About

Finna Woke is a nonsensical slang term combining African American Vernacular English (AAVE) slang words "Finna," which means "about to," and Woke, generally meaning to be aware of social issues. The combination of the two words is generally used as an adjective to mean "good," (i.e. "That's finna woke.") The phrase was spread predominantly by YouTuber JacksFilms, who used it as a parody of millennial slang.

Origin

On February 11th, 2017, Jacksfilms tweeted "Only 1 out of 4 adults are finna woke," gaining over 1,400 retweets and 7,900 likes (shown below).

On April 15th, 2017, a definition was submitted to Urban Dictionary relating the term to spicy memes.

Spread

The phrase saw light use on Twitter after Jacksfilms' tweet, but instances of the phrase's use were overall rare and were used in parody of the slang (examples shown below).

On February 6th, 2018, Jacksfilms uploaded a parody of fellow YouTuber Philip DeFranco in which he repeated the phrase "That's finna woke" to mean "that's good." The video gained 1.9 million views.

On February 16th, 10 days after his Philip DeFranco parody, Jacksfilms posted a video in his "Yesterday I Asked You (YIAY)" series devoted to the phrase, gaining over 1.4 million views (shown below).

This video led to a wave of submissions to Urban Dictionary for the term, many of which related to Jacksfilms. A question was also submitted to /r/OutOfTheLoop^[1] on March 14th, 2018 about the term.

Search Interest

External References