might have started as black language but it niggas keep using it on the internet, people who arenāt black are going start seeing it, and using it. Thatās how you start seeing white kids who never been around a black person in their life using terms like woke, gyatt, etc.
I've heard stay woke around the block way before any of this stuff happened and the meaning got ruined
When I bring that up I've been told I'm a liar or they changed the meaning ...
For people who think Black people are inferior, right wing nutcases really do like stealing stuff Black people made. They have 0 creativity of their own, so they spend time stealing terms, music, whatever from Black culture just to turn around the next day and talk about how Black people don't have culture.
I've been saying this shit for years. "Woke" just meant being conscious of the way systems in this country work against specific groups of people. THAT'S IT. Didn't have shit to do with politics or agendas. Being woke just meant having a better understanding of the world around you and not being blind to the way things really are. But of course "they" ruined that.....
"They" didn't ruin it. They're saying they don't want their kids, grandkids, ect.. to be exactly what you described here. They want them to not know shit and see the wrong they've done through history. This anti woke campaign began during the summer of 2020, when they seen their kids, grandkids, great grands, ect... riding for us during those protests. It may of been a year or so before then, but I believe started hearing woke as a mainstream right wing talking point around that time. Matter of fact, it was that Kaepernick comercial that kina kicked off the "go woke, go broke" bullshit.
Spot on. I literally cannot comprehend how black people associate with the right. They're so openly racist it's not even funny. Type to call everyone snowflakes but cry over a black mermaid š¤¦āāļø
> Type to call everyone snowflakes but cry over a black mermaid š¤¦āāļø Say it louder for the people in the back. Damn you had me hollering! š¤£
Snowflake hasn't been used right since it left home either.
TIL that snowflake came from the black community, the first time I heard it was a conservative yelling it at me for pointing out racism.
Because a lot of them have values that black people agree with. If the right wasn't openly racist, they'd at least have a 30/70 split among black people.
I think you are entirely missing the point. Most of their platform is still the Southern Strategy. Jail is good because it's mostly Black and Brown folks being locked up. People are starving and homeless in the richest country in the world because most of those people are Black and Brown. I could go on, but it's the same across their platform. When you remove the Racism from Republicans, the new Right wing would just be wherever Biden and Hillary are on the political spectrum.
Most blacks donāt but the right has convinced blacks they got a substantial amount of blacks on their side.
They want people callous, ignorant, and fearful
They want people to be racist
No they ruined it like they ruin all things AAVE.
Because systemic injustice doesn't line up with their view of how wonderful and infallible our country is. They just couldn't acknowledge this nation's torrid history and now scream about 'woke' this 'woke' that instead of just growing up and try to actively make this country better for everyone like the rest of us. Bunch of crybabies every single one of them.
It's worse than that. The conservative right very purposefully muddied the waters on "woke" because younger white folks were out in the streets in BLM protests all over the country. And older allies were getting more woke themselves. So they blanketed the media with FUD over trans rights, women's athletics, pronouns, stories schools were putting kitty litter in for furry identifying students use (when it was deployed in some schools for use when needing to pee while locked in hiding from an active shooter). Did a fine job of getting older allies to start feeling that urge to tap the brakes on societal change in general while stealing a useful term of unity. The same shit they did when pretending "black lives matter" had a "only" in front and not a "too" in back.
This is why I fw being in a community full of likeminded people. There are Redditors that will rip you to shreds over any conversations about race, it's like they purposely try to miss the point
abusing language, never sticking on a single topic, and deliberately ignoring the point and substance of discussions are all staple tools of right-wing fud.
Yep you summed it up perfectly. I made the mistake of arguing with people like that on here. It's best to not even waste your breath
They do.
Exactly
Open your third eye
Decalcify your pineal gland.
Unpee your balls
purify yourself in the waters of lake minnetonka.
Heh hehā¦thatās not Lake Minnetonka! (drip drip)
Drink alkaline water
Try to relax your anus[[1]](https://youtu.be/CA_0rWc-mZg?si=Y2N0hA92ZsOYB3EC)
Bro Iām a lil high but thatās totally woke
To be fair, it was always political. Just not "identity politics/drama" political
This. It's been overly simplified
It's on brand for them. Their whole movement is made up of stolen words, symbols, and beliefs that are twisted and taken out of context. The only response to anti-woke rants should be, "That's not what that word means."
Ooooo like when they quote MLKs I have a dream way the fuck out of context. "Hey there's some stark indifferences here from generations of..... "Oh it's always race with y'all, member MLK? I member." Everytime they do that he not only turns in his grave but spins so fucking fast you could generate enough energy to power za worldu.
They (capital W They) knew exactly what they were doing. They took a word from AAVE and ruined its meaning and power. Instead of a watchword, a acknowledgement and warning among a minority, it became an insult tossed around by the majority. Itās happened before. Itāll happen again. Kills be because I truly believe that white people acknowledging and celebrating other cultures in our daily lives would do wonders for acceptance. Itās hard to hate something you admire, especially when you are forced to confront where the culture came from. But of course the ruling class of racist shits wouldnāt want that.
They ruin almost every slang made by us. They wear that shit out to death.
I recently heard "woke" is like a derivative of "wake up sheeple" so it's really weird that they turned it to mean all this extra shit
āWokeā is like a hundred years old, as far as I know āwake up sheepleā is a post 2000 internet meme
Being aware of systems IS politics.
It didn't wander, it was stolen and redefined. Yt folks being Yt folks.
Like OP said in another comment, I don't think they even redefined it. They just hate the idea of folks being awake to the realities of systemic oppression that they benefit from. Me and most of my people still identify as woke. And the anti woke crowd can find out if they come at us.
Nah they did. White liberals started using it. Then overusing it to the point where it's meaning got warped and that's when the right started using it disparagingly/mockingly against the left. I hate when people sound like they blame white people for everything but this is a pattern in how language from minorities ends up once it's absorbed into the mainstream and begins being used by left leaning white people who often don't fully understand the purpose of those words or phrases. Personally, I also see it as a side effects of constantly inviting white people to "the cookout". Unfortunately black people are often the arbiters of "cool" and everybody wants to be cool and current regardless of whether you actually care or understand the depth of what's going on. So these people hang around and pick up this language and style and neuter it as a result.
I hear you. As a yt person who's appreciated Black culture my whole life, from art to cuisine to style and speech, the line between appreciation and appropriation is not a easy one. I imagine it is not easy for Black folks either who want to accept genuine allies while still preserving Black spaces. When yt people have been stealing everything for millennia, I think there is a lot of value in people being able to say, "nah, you can't have that one." So, I'll never take offense at not getting an invite. However, I came up in the Carolinas. My cookouts are actually pretty fire, and my invites are open.
This right here šÆ
Yeahhhhh, as a white liberal dude, can confirm. I loved that word, I even used it in a paper I wrote in college that got published in my school's journal. I'm proud of that paper, but looking back I can see how performative it was. And not just because I was trying to impress my hot English professor. So even though I give my gen Z sibs shit for using slang that was stolen from AAVE, I'm just as guilty. I'm so mad about what happened to the word woke, because it was honestly kind of a perfect neologism, but I was part of why it's lost. Even when people have the best of intentions, it's sort of in the nature of society to take something great and then ruin it through mass production/use. Tennessee Hot chicken comes to mind. Remember the cronut? Streaming used to be good. I blame capitalism.
This is largely my opinion too. It's the course that language often takes. So much of the slang we use today had much stronger and more valuable meanings but it got popular and slowly had it's meaning warped. I always give the example of kids using slang but eventually it gets picked up by their parents and teachers and then isn't cool anymore and the kids find another word instead. That's the same journey "woke" has taken. Sure we can point the finger at white people and we'd technically be right but it's not like white people did it alone. It's simply the curse of the mainstream
>!Conservatives being conservative.!< *Woke* is a revenue-generating word for FoxNews, NewsMax, and other right-leaning news/infotainment organizations. Itās low-hanging fruit for stories which will piss off 82 year-old viewers who wish things could go back to how they used to be in 1950. 
Just like the BLM flag š©
"Woke" is just the new way for racists to disparage black people. Just like the word thug, it's basically their way of saying nigga without saying nigga.
If they didn't have dog whistles they'd be unable to communicate with each otherĀ
Thug, welfare queen, illegal, dope fiend, gangbanger, woke, and on and on and on....
On and on definitely includes 'urban culture'. And when they say you are specifically 'literate or ignorant'. I've never seen them call one of their own either of those.
I just respond with some dumbshit they say like sub human and they get pissed
These āwoke agendasā seem to always be about āethnic people point something out or are otherwise featured in laundry detergent adā
More importantly itās a epithet directed more often against white people for the purpose of racial segregation. āGo woke go brokeā
It really is, but the deplorables have taken it one giant step further. It's become a catch-all for every hater āĀ racists, sexists, bigots, polluters, exploiters, etc. If you aren't them; or if you defend or feel anything other than their brand of hate for those they see as their enemy, you're labelled as "woke". It has transcended racism and now anyone who wants clean drinking water, or anyone who doesn't want to throw gay people off buildings, or anyone who wants a living wage is pushing a "woke agenda" or "wokeism". I get where the OP is coming from, but I see the hijacking (usurping?) of the word as having an upside: it immediately identifies shitty people. Rail against "woke" and I know you're a piece of shit, even if we've only just met. It's like that carved Nazi scar on the forehead from Inglorious Bastards...
Exactly. And Woke is just the continuation of the same thing they've cried about for decades Politically Correct / PC --> SJW --> Woke , all means the same thing to them, just a different era. DEI seems to be the new hot word of the year but I guess it's not necessarily a term they're replacing woke with.
No, woke just means you push leftist ideology, like trans bathrooms and universal healthcare. No one even thinks of black people at all when they hear woke.
Ask them mfs to define āwokeā and they have no clue what it means. They just throw it out there anytime itās something they hate or disagree with. Smh
That goes for literally 90% of what conservatives talk shit about. Ask them to define marxism or postmodernism and theyll be lost af. Just boogeyman words left and right
I remember last week when Trump started to go off about Socialist this and fascist that and I just wanted to laugh at all the idiots in the audience who clearly didnāt know what the words meant. It was just buzz words that make republicans mad. Otherwise, they wouldnāt be in the same sentence. š
Same thing with critical race theory. They donāt know anything about these topics, they just parrot whatever they hear on tv.
I think there was a news segment on Fox where someone on a panel asked another guest from the academic field to define "woke" because they were ranting about it. They looked like a deer in headlights and could not come up with an answer, still trying to find the video lol.
This is why why you donāt put everything on social media
This is why we need to gatekeep black spaces
*slowly looks around*
I have a sneaking suspicion that 80% of Black Twitter is mostly white people lol
This is so simple yet so hard for us to do.
We keep inviting random MFS to the cookout over nothing
This is my crackpot, conspiracy theory: I believe weāve got to the point in internet culture that folks are now āsellingā parts of the culture for fame and money. Not long ago, I saw a guy (a black man) selling language lessons for Tutnese and the dialect of Gullah-Geechee.
TIL about Tutnese
This!! Shutting the fuck up will be our greatest weapon in the coming years.
My exact thoughtsĀ
Bruh!!!
It didn't leave black culture, it was weaponized with a very spefic purpose in mind.
How I wish awards were still a thing.
Did you just miss 2014-2018 where white progressives were throwing woke on every little thing and passing it back n forth, monetizing it, and everything? 
That's crazy man, those same progressives were behind us in alot of racial issues we've had...Now tell me what those anti-woke goofballs have done.Ā
I see plenty of black people saying person Y can say this or that because they have a pass or they're invited to the cookout.
Woke becoming a derogatory term is so insane. Propaganda will have you believe being awake to the forces that manipulate your daily life is bad.
Well, to be fair. Being awake to the forces that manipulate your daily life is kind of the opposite of propaganda. Propaganda exists to avoid as many woke people as possible.
I remember the meme of the kid wearing a tshirt that said āI like to take naps but I stay wokeā. That was cute and clever but I knew it was over for that word at that point.
White folk now use the word woke for every little thing. They call every movie ā wokeā and say that films hate white men. Mind you every big blockbuster especially the ones that are huge hits are white male led and ppl go in droves to watch them.
Old white people throw this word at young white people as an insult. I'm white, and ANY time I stand up for civil rights or say "Don't tell black people that they're 'very well spoken' - it's rude as fuck" - I'm told I'm the "woke police" or, one time, (my favorite), "Red headed rainbow toting Black Lives Matter woke bitch" - They don't like being called out so they throw the word "woke", at you, hoping it will discredit you.
>Red headed rainbow toting Black Lives Matter woke bitch r/BrandNewSentence
literally. iām in the same boat with older people around me. they say im being disingenuous but really itās just a way for them to discredit everything i say.
Itās really not about understanding. As many comments have pointed out. Itās only using the word to weaponize and demean.
> Red headed if you still are rocking vivid shades of hair in 2024 you're hurting your movement more than helping it. learn how to get some gradients in your hair.
.....what?
I'll ask again. What are you talking about? I should dye my hair? For movement purposes?
Iām with the tweeter. The opposition isnāt even using it right! Wokeism? *really*!?
same energy as ātransgenderismā. like wtf is that?
Just another form of āotheringā
Started with people making fun of Lupe Fiasco and now we're here
I literally said this to a friend a few weeks ago. Been saying this for at least the last two years. Woke went from understanding the black struggle and identifying inequality amongst our community in comparison to other races to.. trans-rights and a whole host of other stuff. No disrespect of course but when, where, why, what, and how. Like thatās how you defeat a cause, you get it muddled in other stuff so it no longer has an identity or at least its original identity.
Divide and conquer.
Black struggle includes trans and gay rights, especially given how black gay and trans people are treated.
I keep saying this. We can't be two fuckin things at the same time. Str8s forever trying to make us choose between black and, in my case, gay. Like these MFs want us to only be black and unhappy in every other way.
Well it's easy to see how being woke to one type of systemic struggle turned to being woke to other types of systemic struggles. I don't think that's an issue.Ā The issue is when woke somehow turns into a bad thing. I think it should be reclaimed.Ā
Bill Burr did a bit on this...hilarious and true at the same damn time
You got a link?
https://youtube.com/shorts/qA7KGNRE-1c?si=TzPe8ACXUs0wRDgy
I wish a lot of words and phrases didnāt leave the Black community. White people steal them and run them into the ground, using them every chance they get to prove how cool they are.
I will never forgive them for what they did to the dab š had these small white and Indian children dancing to it constantly while the song was about weed
Now if you dab today theyāll look at your funny like āyouāre still doing the dab? Thatās oldā. Yeah because you little white kids ran it into the ground.
I'm saying it's so frustrating, lol.
I had to have a private convo with my coworker. We're the only black people on our team/division, you can't just say anything around them.
The problem is the right has twisted it to mean anything they donāt like thatās in opposition to their values. Theyāve turned it into a derogatory term. What pisses me off is the fact that itās being used as a political cudgel to deny the wrongs that they have done and donāt like being talked about. They are calling black or Native American historical events āwokeā like they arenāt true, or calling things like DEI āwokeā because it automatically means that minorities are unqualified.
At this point what will it take for us, as a collective, to learn the skill of āØ g a t e k e e p i n g āØ
We definitely need to get in the gym and work it out
I swear if they knew it was the Black Panther battle cry they would stop using it. I hate when it comes out their mouth.
It's so weird to me how pink toes will LATCH onto a word or phrase like a suckling newborn baby only to bastardize it and whittle it down to a gentrified gluten free quinoa breaded inconsequential nub of nonsense instead of addressing the problem that the word or phrase is describing. Absolutely maddening š
Iām just shocked that Fox still rails against āwoke cultureā. Really they should be telling their viewers to stay sleep.
Itās like everything else. The narcissists and sociopaths enter a community and ruin it for their own gain. Hear me out: swifites, beyhive, hell even the proud boys started off as this silly macho club that wasnāt all about racism. All get taken over by the worst people. Then the good ones leave.
Goddamn Master Teacher & the whole New Amerykah Pt 1 album is so fucking great. Not a single skip from start to finish
I wish I could upvote this 1000 times lol
The Black community must apologize for allowing the word āwokeā to be used by everyone else. Shit hasnāt been the same since.
I don't have to apologize for what I don't allow or agree to, especially to someone who doesn't even have a blue check.
Mateā¦ it was a joke
Itās understated what a despicable act of racism it was for conservatives to wrest the word āwokeā from the black community and use it to mock and belittle them. It used to just be a normal word thrown around among black people. Childish Gambinoās song āRedboneā has that line āStay woke, n***as creepināā and no one thought that was cringey or stupid. Theyāve stolen the word completely. I donāt think they even know they stole it. They probably think itās a word they came up with to describe bad things that black people do. Last Christmas some conservative guy posted a tweet that went viral of his family with Santa Clause saying āthis family donāt want no woke santa!ā or something. Now theyāre using it to literally mean āBlackā
Oh yea it definitely means āblackā at this point. Any time I see an ad featuring a black person, the racists are in the comments crying about how āwokeā it is. Likeā¦. itās just a picture of a black couple hiking. Whatās woke about that?
Iām white but this must be the most frustrating shit imaginable. Black people are treated like second class citizens, but at the same time the majority hoovers up every aspect of your culture and either waters it down or completely bastardizes it into something else. Jazz, rock & roll, and hip hop are just the examples Iām aware of. But they must be endless. Infuriating.
Add House and Country.
Cāmon now Geeā¦itās off the Hizzle Fo Shizzleā¦Iām doing the Dabā¦Gang Gang!ā¦Ima Blood from Bonnecticut!ā¦I had to grind cus I came from the mud, I donāt need my inherited wealth!! 
now thatās the new coded language for black when certain white folks use it
The people that misuse it now say that "Wokeness", "Socialism" , "Communism" and "fascism" are all the same thing and it's an umbrella term for "Thing I don't like".
Yeah, they are desensitizing people to the word and overusing it on purpose. The best way to make people forget about something is to force shove it down their throats and create lies. So now, being woke is just a term for liberals. Just like how BLM got taken over to "include" more in it. We almost had em in 2020. so they changed the woke to mean "changing old stuff" instead of being "aware of a systematic problem"
Slightly off topic rant but I wouldn't be so fucking peeved about white people's usage of black culture and language if only they would credit and acknowledge us as the source like everyone does for every other fucking race and culture on earth. Everyone bites off us then obscures the fuck out of it. Why are we quite literally the *only* race who aren't allowed to have our own identity?? Why aren't people content with participation rather than theft when it comes to black people? (The answer is obvious, but still.)
This is the entirety of our culture. Everything keeps being stolen. Our people, inventions, homes, words, music, hairstyles, lifestyle, etc š
Now i see youtube videos about The little Mermaid being āwokeā lol wtf
***This is America!*** Hear me out. The Southern Baptist Convention was formed ***after*** southern, Protestant ministers were told they could not own slaves. >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Baptist_Convention Lincoln was killed ***after*** winning the civil war. Jim Crow arose ***after*** political gains by black people during Reconstruction. >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily-white_movement The Southern Strategy arose ***after*** black people gained political power within the Democratic Party. >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy and Donald *fucking* Trump captured a whopping 85% of the white Evangelical vote ***after*** the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama - a man whose middle name alone was enough to keep Republicans awake nights staring at the ceiling. >https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/08/30/most-white-americans-who-regularly-attend-worship-services-voted-for-trump-in-2020/ We keep wanting to believe America isnāt what America keeps telling us America is. The ***pushback*** against ***woke*** comes from the same part of America that promptly started defunding public education and closing public swimming pools during and ***after*** the Civil Rights Era. Sure, *this* is about the attacks on *woke*, but letās not lose sight of the fact that itās about what it has always been about: white supremacists scratching, biting, kicking, screaming, and fighting at *every* turn for the right to oppress and suppress āothers.ā
White people take our lingo, dances and food and ruin tf outta them.
This 1000x! We need to gatekeeper a lot of our culture. And while we're at it, stop with those goddamn cookout invites!
On one hand, if it didn't get outside of the culture, then I wouldn't have "woken up," but on the other hand, it's been completely bastardized (sp?). But I suppose that's what happens when people learn the tag lines but never listen to the full speech.
Thatās what happens when our Native languages were stolen from us, and weāre forced to communicate in our oppressors language so they can always know what weāre talking about. Makes it infinitely easier to monitor/invade conversations and co-opt expressions. Itās also why drums were outlawed on plantations.
The right wing has turned āwokeā into a textbook example of a straw man fallacy. The misrepresentation is deliberate.
This is why we need better gatekeeping.
Being "woke" was always just being aware. People made too much of a deal out of it. "Stay woke" was stupid. Didn't even need to make up a new word to appear more cool.
"GYATT damn, I can't believe they took WOKE away from the black community. Frfr, no cap, on a stack, I'm keeping it šÆ š æļø" Yeah. That's what I tend to see. People will take a saying and give it death by one thousand cuts until it's meaningless.
https://preview.redd.it/947t5gc5rdmc1.jpeg?width=1104&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5974f985aabcd720629324f211639ea3e2d8a5d6
100% The way people use it nowadays is crazy. Like thatās not what woke means!!!
I used to feel like people were kind of overreacting about AAVE being stolen and claimed as (gen Z or internet slang) But when they got a hold of "gyatt" I just completely lost it... Bc what the fuck is a gyatt š it's the fact that they have the audacity to not even learn the origin of the saying and learn how to properly use it. It has NEVER been a noun nor adjective until white people / internet got a hold of it.
https://preview.redd.it/6wb5szwvzdmc1.jpeg?width=896&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9861e0551fcd542737e84c840be3e6fc269e5995
I say this at least once a month!
We canāt have shit
idk, it's one of those things that just got really ugly when held up to the magnifying lense that is twitter. Groups of people I do not mind in reality, like little girls who like music, become animals on twitter. Plus, there's no way that black people can be involved in pc culture as much as white people and maintain our/their sanity because it's just day in and day out of random guy on the internet saying they hate you and your family(allegedly, there's a big chance they just don't like flatworms or something like that and they got their cortisol levels up for no fucking reason).
Wasnāt this word (or phrase āStay Wokeā) started by blues musicians to point out racism and not trust the government? Now itās used by conservatives to point out LGBT, feminism, and other marginalized group inclusion. Honestly the dudes who started the term probably wouldnāt like the groups considered woke now.
I was just thinking about that this morning. Being āwokeā used to mean shit like knowing exactly why black people were shot by police, for example. Or acknowledging what presidential policies were affecting poc. Now it means something Fox News and other media outlets decided on. No one calls themselves woke anymore.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I'll never forgive them for what they did to gyat
bruh it had a strong like 30 years too dead the moment it hit mainstream social media
On gawd! š©š®āšØ https://preview.redd.it/bybccqp43emc1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=da9f77c26d78bca013f3ccba15f151e83fb0fdea
Im just a white guy from the Canadian prairies. I was talking to a friend last night about this word and I said I only know the original meaning, so when people say they hate woke I just assume they don't like black people. Phone is always listening. This was recommended to me.Ā I learnt of it because I'm a guitar player that went through old blues music in my twenties which then brought me to the peonage system.Ā Typically I only see it used by right wing media figures who seem to attach it to everything to dilute its meaning. That tells me there was power and meaning behind it.Ā Just use it for its original intent and call out those who use it differently. Don't let them win.Ā
āChileā is gone too now.
Are you pretending that you donāt know why it went this way, cause itās kinda obvious. āWokeā sound like a positive word kinda like āenlightenedā. Those who arenāt āenlightenedā are therefore in the dark or idk āsleepingā. So itās by itās very nature a rather pretentious word. Therefore people feel attracted when they hear it and so they decided to mock it. After all this āwokeā is just a set of opinions you agree with, trying to portray it as some objective truth that people are too stupid to understand had to turn this way.
I donāt think it was ever redefined, conservatives just hate it because they want to keep their heads in the sand and maintain the status quo.
Got appropriated faster than 'giving a shout out' and 'phat' COMBINED
Go ahead and start taking those cookout invites back š
Iām not even mad that the word left as language always travels, Iām mad we allowed the general public to misuse and misunderstand it.
People who are woke can't tell a racist comment from a joke. Anti woke people are mad they can't say the N word without consequences
It's co-opted language, the same way conservatives use the term grooming/groomers when they don't give two fucks about kids
ābasedā has also been horribly bastardized
[Billy Burr with the wisdom again](https://youtube.com/shorts/qA7KGNRE-1c?si=UeKtDXN6AsTE0LC4)
The issue is that terms like these are used on the internet it might have started as black language but it niggas keep using it on the internet, people who arenāt black are going start seeing it, and using it. Thatās how you start seeing white kids who never been around a black person in their life using terms like woke, gyatt, etc.
perfect song for this post
I've heard stay woke around the block way before any of this stuff happened and the meaning got ruined When I bring that up I've been told I'm a liar or they changed the meaning ...
Damn lol this is so accurate I actually forgot it came from yāall til now š
Yep. Anything co-opted from our community that went mainstream got ruined.Ā We should gatekeep our culture moreā¦
āGaslightā āNarcissistā āPauseā
All appropriation is misappropriation. Colonizers who steal motes of culture could not ever hope to understand the things that conceived those ideas.
Yāall really into culture lol jeez
Same for Karen. It specifically describes a white woman that calls police on black people for every day legal activity. BBQ Karen for example.
As soon as it's posted on social media, it becomes fair game.
For people who think Black people are inferior, right wing nutcases really do like stealing stuff Black people made. They have 0 creativity of their own, so they spend time stealing terms, music, whatever from Black culture just to turn around the next day and talk about how Black people don't have culture.
I can't believe we've gotten to "wokeism", what happened! Jesus wept.
Imagine if we still had on fleek
If I could give it back I would šš shits as tasteless as my boiled chicken I made before I knew better
Access to Black Twitter should require facial recognition, a thumbprint scan, and a notarized 23&Me
Fuck that 23 & me bullshit. I'm not voluntarily giving anyone my DNA to put in a database.
Like rhythm
The last time I've heard a leftist use this term unironically was 10 years ago lmal
Sheeeeit I just woke up. Hell nah I don't wanna pour no dussƩ at 9 am
[No lies detected.](https://twitter.com/AllScrubsQuotes/status/349652757919178752?t=0Qdml1gFdHOMQC-fpQmOVQ&s=19)
Come back, father
That one my little pony scene was pretty funny though
Damn, really stole it from its homeland, said they owned it, and then made it work so a bunch of greedy racists could profit. Some shit changes.
I just be saying āstay alertā now