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Notes -
The Coordinating Mechanism for Woke
From the early 2010s until roughly 2023, the prevalence of woke coded speech on the internet was constantly on the rise. There has been endless debate over the origins of it, but everyone here is likely familiar with the terms, tone, and intent of such speech. And then, suddenly, in the last 2 years, it basically vanished. Sure there are small, insular corners of the media landscape that still openly discuss such ideas. But on almost all mainstream sites, media outlets, shows, newsletters, etc, the prevalence of woke coded language has decreased by an order of magnitude.
The political reasons for this should be obvious at this point, but what I find puzzling is the speed at which this marked drop was coordinated across all types of media. I'm not enough of a conspiracy theorist to believe there is any shadowy cabal actually orchestrating this. But in the absence of any other coordination mechanism, I have a hard time understanding what has caused this. You would expect a movement that built momentum and followers steadily over a number of years to take an equal amount of time to slow down. Indeed, most other social trends follow that pattern. But in this case, the halt was sudden and ubiquitous. So, as the title implies, my question is really about how this has happened.
If I were to speculate, I'd say that any mass coordination across disparate elements of society, without any authority dictating it, has all the hallmarks of the invisible hand. And if it were only news institutions and media outlets I would give more credence to this theory. But just looking at social media postings, there has been a huge drop in people using this type of language. Attending free activities and events, this rhetoric is less prevalent. And since I have a very hard time accepting that the beliefs themselves are gone, I can't come up with a convincing explanation.
The death of woke has been claimed many times. I'm not convinced.
I'm still afraid to admit to being centrist, maybe slightly right thereof, in social settings and certainly in work ones. A bit left of the modal Mottizen (someone, link the song, I've long lost it!). My close friends know, but I'd never casually admit to even a lack of antipathy for Trump in front of new people. And that's all as someone in many ways immune to censorship - I'm relatively old and well established, take me or leave me.
Concrete questions: when, if ever, will it be acceptable to express even the blander motte views in polite company? Was it ever?
"Trump? A little grating, but the country's doing fine, I don't mind him." "Trans? I mean...you do you, but you ain't a chick, and stop pushing books into the elementary school curriculum."
I sometimes question my own sanity, and start asking if my recollection of the Before Times was all a fever dream, but to the best of my ability to answer your question: yes. It was completely normal to have a friend group with all sorts of people. We've had a dude that was an open (actual) fascist in mine, and the group was majority left-wing. Sometimes things would get heated, and people would fight, but at the end of the day people just wanted to have a good time. The blander views wouldn't even raise an eyebrow. Insert "this is what they took from you" meme.
Now, while I also think the news of Wokeness' death have been greatly exaggerated, I do feel like I can breathe a little. Still not comfortable attaching my Tinker Tuesday github to my resume, but way better than "undercover agent" mode of the COVID era.
I think being older than thirty helps, because you can indeed remember for yourself the Before Times and how things were, both bad and good. The young'uns online don't have those memories so are inclined to "this is the first time ever this happened" and "we are the only ones ever doing anything about it" and of course forgetting the previous waves of "Maoism is so dreamy!" or whatever, for both sides, and the mountains of skulls that resulted.
But that also makes it harder to argue with them, because they don't seem to have the habit of "well what are the primary sources here?" They see it on TikTok or social media or their own little bubble and spread it around as Gospel (e.g. Trump really is a paedophile who rapes thirteen year old girls, this isn't exaggeration or rhetorical sarcasm, they are convinced this is all true).
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