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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.

As more intelligent men than me have observed, the culture is controlled by young, attractive, fertile women and the men granted access to their wombs. “Woke” culture only exists so long as it doesn’t obstruct or offend either of these two groups. And we’re nowhere near the point that the college educated, secular, progressive, urban elite are tired of purity spirals.

Just look at what a flaming dumpster fire of propaganda Reddit has turned into since the days of Ellen Pao. This isn’t 2010 when no one knew what a Reddit was and Ron Paul was popular: these are normies posting what normal people think in 2023. The fact that this single, insignificant thread from /r/slatestarcodex has now had to quietly move camp in the middle of the night TWICE, as though we’re some lost brigade of confederate vagabonds being sheparded safely out of Union territory by Stonewall Jackson, is a testament to how deeply unpopular the kind of ideas posted here are.

is a testament to how deeply unpopular the kind of ideas posted here are.

This assumes the censors have some sort of democratic mandate, which I don't believe is true.

The Reddit censors have the overwhelming support of the Reddit community. No one misses this place anymore than they miss /r/coontown.

Never said anyone would miss us, we're not big enough for anyone to notice. But I'd need some revealed preferences to buy the "overwhelming support" bit. People were crying about Elon Musk not censoring twitter as much too, threatening to leave, etc. Just generally the overwhelming majority of people are overwhelmingly apathetic.

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