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Every time it appears, it feels like incomprehensible gibberish. Practically all leftwing and rightwing- hell just a lot of general terminology in political and even non-political discourse just sound like caveman "unga bunga" gobbledygook. We need to have a new international holiday: "EVERYONE ON PLANET EARTH SHUT THE HELL UP" day, which is completely mandatory and occurs at least once every month. And yes, it would encompass this very site.

The moment I see the word "woke" I feel my brain cells undergoing spontaneous mass apoptosis to avoid the pain and suffering that will inevitably ensue. Not to mention that it's so vague and improperly used as to be completely worthless for describing something other than "thing i like/don't like".

Especially when it comes to gaming discourse. It's all so fucking tiresome trying to discuss gaming only for the Hitler Youth Football Association and Eljibbity United to storm into the room and start having a pissing and shitting match and fling buzzwords and epithets around like it's an elementary school cafeteria.

Proposing that anyone using "woke" unironically, regardless of what sports team they fly the banners of, gets a caning right on the bottom.

This happens to any word that may have a vague definition: Woke, SJW, alt-right, techbro, terrorist, fascist, etc.

"Woke" has gone through what I see as three definition phases, all of which have struggles with subjectivity.

1. Leftist/progressive jargon
Where it began it essentially meant "socially conscious" albeit from a leftist perspective, aware of world's ongoings through a progressive framing. This has two problems, namely one, that the finer details of that are going to vary quite a bit depending on who you ask, and two, that it is a very self-congratulatory term. You pat yourself on the back with this term much in the same way as the self-identified "intellectual", which lends itself nicely to the next phase.

2. Left-critical/mocking
As soon as that term broke out of the circles that birthed it, it got turned around to mock those who once used it as a way to call out their pretense and hypocrisy. While it's nice to have a punchy word with which to call out slactivists and civil rights LARPers, it does not in itself contain any case or counterargument, and so does not lend itself well to intelligent criticism. That leads into where we are now…

3. Rightist tribal jargon
These days it's mostly people on the American new right you see using the term. It's also here that you see some of the most confusing use of the term that will get the uninitiated asking what the hell that even means. It doesn't mean much in this context, as it's just a word used to identify an outsider, usually a progressive or liberal, or something that aligns with those interests.

All this gets muddied further by the occasional person who either hasn't caught up with how the usage of "woke" has developed or makes a failing attempt to reclaim the word for the left. It's good for punchy headlines and getting a reaction out of people, but useless if you're trying to make a detailed point.

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Jokes aside, yeah it feels like "woke" has run its course in western slang; I imagine it'll die down this election cycle. DEI has some good traction right now, but I think there'll be some new term that gets thrown around by the grifters and right-wingers. They need a small word to throw around to reflexively bark when confronted with something out of their familiar sphere.

What you are seeing is an extremely effective method that used to be employed by the left now successfully, albeit largely unintentionally, wielded by the right. Woke and DEI are progressive terminologies meant to signify a particular political action or vision. The right has successfully turned these words to effectively mean something in the realm of: bad because it focuses on political messaging than meaningful content.

And what really irks progressives is how wildly successful it is among normy spaces. These words, which were initially created by the progressive left as a call to left wing activism has instead been coopted by the right to mean something inherently negative. It's not about whether someone knows the actual meaning of the original word for "woke", what matters is what that meaning has become to the wider audience.

In grand strategy games there is a concept of playing tall or playing wide. That is, in a game of limited resources and time, you can focus on expanding the empire geographically to expand power, or focus on small geography that is extremely powerful. It can be applied conceptually to a lot of things. But in this context that I want to allude to in culture is that the left plays tall but the right has adopted playing wide. The left creates conceptual ideas for elite centers of cultural power: managerial, artistic, academic. The right disseminate that culture to a wider normy audience.

This is what you're mad at. The hillbilly hears woke and they dont hear "being aware of inherent social injustices" what they hear "this thing sucks because it panders to people I don't like". And it works.