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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29304 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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I strongly dislike this article because it's simply not true

https://compactmag.com/article/woke-ism-is-winding-down

Data on media outputs and “cancel-culture” incidents also suggest that a corner may have been turned. Across a range of datasets, we see apparent declines in “grassroots” attempts to censor uncomfortable speech on campus (even as there are growing attempts to suppress political scholarship from external stakeholders). Media discussion of various forms of prejudice and discrimination also seem to have declined significantly over the last year.

Within the Democratic Party, following anemic 2020 results and recalls of progressive politicians in blue states, there have been efforts to “course correct,” to avoid further alienating normie voters. The Democratic base has moved in a similar direction, broadly rejecting progressive candidates during the 2022 primaries. These countermeasures likely helped the party stave off the anticipated “red wave,” preventing extreme Republican candidates from facing Democratic challengers who were also perceived to be far out of step with mainstream America. Running moderate Democratic candidates against GOP extremists proved to be a winning move throughout the country in 2022.

Even if one can cite evidence of people turning against woke-ism, this does not change the fact that the woke still hold considerable power for a large number of institutions, at work, and various digital intellectual properties. The woke, the DEI people, BLM, etc. do not need to see the huge number of downvotes on their content (such as youtube videos , before downvotes were removed) to know that their ideology is not that popular, but this does not dissuade them: they still persevere. It has never been about popularity but about power.

When workers at Netflix attempted to cancel Dave Chappelle in late 2021, the company didn’t respond by issuing apologies and promising more programming on LGBTQ topics, as it had in the past. Instead, executives issued a memo informing protesting employees that if they weren’t open to publishing content they disagree with, they should quit. When an insufficient number of activist employees took them up on this invitation, the company proceeded with aggressive cuts apparently targeting these employees and the programming they worked on.

Too bad not all of us have the backing of a multi-billion dollar corp like Spotify or Netflix. It's not like Netflix can easily find another Chapelle or Spotify can find another Rogan. Regular people who get banned or suspended from twitter, reddit, etc or fired have far fewer recourse. It's all in the background: no one even notices or cares but the person who is affected. The marginal cost incurred by Facebook deleting an inconvenient account is zero. It has 2 billion users. No skin off its back.

Yeah, "we've surely reached peak woke!" is the mirror counterpart to "it's only a few kids on college campuses!"

So in the spirit of the thread, I'd like to ask everyone what kind of thing would actually signify to them that we've passed "peak woke"?

For me, I think it would be mass abolishment of DEI roles in companies as useless dreck, and the default response to HR complaints about offensive jokes changing from "yes m'lady we'll fire him immediately" to "grow a thicker skin, I'm not your mother, plus he's our star engineer and we need him more than you", for example.

Peak woke would be when people who push woke too far actually get punished. It's not enough for people leading cancellation mobs to sometimes fail. The leaders themselves need to be punished for harassment. It's not enough for some college administrator pushing a crazy new DEI initiative to fail at it. They need to get punished for being stupid or for being racist against white people. When people who wish to push woke more to the left are afraid of getting punished for overreach as those those who want to push back things to the right are afraid of getting punished, then we will be at equilibrium.

That woke movement sometimes fails is meaningless. Lot's of cancellation attempts have failed and will fail, lot's of trial balloons will get popped (like that latest outrage from Stanford over inclusive language). But as long as there is no consequence for the attempt, there will be more attempts, some will succeed, and we will continue to ratchet leftward.

Peak woke would be when people who push woke too far actually get punished.

I think that'll be a pretty strong signal that we are past peak woke. Peak woke is not the equilibrium, it is the point where the trend crosses from "things get slightly more woke over time" to "things get slightly less woke over time", and is observable as "I can't tell if the level of wokeness is increasing or decreasing in aggregate".

Also I think peak woke will only be callable in retrospect.

No, "past peak woke" would be when the people pushing woke innovations are getting punished, and the people reversing established woke innovations are not getting punished and sometimes succeeding.

"Peak woke" -- or better, "woke plateau" -- would be when someone pushing a woke innovation or trying to make new offense cancellable is as likely to get punished as someone who is calling out and trying to cancel out existing woke norms is likely to get canceled.

I think that would be true if "people pushing woke innovations get punished" was the main way that woke culture lost traction. However, I think that the change is driven much more strongly by whether people on the margin view these new woke innovations as credible or whether they nod while making snide comments to their trusted friends.

I don't think woke culture dies by a coordinated counterculture pushing back on its excesses. I think woke culture dies by becoming uncool, a sign that you are not keeping up with the modern times.

I actually suspect that the beginning of the end for woke culture was the moment that big banks started making floats for pride parades. Nothing is less cool than a big bank trying to show how cool and with the times they are.

For the record, I think that peak woke was probably about 2 years ago, though the exact timing of the peak depends on which exact part of "woke" you're talking about. Concretely:

  • I think the idea of "colorblindness" peaked a couple decades ago

  • I think the idea of "cultural appropriation" probably peaked in 2018ish

  • Cultural battles over "trans rights" are probably either still on the upswing or near peak

  • I expect that there will be some new "deviant" thing that is currently outside the overton window (e.g. polyamory / furries / etc) that will be taken up by the successors of woke ideology.

Nothing is less cool than a big bank trying to show how cool and with the times they are.

What makes you believe that this is so?

To a normie, banks are just these things that are part of the environment, like trees, grass, and television news broadcasts. A bank supporting something won't make it more cool, but it won't make it less cool, either.

I think television news broadcasts are uncool in the same way banks are, though not in the way that trees and grass are.

My impression of normies, and particularly of the type of normies that exhibit "woke" sentiments, are usually pretty anti-establishment, despite the establishment trying to pander to them. So my judgement about banks is mostly driven by the idea that banks are about as "establishment" as you can get, and when the establishment starts supporting your ideas, you need new, better ideas that the establishment is not willing to support to prove that you are not one of them.

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Channeling moldbug, people won't see the bank as uncool without a concerted effort to smear it as uncool, which people mistake for an organic uncoolness factor after decades of "activism."

Similar to people expecting a wave of youth reaction because "teens naturally rebel against authority," when in reality the media and education industries can and have just flipped the switch from "rebellion is cool" to "total conformity is cool."

Colorblindness has never been acceptable to "woke" and was part of the liberal predecessor before racism became cool again. [...] I'm not sure of the inclusion here. Representing the brief overlap period where colorblindness was collapsing and woke was ascendent?

Yes, you're correct. I don't think "woke" is a new phenomenon, I think "woke" is the way the current young generation shows that they "get it" in a way that the older generation does not. And yes, representing how the current idea of "woke" was ascendant while the previous version of "politically correct" was collapsing. My point was at no point does "we are past peak X" mean "and that means that everything will go back to how it was before", it just means that "X" is now unfashionable and will be replaced by a new, fashionable "Y".

And yeah, the "poly / furries" thing is the classic prediction for what the new "Y" will be, but I'm pretty sure it's actually going to be "etc", because if it were the predictable "poly/furries" then the old uncool people could easily "get it", and that would be terrible.

(As a note, I'm not saying "wokeness is just fashion and therefore has no effects on the real world". I'm saying "wokeness is fashion, and therefore you can predict what will happen with it the same way you predict other fashions". Any real-world consequences of things done for fashion are still just as real as real-world consequences of things done for other reasons)

That is a really interesting perspective, and it makes a lot of sense. I have always viewed it as a fashion, but I hadn't considered the poison pill aspect like that. Ooh, how about instead of poly/trans we go with "chatbots not being real people doesn't matter, they are real enough for me and you disrespect them when you call them artificial". Wrap your head around that Dad!

Perhaps we'll look back at the various discussions that are happening right now about whether or not we've reached "peak woke" and realize that the very fact disagreements were happening (versus agreement all in one direction) was an indication that we had been at "peak woke" at the time, i.e. now. One can only hope.

what disagreements? There are disagreements here, but we're a tiny place. There aren't such disagreements in the places you might expect them to be if woke is winding down.

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