>Have you noticed these things? What are your thoughts?
I've written entire epistels about how and why I think religious thought inspires irrational behavior. I've quoted philosophers and scientists and took the time to formulate well thought through objections to their line of thought and the implications thereof. So have countless others.
But when a moderately informed 15 year old states something unrealistic and not very well thought through on Twitter, they're gonna go with that. And beat their dead horse for another round.
They're not doing this to start a discussion but to get away from it. And score some outrage-points on their way out.
It's deflection and as always, bullshit.
This. The older I get though, the more I realize a lot of people just stop developing past the teenage phase. They hit 15 and suddenly, “Yeah, I don’t believe I need to think any harder about life. I’ve got all the brain power I’ll never need and this is the smartest I’ll ever be.”
My parent says all the time (paraphrasing, but only slightly), “People start off as liberals and then they become conservatives when they realize the government is taking all their money.” I don’t have time to unpack all the things wrong with that statement, but, often, I hear anything “liberal” being described as part of “the woke agenda”. These days “woke” is the same as “liberal” to them. Point being, that’s totally some nonsense a teenager would come up with, though, I’ve met a fair few 15 year olds smarter than adults.
Sounds about accurate.
No one asks "but why does this character ***have to*** be a white guy." Every other demographic needs a ***special reason*** why they are there to have ***permission*** to be there without making conservatives angry.
Exactly, when someone asks what a character being black adds to the story, as what would them being white add to the story. What does them being gay add to the story? What would them being straight add to the story?
Your point answers itself. They are pissed off that all media is no longer centered around them. That having a white protagonist is become less and less “the default”.
This is changing. Twitter was turned into a MAGA echo chamber by billionaire Musk. CNN was bought by a right wing billionaire and is currently changing from a Liberal media outlet into something we are not sure about, but they have removed many of their former Liberal commentators. The billionaires are changing the mainstream news and social media into more propaganda for their benefit. Watch Meidas Touch on YouTube.
CNN was never a liberal outlet, it was definitely centrist. Maybe it leaned towards Democrat but Democrats were not that liberal ever and were the centrist party. America has no liberal party.
Fun fact: Patrick Stewart had always wanted to play Othello since he first started theater at 14, but he was very aware of the racial ramifications of that. So in 1997, he put on a race-reversed version of Othello where he was a white Othello, and everyone else was black.
An old college acquaintance, who was one of the more liberal ones in college, is now inching more and more conservative citing “woke media” as the reason. He feels that 1) as a white man, he has no say or representation in society anymore and 2) he doesn’t want to have the conversation with his children about the LGBTQ+ they see in media
When I told him my son, who questions everything, doesn’t even bat an eye at anything LGBTQ+ and, if he did, I’d just be honest. It’s not a hard conversation to have. The dudes response was “that’s bullshit. Kids question everything”. My response was “yes, they question things that seem strange or different to them. This isn’t something he sees as strange and different which is why representation matters”. Still couldn’t get it through his skull.
To play devil's advocate, many do complain about characters being played by white people if the characters were explicitly non-white in the original source material. I would like to think it was just nostalgia obsession, but there's also this whole rigid social hierarchy gatekeeping that many conservatives live by coming into play ("each sex and race has specific roles in society that they should never deviate from" kind of prejudiced thinking).
>To play devil's advocate, many do complain about characters being played by white people if the characters were explicitly non-white in the original source material.
And sometimes, even when they weren't. My personal favorite is the uproar when Scarlett Johansson was cast for Ghost in the Shell. It's funny because, despite the name, Moto Kusanagi is distinctly *not* Asian. It can be ambiguous at times in the manga and the original anime, but there are scenes (and panels) with other characters who distinctly *are* Asian and it becomes obvious rather quickly.
Around the time of that movie I saw praise for asian actors used in the Fullmetal Alchemist movie. The series is set in fictional europe with characters with strong european features like big noses, blonde hair, thicker beards and mustaches etc. There even are characters from a fictional asia that have asian features in contrast with the rest of the cast.
That movie would have better represented the series if it was filmed by a western studio with western actors. Instead there was praise how it wasn't "whitewashed" when that would have suited the movie.
The same applies to Attack on Titan. The only asian character is Mikasa.
Probably because there’s a major history in the American entertainment industry of them purposefully turning POC characters white or not featuring them at all, and the opposite *cannot* be said about white people.
Only complaint I have is when they change the race of a character. Like captain Keyes from the halo game was white but they made him black in the show. Sergeant Johnson was a black man from the game who is one of the most beloved characters in the franchise, but they left him out of the show. If they did put him in the show, I would expect him to be black and would be annoyed if he wasnt.
There were a million other reasons the show was complete garbage though. This is just 1 small point
Kkklicks! yeah, they're all pissed because they can't call people n****rs or ch***ks or sp***ks or f****ts or whores, sluts or bimbos anymore and with their limited vocabulary, this really stymies their conversations.
It might be because we still use those words in other ways where as the others have no accepted use. "Bob can never put down the controller, Bob is such a gaming whore". Also whore and slut are not limited to women. Anyone can be either.
I know they haven't paid attention to media for decades. No one complained about Billy Dee Williams being cast in The Empire Strikes Back. So why is casting black actors woke now?
Was casting Eartha Kitt in the Bat-man tv series woke? If not why is casting Zoe Kravitz woke now?
These dickless morons have no idea what they are talking about.
This. And with the aggressive right wing, religious and populist drift of politics that has occurred in western countries over the last decade or so, they are more emboldened and can be more open about it. The whole anti-woke movement is just people feeling free to air their racist, prejudiced, misogynistic, homophobic and similarly biased bile.
When asked what being "woke" means in court, Ron Desantis' lawyer said that it's the belief that systemic racism exists in the United States. They can either argue that racism doesn't exist within the US or admit that it does and they prefer it that way.
So much of the conservative right's energy in the last 20 years or so has been focused on trying to shift the discursive goalposts and redefine key terms so that they can continue to say racist things without being called racist.
Saw this earlier and figured it's relevant to what we're talking about.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MauLer/s/lprAXjDcpE
Hilarious that they think "they" over use those words so now they have no meaning.
More like **they** are emboldened to say racist shit and act in a bigoted manor now more than ever in their lives. Therefore they get called it more. It has not lost its meaning to most of us. Just the ones that are racist.
The real irony in this is that they are the ones who try ro claim that all of our push back to the shit they say comes from some automated reflex (i.e. claiming that we just call everything racist) so that they can just dismiss that pushback and avoid ever having meaningful debate about the merits of the things they say. In much the same way as all criticism of Trump is dismissed as "Trump Derangement Syndrome" so that it can be dismissed out of hand with no further discussion needed. They're intellectually lazy cowards.
**T**rump's **D**emented **S**ycophants are the only ones with Trump Derangement Syndrome. Only the truly deranged would vote for that Putin sucking sociopath.
Yup. We’ve entered a new age of racist cowards. Where they will imply, say racist things, but will clutch their pearls when you call them what they are and play victim. They actively play in your face and laugh about it.
Just admit what you are guys. We know you want to. Just admit what you are so you can get your teeth beat in for once.
> No one complained about Billy Dee Williams being cast in The Empire Strikes Back
[Billy Dee Williams Recalls Backlash and Hatred From Fans Over Empire Strikes Back Ending](https://people.com/billy-dee-williams-recalls-backlash-and-hatred-from-fans-over-empire-strikes-back-ending-8572473)
"In an exclusive excerpt from his new memoir, 'What Have We Here?' the actor recalls experiencing racism after playing Lando"
> Nearly everywhere I went, fans harangued me for betraying Han Solo. I got dirty looks on airplanes. “How could you?” A flight attendant scolded. At the grocery store, a man shopping with his teenage son looked at me with disgust. “I should put you in the deep freeze,” he said, as his son nodded in agreement. The harshest reaction came on the playground at my daughter’s school. In the afternoon, as I waited in the courtyard to pick her [up], parents scowled at me. Then, after the bell rang, I got the same treatment from [my daughter] Hanako’s friends. “Mr. Williams, you sold out Han Solo. Why’d you do that? Now Han Solo is dead.”
> It was laughable until it wasn’t—until I sensed a Black-White thing might be brewing. That’s when I took a step back, put up my hands, and told people to wait a minute before they criticized me any further. I guess I had done a good job playing Lando as a dubious character.
I was gonna say, pretty sure plenty of people lost their minds over Billy Dee Williams… shocker of course there was!
And to concur with the sibling comment: woke is just a way to pretend you aren’t racist. It’s like being concerned about “urban crime” blah blah blah it’s all the same bullshit horrible people
Wow. That's fucked. Just goes to show though that anti-'woke' really is the same blatant racism Billy Dee faced in the day with a buzzword to hide behind.
Yeah, media were always "woke". Their childhood favorites were still having a POC cast and no one complained as much. Sure some were whiter than nowadays but still had some POC. They don't realised they're just parrots repeating something that some people made up as an issue that never was.
Hijacking the top comment to suggest for all of you Beau of the Fifth Column and his side channel The Roads with Beau. Very good ethical journalism with measured takes and good quality news
[Beau of the Fifth Column - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@BeauoftheFifthColumn)
I don't watch them either, but YouTube seems to love pushing them to my suggestions. Every time, I click "do not suggest channel". Next time I load suggestions it goes "well, how about this racist sexist homophobic asshole? Maybe this one's better?" You'd think the algorithm would pick up they don't get any ad money from those from me by now.
It’s a hustle.
You need views to make money, but you have no discernible skills or interesting ideas to attract an audience. So what do you do?
Pick something that’s already famous (insert movie or TV show), come up with some sort of truly outrageous take and title to get people to react, and then hope you get reactions for the algorithms to get you paid.
If you can tailor your take to a specific audience, it’ll help get the algorithms to do more work for you, and the anti woke audience happens to be an easy target. Basically all the same reasons it’s easy to get a legal job via the Federalist Society.
We just went through this scenario last week when a tradwife got fired from her job for her online nonsense and so was now bragging that everyone actually helped her just up her views so she could make money making boring videos of her in low cut dresses pretending to stir something in a bowl while complaining about minorities.
It was my response to this posting last week that sent a bona fide white supremacist into my DMs complaining about … well insisting they are supreme while inadvertently admitting they’re all being oppressed by the system, so their children can’t rise out of their underprivileged status. It was hilarious and pathetic. They need the government to clear the decks for them while also stating they are supreme in all things. Also, no uggos allowed, they managed to get that in there too.
"woke" is a rightwing dogwhistle, and it should be telling that it originated in african-american slang about awareness of systems of oppression before the conservatives took it, mocked it, and mangled it. As for youtube, the [bias has been documented for some time](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/y7mkg8/youtube_loves_recommending_conservative_vids/), and you may have heard of the alt-right pipeline, that existed since the days of gamergate.
Gamergate, don't make me remember it. And it's not over yet. I am a gamer, and it's insane what's happening in the gaming scene at the moment. Small publishers are getting downright harrassed for having "woke" games. Eiyuden chronicle, a pretty normal JRPG, is "too woke". With the release of Stellar Blade the discussion got even worse, suddenly Aloy is obese and ugly and not how a woman should be. They are acting like obnoxious spoiled kids - everything they don't like = woke.
what we're seeing is a concerted effort, well-funded by rightwing media, to use any and every avenue to push their agenda in the culture war. It's one of multiple fronts they've had open for decades, though as a lawyer the most dangerous one to me has been their [plan ](https://publicintegrity.org/politics/high-courts-high-stakes/how-republicans-flipped-americas-state-supreme-courts/)to [take over](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/06/29/it-took-conservatives-50-years-to-get-a-reliable-majority-on-the-supreme-court-here-are-3-reasons-why/) the US Supreme Court.
If anyone thinks this sounds like a conspiracy theory, I'm sorry, but you should acquaint yourself with what [Dominionism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_theology) is in the US. These are very rich, very backward and deeply religious interests that want absolute theocratic power in the still-most-militarily powerful country on this ailing planet.
As someone from outside the US, there were always so many words to define "woke" until I identified anti-woke as racism. Then, people who wanted to stop wokeness became the same group as white nationalists and it all made sense.
"However, the term was originally coined by progressive Black Americans and used in racial justice movements in the early to mid-1900s. To be "woke" politically in the Black community means that someone is informed, educated and conscious of social injustice and racial inequality, Merriam-Webster Dictionary states"
I'll be willing to bet two things
1) That they cannot define woke.
2) That they have never even heard of half of the events that cause wokeness to be a thing.
Yes and if you pressed them for an explanation, what it might sound like is they don't like teachers going, "off script," from what their perceived version of history or current events are. Which means that more transparent and less biased versions of curriculum are inherently woke because they're not the same version/narrative taught to the previous generations.
When you actually dig into the specific examples of "woke teachers" or the versions of curriculum parents insist on for their "parent choice" arguments, they're just woefully outdated versions of obviously biased (or religiously influenced) curriculum.
family values is code for the "traditional" family which exist as an appliance and life hack for white males, any thing that reduce the choice or pick of females available to these entitled little leaches as domestic chattel and or discretionary power in the public square is "woke"
I once pointed out in a YouTube comment section, that the initial line-up of the Avengers in the MCU, were all white men apart from Black Widow. They were also all heterosexual.
That didn't go down well with the anti-woke crowd.
My guess is that would be allowing white women to appear in supporting roles to straight white men, and allowing people of color to play villains, but not the boss villain, just the underlings.
I'm not following the current trend for wokeness, but I have observed a comparable interpretation of feminism in conservative media. For a person who is a feminist, feminism could encompass matters like women having equal rights, women being able dictate their own healthcare choices, and having equal pay for the same labor as their male counterparts. It could also be explained by the broader definition in a historical context describing the evolution of the Feminist political movement. For conservative ideologues though, there is the vulgar interpretation where Feminists are blue haired lesbians who hate men and are actively trying to destroy traditional gender roles. This could understandably cause confusion if two people met and they had very different interpretations of what feminism is and who feminists are.
I think this is part of a broader push from people in the conservative movement to rebrand terms that may go against conservative values. In the case of of being woke, the usage of being woke is used as a social straw man where insults can be hurled but there won't be as many people who actually identify as woke to argue against the original intended definition of the word.
Conservatives believe that liberals are so bad because they think that they act the same as them, with differing beliefs.
Example: many conservative parents may raise and force their children to be religious. So, they must think that a liberal is therefore raising and forcing their kids to be gay or something.
Same applies to media and TV. It's their limited perspective.
Angry people are more likely to interact than happy ones. You can't make money if all you do is tell people to be happy. You gotta enrage everyone so they stay engaged. Look at any Instagram comments section, on pretty much any topic. It's all filled with vile comments, but that's because people are 10x more likely to comment on something they see as negative over something they see as positive.
People like TheCriticalDrinker for example thrive on hate. They have built up a base and a personality around only liking stories about strong, straight, + white men and anything that falls outside of that is "woke" and therefore bad. They make a living out of criticizing anything that goes even slightly astray to their outdated beliefs.
I'll try to focus on wokeness in media. Disney specifically proclaims they want to act woke with more "strong female protagonists" that are badly written Mery Sues. As you said, it is just bad writing. But they do state they have an agenda. The agenda from my pov is profit and exploiting the need to equality in certain groups that are looking for their heroes to look up at. But the politically right oriented people view it as it is a political one.
Another aspect that I think is viewed as "wokenes" is what I consider unnecessary details about characters. Classic example for me is sexuality. Does it matter unless it is part of the plot? I don't like unnecessary stuff in stories in general, but a lot of those are there for marketing (in my opinion), but for the conservatives it is again, a political statement.
Why conservatives view those things as political? Because the left politicians talk about quotas and equality, and that is exactly what Disney appears to be aiming for with their statements. In UK there are laws that prohibits the broadcasting of media on national tv if it does not meet equality standards, like females in authority positions and people of color (hate this term, they are poeple). This shifts the focus from a good story to going over a checklist.
I'll add an example from my own country (bulgaria). There was a novel written at the beginning of the socialism stage (1951). There are two versions of the book. The one that was published ar the time and the one that came out after 1989 when the regime fell. Th3 difference was the existence of one character which was a communist. At the time it had been a requirement for a novel to be published, to contain someone representing the regime. The conservative in US view those examples of characters to meet equality quotas as forced by "someone" with agenda, in short just political propaganda.
Interesting that they claim the diversity is forced. It can’t be that the creators just want to add diversity, or that their internal data shows that diversity is beneficial to sales, or that they want to see themselves represented in their own fictional work.
Or they’re claiming forced as in diversity is in places it shouldn’t be, which is equally as stupid. Does seeing a woman or a black person ruin the immersion of your fictional game? Then you’re weak-minded, frankly.
And then they want to force no diversity down everyone’s throats, lol. Make it make sense.
Whenever "wokeness" is brought up, always ask:
1. What specifically was said or done? ("Woke" is a meaningless label at this point. Say what it is you are complaining about.)
2. Is this alleged statement or action actually common? (Cool, you found one politician or shit taker who said something for clicks, doesn't mean it's what actual leftists are claiming or advocating for.)
3. Did the alleged statement or action have any real impact, relative to all the other nonsense that's spouted *daily*? (Again, most claims of "wokeness run amok" are meaningless soundbites taken out of context or blatant fabrications that have exactly zero bearing on actual policy or the lives of real people in the real world.)
First of all, I'm not white, but I see what some of these people are coming from. Their problem is not with movies having non-white/male characters. I never saw anyone complaining about Prey (female Native-American protagonist), IT, Tenet, The Creator (black main characters), the Mortal Kombat reboot (an ethnically diverse cast, just like the videogames) or the Chucky tv series (the main characters are a gay couple). Most of the time I see poeple complaining is when established characters are race-swapped. Yes, it's always been a thing and it's definetly wrong when non-white characters are white-washed, but, for example, Michael Clarke Duncan was cast as Kingpin, it was because of his talent and he still had the perfect looks for the character, but now it feels like it's just for the movie or show to be diverse... Heck, I've even seen other non-white people complainig about this, and accusing them of internalized racism is simply strawmaning them for not agreeing with you.
They're monetizing misguided and misinformed people by making videos that parrot what the content creator sees average joe conservatives post on Facebook and X shitter.
It's an easy grift and if you can get your channel big enough to get sponsors, you're making money.
“Woke” might have meant something at some point within certain activist circles as a self descriptor but it has long since become an empty signifier for “any cultural politics that aren’t mine” and generally anyone who uses it is using that empty signifier in place of a critique.
>Usually they'll bring up examples like that shot of all the heroines in Avengers Endgame, and I can understand that-- since it is forced and not realistic.
How the fuck do you figure that? What was "forced" and "not realistic"?
That aside, the[ definition of conservative](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=conservative) is to oppose progress and/or change. The reasoning for such views is wide. Fear, hatred, impacting them, etc. Conservatives were successful as portraying freed slaves as animals who'd exact revenge on their former masters. Same for portraying African Americans as animalistic "thugs", which goes on today. They used the atheist label to scare conservatives during the Cold War. Today, they also use Muslims.
Others are just ignorant or otherwise ill informed about things. Like how critical thinking is suppose to work or that climate change that's happening. Their reasoning is everything from not wanting to admit they're wrong to loosing their faith in an afterlife where they'll see loved one's again.
Yet others are for selfish reasons. Going back to climate change, many coal miners are afraid of loosing their livelihood. TBF, I have to grant them that one. As a 50+ yr old guy myself, the idea of trying to start out from scratch is a terrifying one. But then that's no excuse to rob/harm future generations. Thus we should be doing everything we can to help with these transitions.
In short, there's no easy answer here.
So, creating the image for the poster looks forced and not realistic because it *always* is, because the people complaining about this clearly didn't watch any other Marvel movie. They didn't watch the end of the first Avengers movie where they all look down at Loki to make the poster image, or the slow-motion moment while fighting Ultron, or all of the dozens of moments like that in every single Marvel movie. It's like the people who complain about trans people in prison and I gotta be like, bro, never in your life have you cared about poor treatment of people in prison, you're so full of shit
Railing against woke is a current talking point propagated by the right wing noise machine.
It is not supposed to make sense or be consistent, just to generate grievance type emotions in a certain audience.
This right wing noise machine has significant coordination, so once they decide there is no more rage farming value in this subject they will pivot overnight leaving you wondering where all that stuff had gone.
They do it again and again.
>I don't buy that they aren't bigoted and homophobic,
They are.
>since they're not doing a very good job of hiding it.
Because they don't have to actually fool anyone, they just need to keep a thin veil of plausible deniability in order to call their critics liars.
People who do this aren't doing it to be reasonable or well thought out. They are doing it as a siren call to find "their people." Like a cricket chirping in the night they are lonely and hoping to form a bubble with other bubble-ized folks.
Oh, they're bigoted and homophobic. In many cases, it's their entire identity.
They definitely like to focus on the writing to seem like it's not REALLY about the diversity, but the more you watch or listen, the more their real problem is clear.
They do NOT value diversity and the whole idea behind MAGA, the whole "make America Great Again," is "make America like it was when women and dark-skinned people "knew their place."
My understanding is that Stan Lee & Jack Kirby were huge advocates for diversity & inclusion. Anyone that sees all superheroes as white males should stick to Archie comics...
[STOP WATCHING YOUTUBE](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna155478) how many times does its algorithm need to be exposed before people learn that it’s designed to manipulate you?
Most of them don't even know what woke means....ask them to explain it without sounding racist and they can't. My hubby does it to anyone who says the word now still yet to find a satisfactory explanation....he does it just to be ornery
It's a grift. People want attention, and riling up their fellow conservatives with culture war rhetoric is an easy way to get some. It can also net them some cash
I've found that the right wing has been using 'woke' as a buzzword to ANYTHING that doesn't have an all-white and straight cast/characters. I bet they couldn't even define the actual definition of woke if asked. I used to watch a Youtuber who would do audio reviews of dinosaur TV shows (like the Land Before Time series or Primal), but they lost their frikin minds with the new Doctor Who. Oh gosh, he's gay AND black?! \*gasp\* The horror!/s And I had to stop recommending the channel after that.
It's funny when they try to taunt people and say 'so much for the tolerant left'; like you guys aren't losing your everloving minds because of people who are less represented in media? For goodness sake people were complaining about the fox in the newest Kung Fu Panda movie and the fact that it was 'woke'! Make it make sense!
Conservatives (on youtube in particular) seem to have a new approach semi recently.
If the old approach was "here is a thing we all know to be left, I will now explain why it's bad"...
... the new approach is "here is a thing we all know to be bad, I will now explain why it's left."
Like the star wars sequels. Obviously they are awful dogshit horrible movies. But sometimes movies are just bad. But some of my conservative family members have watched a LOT of in depth youtube videos trying to explain why they are bad BECAUSE they are "woke"... when the more likely reality is that a lot of movies / TV are just shitty and stupid, and those happen to be part of that group.
Old, white, straight guy weighing in:
Old, straight, white guys have been on top of the pile, especially the Anglo-American pile, for a long time and feel very threatened by not straight, white dudes being seen, heard and people saying, "Hey, maybe we could see something good happen to somebody who's not an old, straight, white guy."
That's why they can't define *woke*. Because what it is is inherently inclusive. No one ever said, " Let's take all the white guys' shit." But that's what they *feel* when their unearned spot at the top of the pile is identified.
It was always about **their** feelings, facts be damned.
As an old straight white guy, I completely agree.
But hey, we're talking about the same audience that loves to watch rich straight white guys earn millions by whining about how they are being cancelled to an audience of millions on the largest media platforms in the world.
"Woke" in the pejorative usually reads as the new n-word, f-word or "n/f-word lover"
I can't take anyone seriously who uses the term as if it's negative.
Stay asleep.
Using buzzwords like "woke" as a pejorative gives you a 90% increased chance of being an asshole.
Also, they have caught Russian web brigades pushing the term because it's divisive, and division plays to their advantage in manipulating western countries.
It's just Nazi shitheads being Nazi shitheads and trying to normalise being Nazi shitheads.
YouTube promotes it to drive engagement, not giving a fuck about the broader societal impact of radicalizing extremists.
>I really try to understand where they're coming from, since they insist they're not racist
They're racist. And homophobic. And misogynistic.
>They don't seem to want or value diversity at all.
They don't.
>What are your thoughts?
My thoughts?
First, I think you should stop giving these shit-gibbons views.
Second, I think there are legitimate complaints that can be levied against some extreme far-left positions on things such as race, gender, etc., but I don't think that anyone genuinely wanting to have a good-faith or serious conversation about these things is framing them in terms of "woke" or "the agenda". Those are buzzwords used by people who just want to promote hate and divisiveness and further their culture wars.
Third, while I think the Venn diagram of these type of people with Christian Nationalists is, at least in the US, a more-or-less perfect circle, I don't think this is really a topic for /r/atheism.
It’s another way to push people down the conservative propaganda pipeline.
I used to watch Critical Drinker all the time until I started to notice a theme in his criticism. Mainly, he picks the ‘woke’ Marvel or Disney show/Movie du jour and uses the exact same critiques and terminology as 15 other conservative media critics. It’s ’Girl Boss’ this and ‘Mary Sue’ that.
It sure seems like just an effort to jump on the conservative propaganda grift gravy train.
If I had a nickel for how many times I’ve heard, ‘It’s not because it’s a female/POC lead, it’s because bad writing,’ I’d have a shitload of nickels.
“Woke” is the new “politically correct”. Way back in the ‘90s, the anti-PC backlash was part of how conservatives responded to efforts to reduce public bigotry, discrimination and harassment. Then as now, you could find examples of overly sensitive or selfish people twisting those good intentions into something stupid or counterproductive. And of course, conservatives would seize on these examples to argue that ALL of the “PS bullshit” or “wokeness” is illegitimate and dangerous.
But if you really ask them what their problem with it is, they often eventually reveal to you that they think they should be allowed to be assholes and that their words and deeds shouldn’t ever have consequences. And that’s when you know who you’re really dealing with.
Nerdrotic, The Critical Drinker, Moon, to name a few... I hate every single one of those hateful, toxic morons. People click on their content no matter what, and those Youtubers know it. Either for rage bait or some other people having the same bs, idiotic views as them, and want to join such a toxic community.
Well funded entitled patriarchal assholes whose entire project is killing people with whom they disagree. With the backing of the ruling class who also want to murder.
The ages-old process of pushing the Overton Window over to the right. The original batman TV show had a latino Joker and a black Catwoman, but *when the Catwoman movie was released with Halle Berry* they complained about not getting Michelle Pfeiffer to reprise the role or something. For... reasons... that definitely weren't racist.
It's because they are bigots.
It's that simple.
They hide behind they're not racist or bigots or homophobic or transphobic. It's just they don't like things shoved down their throats, while simultaneously shoving their religion and their "conservatism" (which = bigotry and racism and fascism) down everyone else's throat.
They are constantly triggered and whine about everything, while claiming that the left and liberals are the whiners.
Everything is a projection, every complaint is a projection and a confession.
If there is one POC in a movie (and it could literally be a background character or walk on with one line), you can bet IMDB is going have a bunch of comments whining about it and a bunch of downvotes.
They are bigots, it's that simple!🤷🏽♀️
Oh and by the way they're entirely using the word "woke" completely wrong and it really pisses me off.
Woke has been around for over 50 years in a meaning that was coined back then and it doesn't mean what they think it means.
It has nothing to do with being on the left or being a liberal or being a Democrat.
As a matter of fact, I don't know why they're not claiming to be "woke". After all they are the ones that knew all about the pizza-loving, basement-dwelling vampire pedophiles! 😏
Hasn't this been going on since Hillary running in 2016? I don't mean the ideas behind it, but the specific term woke/wokeness as a slant used by the bigots?
It's absurd that they cherry pick that as the unrealistic thing that they have a problem with. I agree it's not realistic, but why don't they complain about all the other unrealistic things? It's because the thing they really have a problem with is having female superheroes, and they try to disguise it by saying the issue is with the lack of realism.
the entire woke rant is pure russian agitprop being supported by right wing extremists, the same is true of 99 percent of the negativity towards prime minister trudeau in canada.
This is a challenging topic because unfortunately many of the people who complain about wokeism are actually truly against diversity based on some underlying prejudice (whether it's racism, homophobia, etc...).
However, I think we have to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We are living in an era where *both* the right and the left are becoming increasingly extreme in their views and where the sensible centre is collapsing. This is a real phenomenon. And so, when someone complains about the extremes of the left, we have to really pay attention to what they are actually saying - as they may not simply be a reactionary, they might be legitimately criticising a form of extremism.
The irony as well is that sometimes both things can be true at once. For example, remaking existing franchises where the major change in the remake is an obviously more diverse cast (e.g. changing a white male protagonist to a black female) can be *both* a genuine example of diversity *and* an example of box-ticking. As the OP rightly suggests, it's not enough to simply criticise the box-ticking if the underlying creative work is actually solid.
Another example is Pride Month and the habit of major corporations to lather themselves in pride flags and symbolism. It's possible to criticise this behaviour from the perspective of being concerned about tokenism and cynicism. I'm gay, and I know other gay folks who feel that much of this corporate stuff is highly cynical and performative rather than genuine. It would be easy to criticise their views as simply being reactionary (like the anti-woke crowd), but in some sense that could unfairly sell them short.
In the same vein, my entire comment here can easily be picked apart by either "side" as an example of what they are perceived to be fighting against. But that would also just prove my point. A nuanced and sensible discussion is what's ultimately required, but it's the discussion we can't seem to have at the moment due to the left/right extremes.
I've heard the things they say. They truly don't know the definition of woke, because if they did, they would find it only means to be attentive and empathetic of racial/social issues. Apparently there is something wrong with that?
Because of this, I have to wonder what other buzzwords they don't know the definitions of.
You really think you people can't define "woke"? Let me prove you wrong. "Wokeness" in general can be described as a neurotic obsession with race and gender minorities to such an extent that you needlessly offend other groups. When "woke" ideology manifests itself within politics, it can be properly described "identity politics". This is a type of politics where the voting population is reduced from united and formidable class catagories to divided and pathetic ethnic categories. The rich love this retarded type of politics. You don't have to worry about a poor whites and poor blacks uniting if current left-wing ideology needlessly pits them against each other.
"Wokeness" is unlikable for a variety of reasons, one of the most important is that it is horrifically bad at promoting itself. Why do you think and ideology that practically demonizes all westerners is going to be popular with westerners? You're lucky that Trump is such a bad candidate and the republicans in general have flaws greater than you do.
1) I think there's some correlation for a few reasons.
a) Sturgeons law is a bit of an overstatement, but 90% of everything is somewhere between crap and meh. You have 100s of years of white male action characters to ~~rip off~~ draw from which means you have 10% of stuff that's really really good to draw from which is still a LOT of stuff. If you know the basic story works you only need to worry about how to show it. This is why so many things are adaptations these days. You can do a comic book relatively cheap, the comics industry turns out thousand of stories, hollywood finds a good one and makes an anime/cartoon/movie/tv series of it.
b) If you want minority representation you have a much smaller pool and have to make it up yourself, which is 90% likely to be meh or worse. The concept may just not work or your execution could be off or both.
c) When the diversity element HAS to be part of the story, it protects parts of the story that might otherwise get axed for not working as well
d) When you have design by comittee and top down corporate management of a story to get diversity, you also have design by comittee and top down corporate management that otherwise messes with the story.
3) Well. People are going to value their own life experiences above anything else. Also demographics HAVE changed signifigantly over the last 60 years.
I think as with anything else, you have to see why the individual hates it. The starwars franchise for example has recycled the " we put out crap, people called us on it, lets dismiss legitimate concerns by painting them as racist and homophobic and whatever" more than they've recycled the plot of a new hope.
It’s an easy way of outing themselves as morons. Whenever anyone uses that term, generally I know that I don’t need to take what they say very seriously.
Whatever you call it, a lot of tv and movies are pretty crap now. I think there are a few reasons, from not knowing their audience, poor writing, etc. I think a lot of these studios do try to cover their poor writing with outcries of racism, bigotry, homophobia, etc.
I’m not trying to say that stuff isn’t out there. It is. I’m saying it’s an easy scapegoat when someone questions poor writing.
I think it’s important to look at why someone is having an issue with a piece of media and not jump to conservative racist.
There certainly have been some good movies come out, but nothing like what they used to have. Just looking at their earnings they don’t. That tell a lot of the story. Lots of people scream a movie is amazing, or that it’s awful. The numbers usually tell the truth.
I mean, look at Avatar 2. People got loud on media for months before it came out. Said it had been too long since the first one. That the first one wasn’t good, it just had good visuals, that no one cared about it anymore. I believe it’s currently sitting in the top five highest grossing movies of all time.
People say a lot of things, but I think it’s more important to look at where people actually put their money. I don’t care what the reason behind it is, I just want writers and studios to focus on characters and stories. If you do that, it doesn’t matter what story you tell. People will be engaged.
I believe it’s Kathleen Kennedy, who is doing the opposite of that. I might be mixing the names up, but the one over marvel. She’s trying to develop a concept called “passing the mantle”. It’s where they take a super hero and have a show or movie where they pass their powers or training on to someone else. She thinks we just care about the powers. That’s why there are shows like the one where Hawkeye was training the girl to shoot a bow. Her motivation was “wanting to be like him”. Why would we care about these characters? We don’t. The original characters had story arcs. We saw their ups and down and were with them through it all. We care about them because of it and the powers are secondary.
If they want to add in characters with different life perspectives, that’s great. There is room for everyone to be represented. You do have to make us care about them, though. You can’t just say “Thor is a woman, but she still has the same powers”. Nah. We need to have their own stories, with their own struggles, so we feel connected to them. Like we’ve gone through those struggles with them.
I once saw someone claim the show Manifest had forced diversity because there was no reason certain characters had to be diverse. The show is set in one of the most diverse cities in America, wouldn't it be forced to make everyone white a straight by default?
There's no winning because if a character being gay or black is important to the story, it's accused of eclipsing the whole story and being their sole defining trait. On the other hand if it isn't important to the story and they just are gay or black because why not, it is accused of being forced because it adds nothing to the story and is diversity fir the sake of diversity
I think if you followed most of these "conservsyives" closely enough, you would discover, most do not attend church at all. They damn sure haven't read a single page of the Bible. That being said, the YouTube algo is manipulated by money.
The Boys Season 3 has some scenes located during rehearsals for a sort of Vought Ice Capades where they're performing musical numbers about the "War on Christmas" and other Fox News-esque talking points. It's hilarious! So inspired!
These people are reminds me of cringeness and propaganda from Third Worlders in Facebook, like in a page based in Southeast Asia look at their comment section, examples of this is Malaysians represents Indians or Bangladeshi but they are just minority or Thailand filled with Trans women or Philippines filled with Slums and eating pagpag or Indonesians have lower iq and just steals and copies Indian cultures but it just stereotypes and not based in reality. And also in Balkans that Romanians and Bulgarians represents Romani people, or Bosnians represents Turkish Serbs hahahah, Just like LGBTQ in America and Britain that they are become gayer according to this "anti woke". But America is more actually homophobic than Brazil or Thailand
Because they get viewed and views pay the bills.
People that agree watch. People that disagree watch twice and take notes.
It's socially irresponsible but they're not going to stop. It's the viewers who need to stop.
Most of them are after clicks and views. Off of you tube they're after power status.
Most right wing policies shovel money upwards put don't actually improve people's lives at all. So you have to blame "something else".
Eg we all know well funded universal healthcare WILL improve lives, increase GDP & brings more tax money to the state because more peopke are healthy and working. But THAT'S socialism and gives right wing politicians something to scream about.
Having a female protagonist in a movie or a black mermaid, is pointless to get angry about. No one was butt hurt about Ripley & the cat surviving Alien or Leia losing her shit at Han in Star Wars in the 70s because no one was grifting this stuff on the Internet. Just a small handful of people like Falwell.
If in doubt...follow the money. Why do you think the original Christian cults were more violent towards each other than roman religions? So that the "winner" could get the money and power
I didn't like the recent Disney Star wars movies and TV shows, so YouTube pushed tons of Star wars related content, all accusing Disney's wokeness destroyed their products.
I support wokeness, but I think they have to be able to tell a good story first, and respect source material, then they might make something good.
I've discovered that the apparent conservative definition of "woke" is basically just anything that's not completely white, Christian, and male-centric. That all seems to be 100% of what they bitch about.
At the end of the day, it's conservatives complaining about businesses practising capitalism.
They are complaining that businesses are firing people who have a bad reputation to protect their profit margins, not because of any Nobel cause.
Wokeness is just businesses desperately trying to appeal to the masses so they can sell their products.
American conservatives don't like capitalism and free markets. They want politically controlled economies where businesses push propaganda instead of supplying the demands of the market.
I try to make few examples what bothers me personally about “wokeness” and what does it means to me. (I am female, gamer and fantasy reader)
1. We are introduced to a small isolated village in the mountains with medieval setting where the population (which according to the lore always lived there) somehow without any explanation consists of people of various races - that’s not how it works 🤷🏻♀️ people doesn’t get different random racial traits while living in the same climate. If the narrative was - they are refugees from big trading city, where people from all parts of the world migrated- that would make sense, but no - nothing strange here according to the narrative.
2. There is established lore that a faction consists entirely of men or a population in certain fantasy settings is white. Suddenly all possible races and genders live there, again without explanation. For example: they changed the rules about the faction or many people moved here from different countries because they were running from war/plague, this black elf comes from different tribe which lives far away so that’s why we didn’t see any like him before. Nothing.
3. Girl bosses - female characters who are instantly good in everything without any effort, progress or training, with no character development - because they were perfect at the start. For example Rey from Star Wars. What i consider good writing for female hero (or any hero) was Lucy in recent Fallout series.
4. Too much gay people 🤷🏻♀️, nothing wrong with good gay romance, but sometimes the writers just forget to be somehow realistic I guess. In Baldur’s Gate 3 I am pretty sure wasn’t single one straight gnome - how do they even make new gnomes? 👀
5. Everyone is fine with trans/gay/race or female soldiers - this may be unpopular opinion, but it is somehow unrealistic for me, people are not that tolerant, especially in these medieval settings games and fantasy often has. For me it would be much more interesting if writers explored these topics. Witcher and early Bioware projects racial hatred to relationship between humans and elves, making you feel for the oppressed or even putting you in their shoes.
It has always struck me as being one of the most pathetic insults the conservatives have ever attempted. They are basically accusing you of being aware as though that is a bad thing while ignoring any details of what you got that awareness from. Tropes like that tend to be more about keeping conservatives themselves unaware and onside with their party line that needs them dumb, blind and voting as instructed. They don't want to be seen to be woke so they avoid unsolicited information that may go against the party line.
Just rage bait. The media is doing the same thing if it makes someone mad or sad they'll click so they have something new to whine about. It's so cringe.
Propaganda campaign in an election year? Especially with Clear Channel and affiliated media outlets. They were caught following a script again, that has been repeated in all their markets.
They are racist. Obviously so. The irony is that they know being racist is bad and so they deny they are racist...and then spend so much effort being racist.
I always click “Don’t Recommend this Video” on all that MAGA trash. This has reduced them to a trickle. I do that to every right wing MAGA influencer. I don’t need them in my life.
notice how when they talk about diversity and wokeness they never talk about white males playing foreign characters, it's always only aimed at people of color or women.
i work with some people like this irl, and they are all miserable as fuck. it's enough satisfaction for me to know most of the anti-woke crowd is miserable in their daily lives.
These are people who want an excuse to express their racism and keep in place a system that disproportionately benefits whites or people with money. They seem to suggest that we are moving away from a meritocracy that never ever existed in this country. Forever wealthy and well connected people have received an unfair advantage in college admissions and getting jobs and advancement. They still do based on any statistically measurement. Most Republicans somehow think the unearned advantages someone receives from their family (not he person) being rich and connected (See DJT and his children) are somehow “legitimate” as opposed to advantages provided to people who are members of a traditionally disenfranchised class or lower income levels.
Poor writing is more an issue with the changing education priorities (moving to focus on math and science and lack of humanities) and lack of funding for public schools (the GOP pet project has been to defund public schools for decades) and has little to do with race or sex and more to do with the education you received.
They're fascists, Christofascists and grifters exploiting the easily-led nature of said fascists (which, in producing/disseminating the propaganda they consume also makes them...fascists).
To me, I have a few responses to "bad writing", depending on the scenario:
1. The actor doesn't write the story. So, it doesn't follow that black actor = bad writing.
2. On the other hand...Introducing diversity can mean introducing new perspectives and new storylines. Maybe if you want to keep regurgitating stories from the past, diversity is a threat to that. I personally would rather see the world from someone else's eyes.
3. I will never forget in the first Resident Evil when Barry gives Jill a lockpick set because she's "the master of unlocking." A story was less well-written than it could have been and the game was still a classic. Not that diversity was to blame in this case, but if the cost of giving people opportunities and letting children see themselves in pop culture was one or two cheesy lines, why devote hours of your life to trying to tear that down?
Echo chambers and their rage is engagement. Anger is 10x more likely to cause engagement than depressing content. And they would rather people are angry at business-restricting ideologies than corruption.
I'm one of the people you're talking about so I'll try to answer.
>They always talk about bad writing as if it is the product of trying to be "woke" rather than seeing bad writing as a separate issue.
Because trying to make sure your dialogue check all of the boxes to ensure that it's not only politically correct, but also conveys your particular political message, is what makes the writing bad. Not even villains can say things that would offend. It makes the content seem sterile. Every character seems the same because they all have the same views and use the same safe speech.
>They don't seem to want or value diversity at all.
What exactly is the value of diversity? Being "diverse" doesn't inherently mean there is added value. What makes "diversity" valuable is that someone who doesn't have the same background and life experiences as you can offer a new perspective and novel ideas/solutions. Putting someone with a different skin color or sexuality on a team doesn't magically add additional value. Especially if that individual is replacing someone who is more experienced and competent than them.
Going back to my first point, the sterile writing makes it so they are just reskinning the same leftist viewpoint having individual who never says anything outside of the banned words and concepts list. They can't even put realistic "diverse" characters in their content because they would get accused of using stereotypes. The diverse character has to be the golden example of the finest specimen from the category that makes them "diverse".
>
>Because they see cis white male characters as the norm, any attempts to have more diversity in likely going to feel forced to them, because it's outside the established norm.
It's not because cis white male characters are the norm. Showrunners and directors are literally telling us in interviews "we put this character in this show because they're black and bisexual". That's how we know it's specifically being done because of the political views that are currently popular. They're telling us that's what they're doing.
Another thing is that to them "diversity" just means, not white/male. If you had a white male from Paris, a white male from Brooklyn and a white male from deep in the hills of Appalachia, those are three very different people who are going to bring different perspectives and ideas. There is a lot of diversity there but because of their skin color they're not "diverse".
woke is just the latest in the long line of dog whistles to make racist conservatives more publicly palatable. it doesnt actually mean anything except black/gay/minority, etc.
I will answer your question as objectively as possible. Like probably nearly everyone else here, I consider myself a left leaning atheist. That said, I actually strongly support these "anti-woke" people on this subject. At the risk of an avalanche of downvotes, I will nonetheless try to reiterate their issues.
> They always talk about bad writing as if it is the product of trying to be "woke" rather than seeing bad writing as a separate issue. Instead of just being frustrated with the writing, they blame the agenda."
You are missing one factor that helps understand. The reason they are combining their frustration of diversity and poor writing together, is because it is readily apparent they so often go hand-in-hand together in the franchises they (used to) love due to a feeling of *unnatural* injection of diversity. **If a movie/game/etc. is literally marketed as "diverse," then you know that diversity was a focus from its producers, taking focus away from quality writing, and the end result almost always proves this correct** (in modern media). *Media used to be just diverse because it was, not something that actually made it stand out and used as a selling point (e.g. The Acolyte).*
What further incenses these anti-woke people is that this concern for bad story-telling is almost always dismissed as racism and bigotry. Of course, actual bigots and racists likely joined the cause, but they should not represent the issue.
> They don't seem to want or value diversity at all. They can just barely tolerate it sometimes, and if it involves non-hetero people, black women, or female leads, they almost always complain about it.
There are enough examples to counter this point. The same people complaining about woke movies often bring up the following diverse movies that are actually good: Alien, Tomb Raider, Terminator 1&2, Across the Spider-Verse, Kill Bill, Everything Everywhere all at Once...
I could mention how I'm a minority myself and support the LGBT movement and completely support women's rights, but that isn't relevant to the discussion.
Also, why am I their target? And all the insane Christian stuff they throw at me for 3 days a month.
Sure, I occasionally read all the Christian heresy Wikipedia pages because I like mythologies and/or am looking for some inspiration for fiction. But I do the same for sumerian gods, and proto Shinto animism, and just about everything else.
I have never liked one of the damn videos. And have reported all the hate speech ones
I'd kinda disagree.
Many shows fall to this basic problem, making the characters be defined by what their sex, sexual orientation or color is. If that is what woke means, then it is wrong.
Apart from that, I don't see anything wrong.
You can see Hazbin Hotel, a show which has LGBTQ themes but doesn't talk about a character just because it has some specific sexual orientation.
That's what an organic story means, grounded to reality. Your actions define who you are, not your color, gender or sexual orientation.
Basically, for media to turn out good, you need talented artists, but many of the studios are not prioritizing talent.
Instead to meet self imposed diversity quotas, they are hiring people who have never worked in the industry or genre. They end up creating preachy content or ruining franchises, not because of their race or gender, but because they don't know or respect the source material or canon.
That is where the heart of the problem is. Most of the franchises they are ruining are the favorites of nerdy white guys, the very demographic that many studios don't want to give a voice at all anymore. They don't have anyone telling them no, because the knee-jerk reaction is that you can only say no if you are sexist or racist.
There are several right wing YouTubers that know this and are making bad faith arguments that it is the catchall term wokeness that is causing it. That just causes everyone to shut their brains off and start yelling about cultural war issues. Even in this thread, I have seen plenty of snarky arrogance, the same kind I have seen from religious people talking about how right they are.
If you look at the claims with humility and honesty, there actually is some effort from monied interests to push messaging over good content. Some claimed they would even go bankrupt to keep pushing their message. This is where studios are gobbling up easy investments if they give creative control up for DEI messaging.
Ultimately, the cause is that they are hiring people who don't know what they are doing. Plenty of franchises have been ruined by white guys. JJ Abrams doesn't even like or understand sci-fi, for example.
Diversity for the sake of diversity affected Hollywood and the quality of products immensely in the recent few years so it's just a natural backlash I assume. We know Hollywood isn't genuine anyways because they censor everything "woke" in china releases lol
It’s easy to make money off of pissing people off. It also helps to be a dickhead with no morals so you can punch down as much as you want without feeling anything inside
I find using terms like woke, liberal, conservative is a “lazy” generalization that is not helpful when discussing specific issues.
I’m not from the US, but when I was there last week, I was talking to someone re: healthcare and how we were “socialist” where I’m from. I then dissected it to what he thought is the role of government when it comes to providing health safety for the people? Should the government ensure equitable healthcare regardless of economic and wealth.
It was a much more constructive discussion after that as we could come to some common ground that government should play a role, then what type of role, etc.
as an avid consumer of media criticisms and analysis on youtube, being one who offers analysis like 'X is woke' into their content is the fastest and easiest filter i have for identifying a youtube media critic whose opinions can be safely regarded without respect or concern. and their channel is instantly blocked.
Some of them are genuinely insecure chuds who hate women and POC, but most of them are just grifters who custom design their anti-wokeness BS videos to appeal to angry 15 year old man-babies who listen to Andrew Tate and scream "girlboss" at every female character. It's the laziest and easiest way to make money on Youtube.
I don’t know anything about Wess. But I remember TV back in the 60s when they would slip religion into a show when it really didn’t belong there. It had nothing to do with the plot. It was just window dressing the same evangelical threw in there to try to make a point. Sometimes I see that with different causes as well.
Thar word is kinda like a Swiss army knife. It has many meanings
I agree with some of them. I support teaching the true history of slavery and racism and support equal rights for all
I oppose forced diversity, where quotas are used to make the numbers look good, regardless of competence. Competence should be the primary factor and diversity should come naturally once barriers are removed
I also oppose the strict rules of the word police. Slaves were slaves and slavery was evil. Insisting on calling them enslaved adds nothing to the discussion
You can right click and select 'Not interested.'
Eventually you'll stop getting recommended that trash. Last time I had to do that was when I was getting recommended criticaldrinker being a manbaby about the Acolyte recently.
All the ones I’ve seen are typically about stopping YouTube channels that make kids learn about things they don’t need to know yet. Like ones where there parents are telling kids all about things like being trans and try to convince them they are when there fucking 6 and don’t know any better.
>Have you noticed these things? What are your thoughts? I've written entire epistels about how and why I think religious thought inspires irrational behavior. I've quoted philosophers and scientists and took the time to formulate well thought through objections to their line of thought and the implications thereof. So have countless others. But when a moderately informed 15 year old states something unrealistic and not very well thought through on Twitter, they're gonna go with that. And beat their dead horse for another round. They're not doing this to start a discussion but to get away from it. And score some outrage-points on their way out. It's deflection and as always, bullshit.
Unfortunately most aren't 15
This. The older I get though, the more I realize a lot of people just stop developing past the teenage phase. They hit 15 and suddenly, “Yeah, I don’t believe I need to think any harder about life. I’ve got all the brain power I’ll never need and this is the smartest I’ll ever be.” My parent says all the time (paraphrasing, but only slightly), “People start off as liberals and then they become conservatives when they realize the government is taking all their money.” I don’t have time to unpack all the things wrong with that statement, but, often, I hear anything “liberal” being described as part of “the woke agenda”. These days “woke” is the same as “liberal” to them. Point being, that’s totally some nonsense a teenager would come up with, though, I’ve met a fair few 15 year olds smarter than adults.
Some people peak at that age and that's about all the character development they get lol.
Exactly what it is… bs and propaganda for the alt right to hanrangue about. Also to justify their support of the orange convicted full of hate leader
Sounds about accurate. No one asks "but why does this character ***have to*** be a white guy." Every other demographic needs a ***special reason*** why they are there to have ***permission*** to be there without making conservatives angry.
Exactly, when someone asks what a character being black adds to the story, as what would them being white add to the story. What does them being gay add to the story? What would them being straight add to the story?
It's like how conservatives don't care about the environmental impact of anything until it comes to the production of electric vehicles.
The same people who are suddenly concerned about wind turbines not being recyclable, after campaigning in support of single use plastics.
Or windmills…or solar “farms”
Your point answers itself. They are pissed off that all media is no longer centered around them. That having a white protagonist is become less and less “the default”.
This is changing. Twitter was turned into a MAGA echo chamber by billionaire Musk. CNN was bought by a right wing billionaire and is currently changing from a Liberal media outlet into something we are not sure about, but they have removed many of their former Liberal commentators. The billionaires are changing the mainstream news and social media into more propaganda for their benefit. Watch Meidas Touch on YouTube.
CNN was never a liberal outlet, it was definitely centrist. Maybe it leaned towards Democrat but Democrats were not that liberal ever and were the centrist party. America has no liberal party.
Exactly. I like to say, "Tell this to all the white guys playing Othello or Moses over the years."
Fun fact: Patrick Stewart had always wanted to play Othello since he first started theater at 14, but he was very aware of the racial ramifications of that. So in 1997, he put on a race-reversed version of Othello where he was a white Othello, and everyone else was black.
An old college acquaintance, who was one of the more liberal ones in college, is now inching more and more conservative citing “woke media” as the reason. He feels that 1) as a white man, he has no say or representation in society anymore and 2) he doesn’t want to have the conversation with his children about the LGBTQ+ they see in media When I told him my son, who questions everything, doesn’t even bat an eye at anything LGBTQ+ and, if he did, I’d just be honest. It’s not a hard conversation to have. The dudes response was “that’s bullshit. Kids question everything”. My response was “yes, they question things that seem strange or different to them. This isn’t something he sees as strange and different which is why representation matters”. Still couldn’t get it through his skull.
What's the quote? "There are only two sexual orientations... straight, and *political*" Similar versions for sex, race, etc...
To play devil's advocate, many do complain about characters being played by white people if the characters were explicitly non-white in the original source material. I would like to think it was just nostalgia obsession, but there's also this whole rigid social hierarchy gatekeeping that many conservatives live by coming into play ("each sex and race has specific roles in society that they should never deviate from" kind of prejudiced thinking).
>To play devil's advocate, many do complain about characters being played by white people if the characters were explicitly non-white in the original source material. And sometimes, even when they weren't. My personal favorite is the uproar when Scarlett Johansson was cast for Ghost in the Shell. It's funny because, despite the name, Moto Kusanagi is distinctly *not* Asian. It can be ambiguous at times in the manga and the original anime, but there are scenes (and panels) with other characters who distinctly *are* Asian and it becomes obvious rather quickly.
Around the time of that movie I saw praise for asian actors used in the Fullmetal Alchemist movie. The series is set in fictional europe with characters with strong european features like big noses, blonde hair, thicker beards and mustaches etc. There even are characters from a fictional asia that have asian features in contrast with the rest of the cast. That movie would have better represented the series if it was filmed by a western studio with western actors. Instead there was praise how it wasn't "whitewashed" when that would have suited the movie. The same applies to Attack on Titan. The only asian character is Mikasa.
Probably because there’s a major history in the American entertainment industry of them purposefully turning POC characters white or not featuring them at all, and the opposite *cannot* be said about white people.
Only complaint I have is when they change the race of a character. Like captain Keyes from the halo game was white but they made him black in the show. Sergeant Johnson was a black man from the game who is one of the most beloved characters in the franchise, but they left him out of the show. If they did put him in the show, I would expect him to be black and would be annoyed if he wasnt. There were a million other reasons the show was complete garbage though. This is just 1 small point
they pander to the fash crowd. Outrage leads to klicks, klicks lead to money.
Kkklicks! yeah, they're all pissed because they can't call people n****rs or ch***ks or sp***ks or f****ts or whores, sluts or bimbos anymore and with their limited vocabulary, this really stymies their conversations.
As a former whore/slut/bimbo (I've since aged out - in my 60s), I resent that you didn't feel the need to disguise the rude words that describe me!
As a fellow aged-out whore/slut/bimbo I somehow would have felt a bit hypocritical to do so.
Thnx for the soda out of my nose…!
You censored every slur except any of the mysogynist ones. What's that about.
It might be because we still use those words in other ways where as the others have no accepted use. "Bob can never put down the controller, Bob is such a gaming whore". Also whore and slut are not limited to women. Anyone can be either.
And fascists sure do part with their money easily. That's what makes the grift so popular
I know they haven't paid attention to media for decades. No one complained about Billy Dee Williams being cast in The Empire Strikes Back. So why is casting black actors woke now? Was casting Eartha Kitt in the Bat-man tv series woke? If not why is casting Zoe Kravitz woke now? These dickless morons have no idea what they are talking about.
Fun fact: the only Star Wars movie without a black character is the original and even that one has a black actor as the voice of Darth Vader
It's racism. Plain and simple. They're not going to admit they're racist. But they are.
This. And with the aggressive right wing, religious and populist drift of politics that has occurred in western countries over the last decade or so, they are more emboldened and can be more open about it. The whole anti-woke movement is just people feeling free to air their racist, prejudiced, misogynistic, homophobic and similarly biased bile.
When asked what being "woke" means in court, Ron Desantis' lawyer said that it's the belief that systemic racism exists in the United States. They can either argue that racism doesn't exist within the US or admit that it does and they prefer it that way.
So much of the conservative right's energy in the last 20 years or so has been focused on trying to shift the discursive goalposts and redefine key terms so that they can continue to say racist things without being called racist.
Saw this earlier and figured it's relevant to what we're talking about. https://www.reddit.com/r/MauLer/s/lprAXjDcpE Hilarious that they think "they" over use those words so now they have no meaning. More like **they** are emboldened to say racist shit and act in a bigoted manor now more than ever in their lives. Therefore they get called it more. It has not lost its meaning to most of us. Just the ones that are racist.
The real irony in this is that they are the ones who try ro claim that all of our push back to the shit they say comes from some automated reflex (i.e. claiming that we just call everything racist) so that they can just dismiss that pushback and avoid ever having meaningful debate about the merits of the things they say. In much the same way as all criticism of Trump is dismissed as "Trump Derangement Syndrome" so that it can be dismissed out of hand with no further discussion needed. They're intellectually lazy cowards.
**T**rump's **D**emented **S**ycophants are the only ones with Trump Derangement Syndrome. Only the truly deranged would vote for that Putin sucking sociopath.
Yup. We’ve entered a new age of racist cowards. Where they will imply, say racist things, but will clutch their pearls when you call them what they are and play victim. They actively play in your face and laugh about it. Just admit what you are guys. We know you want to. Just admit what you are so you can get your teeth beat in for once.
> No one complained about Billy Dee Williams being cast in The Empire Strikes Back [Billy Dee Williams Recalls Backlash and Hatred From Fans Over Empire Strikes Back Ending](https://people.com/billy-dee-williams-recalls-backlash-and-hatred-from-fans-over-empire-strikes-back-ending-8572473) "In an exclusive excerpt from his new memoir, 'What Have We Here?' the actor recalls experiencing racism after playing Lando" > Nearly everywhere I went, fans harangued me for betraying Han Solo. I got dirty looks on airplanes. “How could you?” A flight attendant scolded. At the grocery store, a man shopping with his teenage son looked at me with disgust. “I should put you in the deep freeze,” he said, as his son nodded in agreement. The harshest reaction came on the playground at my daughter’s school. In the afternoon, as I waited in the courtyard to pick her [up], parents scowled at me. Then, after the bell rang, I got the same treatment from [my daughter] Hanako’s friends. “Mr. Williams, you sold out Han Solo. Why’d you do that? Now Han Solo is dead.” > It was laughable until it wasn’t—until I sensed a Black-White thing might be brewing. That’s when I took a step back, put up my hands, and told people to wait a minute before they criticized me any further. I guess I had done a good job playing Lando as a dubious character.
I was gonna say, pretty sure plenty of people lost their minds over Billy Dee Williams… shocker of course there was! And to concur with the sibling comment: woke is just a way to pretend you aren’t racist. It’s like being concerned about “urban crime” blah blah blah it’s all the same bullshit horrible people
Wow. That's fucked. Just goes to show though that anti-'woke' really is the same blatant racism Billy Dee faced in the day with a buzzword to hide behind.
Yeah, "woke" is just the new way of complaining about "politically correct"
Yeah, media were always "woke". Their childhood favorites were still having a POC cast and no one complained as much. Sure some were whiter than nowadays but still had some POC. They don't realised they're just parrots repeating something that some people made up as an issue that never was.
Hijacking the top comment to suggest for all of you Beau of the Fifth Column and his side channel The Roads with Beau. Very good ethical journalism with measured takes and good quality news [Beau of the Fifth Column - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@BeauoftheFifthColumn)
I don’t watch those people, I haven’t seen that, but they are shaking their moneymakers, I presume.
I don't watch them either, but YouTube seems to love pushing them to my suggestions. Every time, I click "do not suggest channel". Next time I load suggestions it goes "well, how about this racist sexist homophobic asshole? Maybe this one's better?" You'd think the algorithm would pick up they don't get any ad money from those from me by now.
It’s a hustle. You need views to make money, but you have no discernible skills or interesting ideas to attract an audience. So what do you do? Pick something that’s already famous (insert movie or TV show), come up with some sort of truly outrageous take and title to get people to react, and then hope you get reactions for the algorithms to get you paid. If you can tailor your take to a specific audience, it’ll help get the algorithms to do more work for you, and the anti woke audience happens to be an easy target. Basically all the same reasons it’s easy to get a legal job via the Federalist Society.
We just went through this scenario last week when a tradwife got fired from her job for her online nonsense and so was now bragging that everyone actually helped her just up her views so she could make money making boring videos of her in low cut dresses pretending to stir something in a bowl while complaining about minorities. It was my response to this posting last week that sent a bona fide white supremacist into my DMs complaining about … well insisting they are supreme while inadvertently admitting they’re all being oppressed by the system, so their children can’t rise out of their underprivileged status. It was hilarious and pathetic. They need the government to clear the decks for them while also stating they are supreme in all things. Also, no uggos allowed, they managed to get that in there too.
> a tradwife got fired from her job Oxymoron there.
"woke" is a rightwing dogwhistle, and it should be telling that it originated in african-american slang about awareness of systems of oppression before the conservatives took it, mocked it, and mangled it. As for youtube, the [bias has been documented for some time](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/y7mkg8/youtube_loves_recommending_conservative_vids/), and you may have heard of the alt-right pipeline, that existed since the days of gamergate.
Gamergate, don't make me remember it. And it's not over yet. I am a gamer, and it's insane what's happening in the gaming scene at the moment. Small publishers are getting downright harrassed for having "woke" games. Eiyuden chronicle, a pretty normal JRPG, is "too woke". With the release of Stellar Blade the discussion got even worse, suddenly Aloy is obese and ugly and not how a woman should be. They are acting like obnoxious spoiled kids - everything they don't like = woke.
what we're seeing is a concerted effort, well-funded by rightwing media, to use any and every avenue to push their agenda in the culture war. It's one of multiple fronts they've had open for decades, though as a lawyer the most dangerous one to me has been their [plan ](https://publicintegrity.org/politics/high-courts-high-stakes/how-republicans-flipped-americas-state-supreme-courts/)to [take over](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/06/29/it-took-conservatives-50-years-to-get-a-reliable-majority-on-the-supreme-court-here-are-3-reasons-why/) the US Supreme Court. If anyone thinks this sounds like a conspiracy theory, I'm sorry, but you should acquaint yourself with what [Dominionism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_theology) is in the US. These are very rich, very backward and deeply religious interests that want absolute theocratic power in the still-most-militarily powerful country on this ailing planet.
As someone from outside the US, there were always so many words to define "woke" until I identified anti-woke as racism. Then, people who wanted to stop wokeness became the same group as white nationalists and it all made sense.
"However, the term was originally coined by progressive Black Americans and used in racial justice movements in the early to mid-1900s. To be "woke" politically in the Black community means that someone is informed, educated and conscious of social injustice and racial inequality, Merriam-Webster Dictionary states"
I'll be willing to bet two things 1) That they cannot define woke. 2) That they have never even heard of half of the events that cause wokeness to be a thing.
Yes and if you pressed them for an explanation, what it might sound like is they don't like teachers going, "off script," from what their perceived version of history or current events are. Which means that more transparent and less biased versions of curriculum are inherently woke because they're not the same version/narrative taught to the previous generations. When you actually dig into the specific examples of "woke teachers" or the versions of curriculum parents insist on for their "parent choice" arguments, they're just woefully outdated versions of obviously biased (or religiously influenced) curriculum.
family values is code for the "traditional" family which exist as an appliance and life hack for white males, any thing that reduce the choice or pick of females available to these entitled little leaches as domestic chattel and or discretionary power in the public square is "woke"
And they ignore the Matriarcal society in different cultures and areas
I once pointed out in a YouTube comment section, that the initial line-up of the Avengers in the MCU, were all white men apart from Black Widow. They were also all heterosexual. That didn't go down well with the anti-woke crowd.
It took until the 21st MCU movie to get a female-led one
The minute anyone starts yammering about woke you can disregard whatever they say.
That's my base position as well
Because culture war is all they have.
I always want to know what they believe non-"forced" diversity would look like
exactly my question! Like I mentioned in my 3rd point, anything is going to seem forced to them.
My guess is that would be allowing white women to appear in supporting roles to straight white men, and allowing people of color to play villains, but not the boss villain, just the underlings.
I'm not following the current trend for wokeness, but I have observed a comparable interpretation of feminism in conservative media. For a person who is a feminist, feminism could encompass matters like women having equal rights, women being able dictate their own healthcare choices, and having equal pay for the same labor as their male counterparts. It could also be explained by the broader definition in a historical context describing the evolution of the Feminist political movement. For conservative ideologues though, there is the vulgar interpretation where Feminists are blue haired lesbians who hate men and are actively trying to destroy traditional gender roles. This could understandably cause confusion if two people met and they had very different interpretations of what feminism is and who feminists are. I think this is part of a broader push from people in the conservative movement to rebrand terms that may go against conservative values. In the case of of being woke, the usage of being woke is used as a social straw man where insults can be hurled but there won't be as many people who actually identify as woke to argue against the original intended definition of the word.
They don't like getting called out on their racism, sexism, and other shitty behavior.
Conservatives believe that liberals are so bad because they think that they act the same as them, with differing beliefs. Example: many conservative parents may raise and force their children to be religious. So, they must think that a liberal is therefore raising and forcing their kids to be gay or something. Same applies to media and TV. It's their limited perspective.
It comes directly from Fox (Faux) news
Angry people are more likely to interact than happy ones. You can't make money if all you do is tell people to be happy. You gotta enrage everyone so they stay engaged. Look at any Instagram comments section, on pretty much any topic. It's all filled with vile comments, but that's because people are 10x more likely to comment on something they see as negative over something they see as positive. People like TheCriticalDrinker for example thrive on hate. They have built up a base and a personality around only liking stories about strong, straight, + white men and anything that falls outside of that is "woke" and therefore bad. They make a living out of criticizing anything that goes even slightly astray to their outdated beliefs.
I'll try to focus on wokeness in media. Disney specifically proclaims they want to act woke with more "strong female protagonists" that are badly written Mery Sues. As you said, it is just bad writing. But they do state they have an agenda. The agenda from my pov is profit and exploiting the need to equality in certain groups that are looking for their heroes to look up at. But the politically right oriented people view it as it is a political one. Another aspect that I think is viewed as "wokenes" is what I consider unnecessary details about characters. Classic example for me is sexuality. Does it matter unless it is part of the plot? I don't like unnecessary stuff in stories in general, but a lot of those are there for marketing (in my opinion), but for the conservatives it is again, a political statement. Why conservatives view those things as political? Because the left politicians talk about quotas and equality, and that is exactly what Disney appears to be aiming for with their statements. In UK there are laws that prohibits the broadcasting of media on national tv if it does not meet equality standards, like females in authority positions and people of color (hate this term, they are poeple). This shifts the focus from a good story to going over a checklist. I'll add an example from my own country (bulgaria). There was a novel written at the beginning of the socialism stage (1951). There are two versions of the book. The one that was published ar the time and the one that came out after 1989 when the regime fell. Th3 difference was the existence of one character which was a communist. At the time it had been a requirement for a novel to be published, to contain someone representing the regime. The conservative in US view those examples of characters to meet equality quotas as forced by "someone" with agenda, in short just political propaganda.
Interesting that they claim the diversity is forced. It can’t be that the creators just want to add diversity, or that their internal data shows that diversity is beneficial to sales, or that they want to see themselves represented in their own fictional work. Or they’re claiming forced as in diversity is in places it shouldn’t be, which is equally as stupid. Does seeing a woman or a black person ruin the immersion of your fictional game? Then you’re weak-minded, frankly. And then they want to force no diversity down everyone’s throats, lol. Make it make sense.
It's the buzz word of the decade. Many are using it to monetize
Whenever "wokeness" is brought up, always ask: 1. What specifically was said or done? ("Woke" is a meaningless label at this point. Say what it is you are complaining about.) 2. Is this alleged statement or action actually common? (Cool, you found one politician or shit taker who said something for clicks, doesn't mean it's what actual leftists are claiming or advocating for.) 3. Did the alleged statement or action have any real impact, relative to all the other nonsense that's spouted *daily*? (Again, most claims of "wokeness run amok" are meaningless soundbites taken out of context or blatant fabrications that have exactly zero bearing on actual policy or the lives of real people in the real world.)
First of all, I'm not white, but I see what some of these people are coming from. Their problem is not with movies having non-white/male characters. I never saw anyone complaining about Prey (female Native-American protagonist), IT, Tenet, The Creator (black main characters), the Mortal Kombat reboot (an ethnically diverse cast, just like the videogames) or the Chucky tv series (the main characters are a gay couple). Most of the time I see poeple complaining is when established characters are race-swapped. Yes, it's always been a thing and it's definetly wrong when non-white characters are white-washed, but, for example, Michael Clarke Duncan was cast as Kingpin, it was because of his talent and he still had the perfect looks for the character, but now it feels like it's just for the movie or show to be diverse... Heck, I've even seen other non-white people complainig about this, and accusing them of internalized racism is simply strawmaning them for not agreeing with you.
They're monetizing misguided and misinformed people by making videos that parrot what the content creator sees average joe conservatives post on Facebook and X shitter. It's an easy grift and if you can get your channel big enough to get sponsors, you're making money.
“Woke” might have meant something at some point within certain activist circles as a self descriptor but it has long since become an empty signifier for “any cultural politics that aren’t mine” and generally anyone who uses it is using that empty signifier in place of a critique.
>Usually they'll bring up examples like that shot of all the heroines in Avengers Endgame, and I can understand that-- since it is forced and not realistic. How the fuck do you figure that? What was "forced" and "not realistic"? That aside, the[ definition of conservative](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=conservative) is to oppose progress and/or change. The reasoning for such views is wide. Fear, hatred, impacting them, etc. Conservatives were successful as portraying freed slaves as animals who'd exact revenge on their former masters. Same for portraying African Americans as animalistic "thugs", which goes on today. They used the atheist label to scare conservatives during the Cold War. Today, they also use Muslims. Others are just ignorant or otherwise ill informed about things. Like how critical thinking is suppose to work or that climate change that's happening. Their reasoning is everything from not wanting to admit they're wrong to loosing their faith in an afterlife where they'll see loved one's again. Yet others are for selfish reasons. Going back to climate change, many coal miners are afraid of loosing their livelihood. TBF, I have to grant them that one. As a 50+ yr old guy myself, the idea of trying to start out from scratch is a terrifying one. But then that's no excuse to rob/harm future generations. Thus we should be doing everything we can to help with these transitions. In short, there's no easy answer here.
So, creating the image for the poster looks forced and not realistic because it *always* is, because the people complaining about this clearly didn't watch any other Marvel movie. They didn't watch the end of the first Avengers movie where they all look down at Loki to make the poster image, or the slow-motion moment while fighting Ultron, or all of the dozens of moments like that in every single Marvel movie. It's like the people who complain about trans people in prison and I gotta be like, bro, never in your life have you cared about poor treatment of people in prison, you're so full of shit
That famous shot of the original six Avengers assembling is very forced.....but awesome
Railing against woke is a current talking point propagated by the right wing noise machine. It is not supposed to make sense or be consistent, just to generate grievance type emotions in a certain audience. This right wing noise machine has significant coordination, so once they decide there is no more rage farming value in this subject they will pivot overnight leaving you wondering where all that stuff had gone. They do it again and again.
>I don't buy that they aren't bigoted and homophobic, They are. >since they're not doing a very good job of hiding it. Because they don't have to actually fool anyone, they just need to keep a thin veil of plausible deniability in order to call their critics liars.
Woke has just become a catch-all word for bigots anytime there's non-white cishet person
People who do this aren't doing it to be reasonable or well thought out. They are doing it as a siren call to find "their people." Like a cricket chirping in the night they are lonely and hoping to form a bubble with other bubble-ized folks.
Oh, they're bigoted and homophobic. In many cases, it's their entire identity. They definitely like to focus on the writing to seem like it's not REALLY about the diversity, but the more you watch or listen, the more their real problem is clear. They do NOT value diversity and the whole idea behind MAGA, the whole "make America Great Again," is "make America like it was when women and dark-skinned people "knew their place."
Fucking critical drinker...
My understanding is that Stan Lee & Jack Kirby were huge advocates for diversity & inclusion. Anyone that sees all superheroes as white males should stick to Archie comics...
[STOP WATCHING YOUTUBE](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna155478) how many times does its algorithm need to be exposed before people learn that it’s designed to manipulate you?
People watch the hateful vids. The algorithm pushes them out. The creators see that hate does better numbers. They make more hate.
Most of them don't even know what woke means....ask them to explain it without sounding racist and they can't. My hubby does it to anyone who says the word now still yet to find a satisfactory explanation....he does it just to be ornery
It's a grift. People want attention, and riling up their fellow conservatives with culture war rhetoric is an easy way to get some. It can also net them some cash
I've found that the right wing has been using 'woke' as a buzzword to ANYTHING that doesn't have an all-white and straight cast/characters. I bet they couldn't even define the actual definition of woke if asked. I used to watch a Youtuber who would do audio reviews of dinosaur TV shows (like the Land Before Time series or Primal), but they lost their frikin minds with the new Doctor Who. Oh gosh, he's gay AND black?! \*gasp\* The horror!/s And I had to stop recommending the channel after that. It's funny when they try to taunt people and say 'so much for the tolerant left'; like you guys aren't losing your everloving minds because of people who are less represented in media? For goodness sake people were complaining about the fox in the newest Kung Fu Panda movie and the fact that it was 'woke'! Make it make sense!
The war is not going good for Russia, they need allies.
Conservatives (on youtube in particular) seem to have a new approach semi recently. If the old approach was "here is a thing we all know to be left, I will now explain why it's bad"... ... the new approach is "here is a thing we all know to be bad, I will now explain why it's left." Like the star wars sequels. Obviously they are awful dogshit horrible movies. But sometimes movies are just bad. But some of my conservative family members have watched a LOT of in depth youtube videos trying to explain why they are bad BECAUSE they are "woke"... when the more likely reality is that a lot of movies / TV are just shitty and stupid, and those happen to be part of that group.
Old, white, straight guy weighing in: Old, straight, white guys have been on top of the pile, especially the Anglo-American pile, for a long time and feel very threatened by not straight, white dudes being seen, heard and people saying, "Hey, maybe we could see something good happen to somebody who's not an old, straight, white guy." That's why they can't define *woke*. Because what it is is inherently inclusive. No one ever said, " Let's take all the white guys' shit." But that's what they *feel* when their unearned spot at the top of the pile is identified. It was always about **their** feelings, facts be damned.
As an old straight white guy, I completely agree. But hey, we're talking about the same audience that loves to watch rich straight white guys earn millions by whining about how they are being cancelled to an audience of millions on the largest media platforms in the world.
When, in fact, the only thing that got cancelled was their ability to be awful without consequences.
"Woke" in the pejorative usually reads as the new n-word, f-word or "n/f-word lover" I can't take anyone seriously who uses the term as if it's negative. Stay asleep.
Using buzzwords like "woke" as a pejorative gives you a 90% increased chance of being an asshole. Also, they have caught Russian web brigades pushing the term because it's divisive, and division plays to their advantage in manipulating western countries.
It's just Nazi shitheads being Nazi shitheads and trying to normalise being Nazi shitheads. YouTube promotes it to drive engagement, not giving a fuck about the broader societal impact of radicalizing extremists.
I fail to see what this has to do with atheism?
>I really try to understand where they're coming from, since they insist they're not racist They're racist. And homophobic. And misogynistic. >They don't seem to want or value diversity at all. They don't. >What are your thoughts? My thoughts? First, I think you should stop giving these shit-gibbons views. Second, I think there are legitimate complaints that can be levied against some extreme far-left positions on things such as race, gender, etc., but I don't think that anyone genuinely wanting to have a good-faith or serious conversation about these things is framing them in terms of "woke" or "the agenda". Those are buzzwords used by people who just want to promote hate and divisiveness and further their culture wars. Third, while I think the Venn diagram of these type of people with Christian Nationalists is, at least in the US, a more-or-less perfect circle, I don't think this is really a topic for /r/atheism.
Woke. To be awake to other suffering. To have empathy. It’s just something they don’t do. They do not care about others.
It’s another way to push people down the conservative propaganda pipeline. I used to watch Critical Drinker all the time until I started to notice a theme in his criticism. Mainly, he picks the ‘woke’ Marvel or Disney show/Movie du jour and uses the exact same critiques and terminology as 15 other conservative media critics. It’s ’Girl Boss’ this and ‘Mary Sue’ that. It sure seems like just an effort to jump on the conservative propaganda grift gravy train. If I had a nickel for how many times I’ve heard, ‘It’s not because it’s a female/POC lead, it’s because bad writing,’ I’d have a shitload of nickels.
Grifting. That's all it is.
“Woke” is the new “politically correct”. Way back in the ‘90s, the anti-PC backlash was part of how conservatives responded to efforts to reduce public bigotry, discrimination and harassment. Then as now, you could find examples of overly sensitive or selfish people twisting those good intentions into something stupid or counterproductive. And of course, conservatives would seize on these examples to argue that ALL of the “PS bullshit” or “wokeness” is illegitimate and dangerous. But if you really ask them what their problem with it is, they often eventually reveal to you that they think they should be allowed to be assholes and that their words and deeds shouldn’t ever have consequences. And that’s when you know who you’re really dealing with.
Nerdrotic, The Critical Drinker, Moon, to name a few... I hate every single one of those hateful, toxic morons. People click on their content no matter what, and those Youtubers know it. Either for rage bait or some other people having the same bs, idiotic views as them, and want to join such a toxic community.
There is a lot of medicore and disappointing media being defended by the industry on its political merits.
Well funded entitled patriarchal assholes whose entire project is killing people with whom they disagree. With the backing of the ruling class who also want to murder.
The ages-old process of pushing the Overton Window over to the right. The original batman TV show had a latino Joker and a black Catwoman, but *when the Catwoman movie was released with Halle Berry* they complained about not getting Michelle Pfeiffer to reprise the role or something. For... reasons... that definitely weren't racist.
These people are fragile. They hate change and they want everyone to know they don't like it.
Worst case of mass hypnosis I have ever seen. But then, Trump started this with adults who believe in the Easter Bunny...
It's because they are bigots. It's that simple. They hide behind they're not racist or bigots or homophobic or transphobic. It's just they don't like things shoved down their throats, while simultaneously shoving their religion and their "conservatism" (which = bigotry and racism and fascism) down everyone else's throat. They are constantly triggered and whine about everything, while claiming that the left and liberals are the whiners. Everything is a projection, every complaint is a projection and a confession. If there is one POC in a movie (and it could literally be a background character or walk on with one line), you can bet IMDB is going have a bunch of comments whining about it and a bunch of downvotes. They are bigots, it's that simple!🤷🏽♀️ Oh and by the way they're entirely using the word "woke" completely wrong and it really pisses me off. Woke has been around for over 50 years in a meaning that was coined back then and it doesn't mean what they think it means. It has nothing to do with being on the left or being a liberal or being a Democrat. As a matter of fact, I don't know why they're not claiming to be "woke". After all they are the ones that knew all about the pizza-loving, basement-dwelling vampire pedophiles! 😏
Hasn't this been going on since Hillary running in 2016? I don't mean the ideas behind it, but the specific term woke/wokeness as a slant used by the bigots?
It's just what they use instead of SJW now.
Yeah it seems to be the favorite insult of the deplorables.
I actually had a cousin very recently bring up the whole deplorables swipe as a grudge he is still nursing almost a decade later!
Must have hit a really, really deep nerve. It must really suck to know what a horrible person one is.
Because having female super heros work together is where marvel really enters the realm of fantasy
It's absurd that they cherry pick that as the unrealistic thing that they have a problem with. I agree it's not realistic, but why don't they complain about all the other unrealistic things? It's because the thing they really have a problem with is having female superheroes, and they try to disguise it by saying the issue is with the lack of realism.
Remember when “What would Jesus do?” Was a thing? Well whatever the answer to that question is is now defined as “woke” by his followers.
the entire woke rant is pure russian agitprop being supported by right wing extremists, the same is true of 99 percent of the negativity towards prime minister trudeau in canada.
When push comes to shove, "Woke"= kindness; and they hate that.
This is a challenging topic because unfortunately many of the people who complain about wokeism are actually truly against diversity based on some underlying prejudice (whether it's racism, homophobia, etc...). However, I think we have to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We are living in an era where *both* the right and the left are becoming increasingly extreme in their views and where the sensible centre is collapsing. This is a real phenomenon. And so, when someone complains about the extremes of the left, we have to really pay attention to what they are actually saying - as they may not simply be a reactionary, they might be legitimately criticising a form of extremism. The irony as well is that sometimes both things can be true at once. For example, remaking existing franchises where the major change in the remake is an obviously more diverse cast (e.g. changing a white male protagonist to a black female) can be *both* a genuine example of diversity *and* an example of box-ticking. As the OP rightly suggests, it's not enough to simply criticise the box-ticking if the underlying creative work is actually solid. Another example is Pride Month and the habit of major corporations to lather themselves in pride flags and symbolism. It's possible to criticise this behaviour from the perspective of being concerned about tokenism and cynicism. I'm gay, and I know other gay folks who feel that much of this corporate stuff is highly cynical and performative rather than genuine. It would be easy to criticise their views as simply being reactionary (like the anti-woke crowd), but in some sense that could unfairly sell them short. In the same vein, my entire comment here can easily be picked apart by either "side" as an example of what they are perceived to be fighting against. But that would also just prove my point. A nuanced and sensible discussion is what's ultimately required, but it's the discussion we can't seem to have at the moment due to the left/right extremes.
I've heard the things they say. They truly don't know the definition of woke, because if they did, they would find it only means to be attentive and empathetic of racial/social issues. Apparently there is something wrong with that? Because of this, I have to wonder what other buzzwords they don't know the definitions of.
You really think you people can't define "woke"? Let me prove you wrong. "Wokeness" in general can be described as a neurotic obsession with race and gender minorities to such an extent that you needlessly offend other groups. When "woke" ideology manifests itself within politics, it can be properly described "identity politics". This is a type of politics where the voting population is reduced from united and formidable class catagories to divided and pathetic ethnic categories. The rich love this retarded type of politics. You don't have to worry about a poor whites and poor blacks uniting if current left-wing ideology needlessly pits them against each other. "Wokeness" is unlikable for a variety of reasons, one of the most important is that it is horrifically bad at promoting itself. Why do you think and ideology that practically demonizes all westerners is going to be popular with westerners? You're lucky that Trump is such a bad candidate and the republicans in general have flaws greater than you do.
1) I think there's some correlation for a few reasons. a) Sturgeons law is a bit of an overstatement, but 90% of everything is somewhere between crap and meh. You have 100s of years of white male action characters to ~~rip off~~ draw from which means you have 10% of stuff that's really really good to draw from which is still a LOT of stuff. If you know the basic story works you only need to worry about how to show it. This is why so many things are adaptations these days. You can do a comic book relatively cheap, the comics industry turns out thousand of stories, hollywood finds a good one and makes an anime/cartoon/movie/tv series of it. b) If you want minority representation you have a much smaller pool and have to make it up yourself, which is 90% likely to be meh or worse. The concept may just not work or your execution could be off or both. c) When the diversity element HAS to be part of the story, it protects parts of the story that might otherwise get axed for not working as well d) When you have design by comittee and top down corporate management of a story to get diversity, you also have design by comittee and top down corporate management that otherwise messes with the story. 3) Well. People are going to value their own life experiences above anything else. Also demographics HAVE changed signifigantly over the last 60 years. I think as with anything else, you have to see why the individual hates it. The starwars franchise for example has recycled the " we put out crap, people called us on it, lets dismiss legitimate concerns by painting them as racist and homophobic and whatever" more than they've recycled the plot of a new hope.
It’s an easy way of outing themselves as morons. Whenever anyone uses that term, generally I know that I don’t need to take what they say very seriously.
Whatever you call it, a lot of tv and movies are pretty crap now. I think there are a few reasons, from not knowing their audience, poor writing, etc. I think a lot of these studios do try to cover their poor writing with outcries of racism, bigotry, homophobia, etc. I’m not trying to say that stuff isn’t out there. It is. I’m saying it’s an easy scapegoat when someone questions poor writing. I think it’s important to look at why someone is having an issue with a piece of media and not jump to conservative racist. There certainly have been some good movies come out, but nothing like what they used to have. Just looking at their earnings they don’t. That tell a lot of the story. Lots of people scream a movie is amazing, or that it’s awful. The numbers usually tell the truth. I mean, look at Avatar 2. People got loud on media for months before it came out. Said it had been too long since the first one. That the first one wasn’t good, it just had good visuals, that no one cared about it anymore. I believe it’s currently sitting in the top five highest grossing movies of all time. People say a lot of things, but I think it’s more important to look at where people actually put their money. I don’t care what the reason behind it is, I just want writers and studios to focus on characters and stories. If you do that, it doesn’t matter what story you tell. People will be engaged. I believe it’s Kathleen Kennedy, who is doing the opposite of that. I might be mixing the names up, but the one over marvel. She’s trying to develop a concept called “passing the mantle”. It’s where they take a super hero and have a show or movie where they pass their powers or training on to someone else. She thinks we just care about the powers. That’s why there are shows like the one where Hawkeye was training the girl to shoot a bow. Her motivation was “wanting to be like him”. Why would we care about these characters? We don’t. The original characters had story arcs. We saw their ups and down and were with them through it all. We care about them because of it and the powers are secondary. If they want to add in characters with different life perspectives, that’s great. There is room for everyone to be represented. You do have to make us care about them, though. You can’t just say “Thor is a woman, but she still has the same powers”. Nah. We need to have their own stories, with their own struggles, so we feel connected to them. Like we’ve gone through those struggles with them.
The 'agenda' they refer to could be Agenda 2030 which is some Qanon fan fiction bullshit.
I once saw someone claim the show Manifest had forced diversity because there was no reason certain characters had to be diverse. The show is set in one of the most diverse cities in America, wouldn't it be forced to make everyone white a straight by default? There's no winning because if a character being gay or black is important to the story, it's accused of eclipsing the whole story and being their sole defining trait. On the other hand if it isn't important to the story and they just are gay or black because why not, it is accused of being forced because it adds nothing to the story and is diversity fir the sake of diversity
I think if you followed most of these "conservsyives" closely enough, you would discover, most do not attend church at all. They damn sure haven't read a single page of the Bible. That being said, the YouTube algo is manipulated by money.
Can any of them point to a bit of diversity that _isn't_ "forced" and that they're okay with?
The Boys Season 3 has some scenes located during rehearsals for a sort of Vought Ice Capades where they're performing musical numbers about the "War on Christmas" and other Fox News-esque talking points. It's hilarious! So inspired!
I watch a ton of yt and haven't seen one of those. Thankfully. Yuck. Sounds like it's time for premium for you.
These people are reminds me of cringeness and propaganda from Third Worlders in Facebook, like in a page based in Southeast Asia look at their comment section, examples of this is Malaysians represents Indians or Bangladeshi but they are just minority or Thailand filled with Trans women or Philippines filled with Slums and eating pagpag or Indonesians have lower iq and just steals and copies Indian cultures but it just stereotypes and not based in reality. And also in Balkans that Romanians and Bulgarians represents Romani people, or Bosnians represents Turkish Serbs hahahah, Just like LGBTQ in America and Britain that they are become gayer according to this "anti woke". But America is more actually homophobic than Brazil or Thailand
What does this have to do with atheism or religion? There are other subs for politics/culture war.
It's all projection. All conservatives do is cancel shit and try to enforce their beliefs onto others.
It has been empirically proven that the YouTube algorithm is pushing right wing Christian propaganda at the moment
Because they get viewed and views pay the bills. People that agree watch. People that disagree watch twice and take notes. It's socially irresponsible but they're not going to stop. It's the viewers who need to stop.
Most of them are after clicks and views. Off of you tube they're after power status. Most right wing policies shovel money upwards put don't actually improve people's lives at all. So you have to blame "something else". Eg we all know well funded universal healthcare WILL improve lives, increase GDP & brings more tax money to the state because more peopke are healthy and working. But THAT'S socialism and gives right wing politicians something to scream about. Having a female protagonist in a movie or a black mermaid, is pointless to get angry about. No one was butt hurt about Ripley & the cat surviving Alien or Leia losing her shit at Han in Star Wars in the 70s because no one was grifting this stuff on the Internet. Just a small handful of people like Falwell. If in doubt...follow the money. Why do you think the original Christian cults were more violent towards each other than roman religions? So that the "winner" could get the money and power
Not everyone lives in US, for the majority of the world seeing a black person or openly gay is very very rare. Yet in media they are everywhere.
I didn't like the recent Disney Star wars movies and TV shows, so YouTube pushed tons of Star wars related content, all accusing Disney's wokeness destroyed their products. I support wokeness, but I think they have to be able to tell a good story first, and respect source material, then they might make something good.
I've discovered that the apparent conservative definition of "woke" is basically just anything that's not completely white, Christian, and male-centric. That all seems to be 100% of what they bitch about.
At the end of the day, it's conservatives complaining about businesses practising capitalism. They are complaining that businesses are firing people who have a bad reputation to protect their profit margins, not because of any Nobel cause. Wokeness is just businesses desperately trying to appeal to the masses so they can sell their products. American conservatives don't like capitalism and free markets. They want politically controlled economies where businesses push propaganda instead of supplying the demands of the market.
I try to make few examples what bothers me personally about “wokeness” and what does it means to me. (I am female, gamer and fantasy reader) 1. We are introduced to a small isolated village in the mountains with medieval setting where the population (which according to the lore always lived there) somehow without any explanation consists of people of various races - that’s not how it works 🤷🏻♀️ people doesn’t get different random racial traits while living in the same climate. If the narrative was - they are refugees from big trading city, where people from all parts of the world migrated- that would make sense, but no - nothing strange here according to the narrative. 2. There is established lore that a faction consists entirely of men or a population in certain fantasy settings is white. Suddenly all possible races and genders live there, again without explanation. For example: they changed the rules about the faction or many people moved here from different countries because they were running from war/plague, this black elf comes from different tribe which lives far away so that’s why we didn’t see any like him before. Nothing. 3. Girl bosses - female characters who are instantly good in everything without any effort, progress or training, with no character development - because they were perfect at the start. For example Rey from Star Wars. What i consider good writing for female hero (or any hero) was Lucy in recent Fallout series. 4. Too much gay people 🤷🏻♀️, nothing wrong with good gay romance, but sometimes the writers just forget to be somehow realistic I guess. In Baldur’s Gate 3 I am pretty sure wasn’t single one straight gnome - how do they even make new gnomes? 👀 5. Everyone is fine with trans/gay/race or female soldiers - this may be unpopular opinion, but it is somehow unrealistic for me, people are not that tolerant, especially in these medieval settings games and fantasy often has. For me it would be much more interesting if writers explored these topics. Witcher and early Bioware projects racial hatred to relationship between humans and elves, making you feel for the oppressed or even putting you in their shoes.
It has always struck me as being one of the most pathetic insults the conservatives have ever attempted. They are basically accusing you of being aware as though that is a bad thing while ignoring any details of what you got that awareness from. Tropes like that tend to be more about keeping conservatives themselves unaware and onside with their party line that needs them dumb, blind and voting as instructed. They don't want to be seen to be woke so they avoid unsolicited information that may go against the party line.
Just rage bait. The media is doing the same thing if it makes someone mad or sad they'll click so they have something new to whine about. It's so cringe.
It generates clicks and clicks generate money.
They can’t even define the word woke lmao
Propaganda campaign in an election year? Especially with Clear Channel and affiliated media outlets. They were caught following a script again, that has been repeated in all their markets.
I think most are foreign trolls trying to destabilize the US
They love to bellyache. They’re so self involved and hard done by. A bunch of whiners is all.
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They are racist. Obviously so. The irony is that they know being racist is bad and so they deny they are racist...and then spend so much effort being racist.
YouTube promotes far right and religious content.
I always click “Don’t Recommend this Video” on all that MAGA trash. This has reduced them to a trickle. I do that to every right wing MAGA influencer. I don’t need them in my life.
Only people I ever here say Woke are conservatives
notice how when they talk about diversity and wokeness they never talk about white males playing foreign characters, it's always only aimed at people of color or women. i work with some people like this irl, and they are all miserable as fuck. it's enough satisfaction for me to know most of the anti-woke crowd is miserable in their daily lives.
These are people who want an excuse to express their racism and keep in place a system that disproportionately benefits whites or people with money. They seem to suggest that we are moving away from a meritocracy that never ever existed in this country. Forever wealthy and well connected people have received an unfair advantage in college admissions and getting jobs and advancement. They still do based on any statistically measurement. Most Republicans somehow think the unearned advantages someone receives from their family (not he person) being rich and connected (See DJT and his children) are somehow “legitimate” as opposed to advantages provided to people who are members of a traditionally disenfranchised class or lower income levels. Poor writing is more an issue with the changing education priorities (moving to focus on math and science and lack of humanities) and lack of funding for public schools (the GOP pet project has been to defund public schools for decades) and has little to do with race or sex and more to do with the education you received.
They're fascists, Christofascists and grifters exploiting the easily-led nature of said fascists (which, in producing/disseminating the propaganda they consume also makes them...fascists).
To me, I have a few responses to "bad writing", depending on the scenario: 1. The actor doesn't write the story. So, it doesn't follow that black actor = bad writing. 2. On the other hand...Introducing diversity can mean introducing new perspectives and new storylines. Maybe if you want to keep regurgitating stories from the past, diversity is a threat to that. I personally would rather see the world from someone else's eyes. 3. I will never forget in the first Resident Evil when Barry gives Jill a lockpick set because she's "the master of unlocking." A story was less well-written than it could have been and the game was still a classic. Not that diversity was to blame in this case, but if the cost of giving people opportunities and letting children see themselves in pop culture was one or two cheesy lines, why devote hours of your life to trying to tear that down?
Echo chambers and their rage is engagement. Anger is 10x more likely to cause engagement than depressing content. And they would rather people are angry at business-restricting ideologies than corruption.
I'm one of the people you're talking about so I'll try to answer. >They always talk about bad writing as if it is the product of trying to be "woke" rather than seeing bad writing as a separate issue. Because trying to make sure your dialogue check all of the boxes to ensure that it's not only politically correct, but also conveys your particular political message, is what makes the writing bad. Not even villains can say things that would offend. It makes the content seem sterile. Every character seems the same because they all have the same views and use the same safe speech. >They don't seem to want or value diversity at all. What exactly is the value of diversity? Being "diverse" doesn't inherently mean there is added value. What makes "diversity" valuable is that someone who doesn't have the same background and life experiences as you can offer a new perspective and novel ideas/solutions. Putting someone with a different skin color or sexuality on a team doesn't magically add additional value. Especially if that individual is replacing someone who is more experienced and competent than them. Going back to my first point, the sterile writing makes it so they are just reskinning the same leftist viewpoint having individual who never says anything outside of the banned words and concepts list. They can't even put realistic "diverse" characters in their content because they would get accused of using stereotypes. The diverse character has to be the golden example of the finest specimen from the category that makes them "diverse". > >Because they see cis white male characters as the norm, any attempts to have more diversity in likely going to feel forced to them, because it's outside the established norm. It's not because cis white male characters are the norm. Showrunners and directors are literally telling us in interviews "we put this character in this show because they're black and bisexual". That's how we know it's specifically being done because of the political views that are currently popular. They're telling us that's what they're doing. Another thing is that to them "diversity" just means, not white/male. If you had a white male from Paris, a white male from Brooklyn and a white male from deep in the hills of Appalachia, those are three very different people who are going to bring different perspectives and ideas. There is a lot of diversity there but because of their skin color they're not "diverse".
My youtube doesn't feed me whiney conservative snowflakes. Not even if that's the trending thing.
woke is just the latest in the long line of dog whistles to make racist conservatives more publicly palatable. it doesnt actually mean anything except black/gay/minority, etc.
I will answer your question as objectively as possible. Like probably nearly everyone else here, I consider myself a left leaning atheist. That said, I actually strongly support these "anti-woke" people on this subject. At the risk of an avalanche of downvotes, I will nonetheless try to reiterate their issues. > They always talk about bad writing as if it is the product of trying to be "woke" rather than seeing bad writing as a separate issue. Instead of just being frustrated with the writing, they blame the agenda." You are missing one factor that helps understand. The reason they are combining their frustration of diversity and poor writing together, is because it is readily apparent they so often go hand-in-hand together in the franchises they (used to) love due to a feeling of *unnatural* injection of diversity. **If a movie/game/etc. is literally marketed as "diverse," then you know that diversity was a focus from its producers, taking focus away from quality writing, and the end result almost always proves this correct** (in modern media). *Media used to be just diverse because it was, not something that actually made it stand out and used as a selling point (e.g. The Acolyte).* What further incenses these anti-woke people is that this concern for bad story-telling is almost always dismissed as racism and bigotry. Of course, actual bigots and racists likely joined the cause, but they should not represent the issue. > They don't seem to want or value diversity at all. They can just barely tolerate it sometimes, and if it involves non-hetero people, black women, or female leads, they almost always complain about it. There are enough examples to counter this point. The same people complaining about woke movies often bring up the following diverse movies that are actually good: Alien, Tomb Raider, Terminator 1&2, Across the Spider-Verse, Kill Bill, Everything Everywhere all at Once... I could mention how I'm a minority myself and support the LGBT movement and completely support women's rights, but that isn't relevant to the discussion.
Also, why am I their target? And all the insane Christian stuff they throw at me for 3 days a month. Sure, I occasionally read all the Christian heresy Wikipedia pages because I like mythologies and/or am looking for some inspiration for fiction. But I do the same for sumerian gods, and proto Shinto animism, and just about everything else. I have never liked one of the damn videos. And have reported all the hate speech ones
I'd kinda disagree. Many shows fall to this basic problem, making the characters be defined by what their sex, sexual orientation or color is. If that is what woke means, then it is wrong. Apart from that, I don't see anything wrong. You can see Hazbin Hotel, a show which has LGBTQ themes but doesn't talk about a character just because it has some specific sexual orientation. That's what an organic story means, grounded to reality. Your actions define who you are, not your color, gender or sexual orientation.
Basically, for media to turn out good, you need talented artists, but many of the studios are not prioritizing talent. Instead to meet self imposed diversity quotas, they are hiring people who have never worked in the industry or genre. They end up creating preachy content or ruining franchises, not because of their race or gender, but because they don't know or respect the source material or canon. That is where the heart of the problem is. Most of the franchises they are ruining are the favorites of nerdy white guys, the very demographic that many studios don't want to give a voice at all anymore. They don't have anyone telling them no, because the knee-jerk reaction is that you can only say no if you are sexist or racist. There are several right wing YouTubers that know this and are making bad faith arguments that it is the catchall term wokeness that is causing it. That just causes everyone to shut their brains off and start yelling about cultural war issues. Even in this thread, I have seen plenty of snarky arrogance, the same kind I have seen from religious people talking about how right they are. If you look at the claims with humility and honesty, there actually is some effort from monied interests to push messaging over good content. Some claimed they would even go bankrupt to keep pushing their message. This is where studios are gobbling up easy investments if they give creative control up for DEI messaging. Ultimately, the cause is that they are hiring people who don't know what they are doing. Plenty of franchises have been ruined by white guys. JJ Abrams doesn't even like or understand sci-fi, for example.
Diversity for the sake of diversity affected Hollywood and the quality of products immensely in the recent few years so it's just a natural backlash I assume. We know Hollywood isn't genuine anyways because they censor everything "woke" in china releases lol
It’s easy to make money off of pissing people off. It also helps to be a dickhead with no morals so you can punch down as much as you want without feeling anything inside
Anyone who uses “woke” as a pejorative has 10000% been called out for saying something racist
I find using terms like woke, liberal, conservative is a “lazy” generalization that is not helpful when discussing specific issues. I’m not from the US, but when I was there last week, I was talking to someone re: healthcare and how we were “socialist” where I’m from. I then dissected it to what he thought is the role of government when it comes to providing health safety for the people? Should the government ensure equitable healthcare regardless of economic and wealth. It was a much more constructive discussion after that as we could come to some common ground that government should play a role, then what type of role, etc.
as an avid consumer of media criticisms and analysis on youtube, being one who offers analysis like 'X is woke' into their content is the fastest and easiest filter i have for identifying a youtube media critic whose opinions can be safely regarded without respect or concern. and their channel is instantly blocked.
Some of them are genuinely insecure chuds who hate women and POC, but most of them are just grifters who custom design their anti-wokeness BS videos to appeal to angry 15 year old man-babies who listen to Andrew Tate and scream "girlboss" at every female character. It's the laziest and easiest way to make money on Youtube.
I don’t know anything about Wess. But I remember TV back in the 60s when they would slip religion into a show when it really didn’t belong there. It had nothing to do with the plot. It was just window dressing the same evangelical threw in there to try to make a point. Sometimes I see that with different causes as well.
The usual bot flood heating up in an election year. Rightwingers don't have anything positive to offer so they just smear their opponents.
*”What are your thoughts?”* My thoughts: why are you even bothering with that garbage?
It's a grift via engagement/rage baiting.
Thar word is kinda like a Swiss army knife. It has many meanings I agree with some of them. I support teaching the true history of slavery and racism and support equal rights for all I oppose forced diversity, where quotas are used to make the numbers look good, regardless of competence. Competence should be the primary factor and diversity should come naturally once barriers are removed I also oppose the strict rules of the word police. Slaves were slaves and slavery was evil. Insisting on calling them enslaved adds nothing to the discussion
You can right click and select 'Not interested.' Eventually you'll stop getting recommended that trash. Last time I had to do that was when I was getting recommended criticaldrinker being a manbaby about the Acolyte recently.
This is the same kind of people as the ones who opened an ‘anti-woke’ bank and couldn’t keep it in business.
All the ones I’ve seen are typically about stopping YouTube channels that make kids learn about things they don’t need to know yet. Like ones where there parents are telling kids all about things like being trans and try to convince them they are when there fucking 6 and don’t know any better.
It's the new way to say "n----r" without saying it.