[hpvic03]

This essay is so prescient.

Does anyone else think wokeism has gone too far, and we're sliding into a 1984-style era full of newspeak, wrongthink, and thoughtcrimes?

I feel a little afraid to even write that, even as a question mark, even at that level of abstraction.

That right there is probably an indication that it perhaps has gone too far.

To be clear, this is coming from a person who is hispanic, supports gay-rights, and voted for Bernie. Not that any of that should matter.

[rspeele]

The "gone too far" wokeism stuff seems to be openly mocked, almost everywhere, all the time.

Just because I can find people expressing goofy ideas like "saying 'my concerns fell on deaf ears' is ableist language" or "deadnaming a trans person is violence" on Twitter, doesn't mean that's mainstream. Those posts get shared 100x more by people mocking them than by people agreeing with them.

Maybe you could give an example of something specific?

[humanistbot]

> Just because I can find people expressing goofy ideas like "saying 'my concerns fell on deaf ears' is ableist language" or "deadnaming a trans person is violence" on Twitter, doesn't mean that's mainstream.

Do a thought experiment: Your company is a player in a certain language/framework ecosystem (python, react, whatever). As part of that, many of your employees attend and sometimes host meetups for that ecosystem. A fellow highly-involved meetup organizer from another company announces that they are transitioning gender, and that they would like to be called by a new name. Almost everyone does. A few people make mistakes, but are sincere and apologize -- they want to do better, but memory pathways are hard. But one employee at your company objects to using their new name and pronouns on moral grounds. They keep using the organizer's dead name and old pronouns, and when they are asked to use their new name, they refuse.

Do you think that is the way that a professional should act towards others in their profession?

[lubesGordi]

Openly mocked? Definitely not.

I know someone who knows someone who ran an art gallery on the west coast. Most of the artists were black and the gallerist was a white man. At one point he made some offhanded remark that "don't worry, the white artists have an area over there..." Guess what happened to his career after?

These stories are everywhere, and are why people think things have gone too far.

[inglor_cz]

Isn't deadnaming a trans person literally a bannable offense on Twitter?

https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/27/18113344/twitter-trans-u...

[paulpauper]

employers have much more power than individuals. even if the public is mostly opposed to wokeism , companies, fed. govt., and universities still seem intent on pushing it.

[zozbot234]

That still doesn't disprove wokeism's influence on the whole "things you can't say" dynamic. Leo Strauss has famously pointed out that censored ideas often end up being conveyed in a disguised manner, generally involving some kind of reverse psychology where a purposely clumsy or hyperbolic argument for X is used as a signal of believing not-X. So it may be that these seemingly "extreme woke" ideas are being purposely targeted to an unsuspecting Twitter audience as a broader challenge to wokeism itself, and that much of the mockery simply misses the point.

[VirusNewbie]

Sure. There have been numerous mainstream articles as well as a recent segment on John Oliver that liken teaching CRT to teaching about the fact racism exists. This is becoming a mainstream viewpoint, that "banning CRT" in classrooms is banning talk of racism.

None of these articles mention any of the more controversial CRT viewpoints that you can find by...reading the wikipedia article. It isn't exactly a hidden secret that CRT purports that any racial disparities must be due to systemic racism, though we can use some logic to quickly falsify some its main beliefs.

[commandlinefan]

That’s like saying “I tried to kill you, but you survived, so what are you complaining about?”

The Twitter mob has ruined lives and is doing everything they can to ruin the ones they target.

[bob34]

“Transwomen are women” is a religious precept on the left yet the overwhelming majority of people can see the obvious truth that they are in fact men in dresses with a serious disturbing sexual fetish.

[majormajor]

Discussions of "wokeism" should keep in mind that one of the most visible cases of being "canceled" is Colin Kaepernick, and you'd hardly call those blackballing him "woke." Meanwhile other less-accomplished QBs still bounce around from at least backup job to backup job...

But beyond that... people have been getting blackballed forever in this country.

So it's very important in this discussion to make it clear if you're complaining about just:

a) people facing repercussions for saying 'conservative' things

or

b) people facing repercussions for other things as well

or even just something like

c) the outsize influence of random anonymous people and mobs on Twitter

[rootusrootus]

> c) the outsize influence of random anonymous people and mobs on Twitter

Ding ding ding! This is the fundamental problem. We collectively seem to care entirely too much about the fringe people who bother to vent their minds on Twitter.

[overgard]

I don't think Kaepernick is really relevant here because he didn't piss off most people, he pissed off 32 mostly white billionaires in their 70s and 80s. IE, it's less that he got "cancelled" by society in general but rather he got cancelled by an insular cabal. That culture really doesn't reflect the culture of society as a whole.

[commandlinefan]

> Colin Kaepernick

If he had been winning football games, he’d still be playing football. Witness the legions of other non-cancelled football players who’ve done way worse (but still win).

[philwelch]

Kaepernick’s career was going downhill before he started protesting. He was already the backup by then and frankly already had a reputation as an egotistical jackass. If you want to be an egotistical jackass in the NFL, it’s possible, but it will limit your career options even if you have the talent to back them up, which Kaep didn’t at the end. He’s also went on to sabotage his own comeback opportunities at least once. Probably the best comparison I could make is Kyrie Irving, and the only reason Kyrie isn’t out of the league is the NBA CBA.

[screye]

It certainly did. Although, it seems like the opposition to it is in full swing.

Wokeness (as portrayed in popular culture) hit its peak during the George Floyd protests and subsequent publishing of the Harpers letter. Since then, an entire ecosystem has risen in opposition to ideas of wokeness.

Alas, the reaction to this opposition has not been to find a new consensus. Rather, communities have sharded and further polarized. Now, fervent ingroup loyalty is mandatory while the difference between each ingroup keeps expanding.

This is especially noticeable in the most radical communities on the left and the right. From draconian Trans-bans to radical no-questions asked trans-acceptance, these communities have started dealing in absolutes. The more nuanced anti-woke have coalesced around Substack and honestly make good money. But, they rely on word of mouth to reach their readers. The other side of the anti-woke use viral video and aggressive youtube algorithms to reach their viewer base. However, the nature of these algorithms means that strong emotion is promoted over nuance and reason. Finally, there are celebrity faces like Rowling, Chapelle and Rogan, who can't really be deplatformed and serve as lightning rods for criticism, while smaller voices get the necessary protection to build out their platform.

The sad part of this, is that you can't be apolitical anymore. There are only 3 acceptable positions. 1. Strong support and be embraced, 2. strong opposition and lose your friends but gain new anti-woke friends and lastly 3.stay silent while nodding to those in strong support.

Now, if your profession is one is wholly in-group for the woke, then you will be in a difficult situation. Academia, print journalism and legacy media practically force you to be #1 or #3. If you are in a more technical field like tech, it doesn't really affect your life. But, if you choose to interface with social-sciencey aspects of big-tech such as ResponsibleAI, DEI or hiring, then you will also be forced into #1 or #3.

[inglor_cz]

Also, Trump's visibility in media has been reduced.

I believe that Trumpesque utterances were driving certain demography crazy and it overcompensated by going all in into wokeness and doubling down. And while Trump was president, there wasn't a chance to escape his daily, uh, serving of wisdom, which served as an irritant that had to be scratched, scratched, scratched, scratched.

Nowadays Trump is much less prominent in the media and some people started rethinking their previous fervor.

[nperez]

I think the term "woke" has been hijacked by some people to refer to anything minorities do in a disparaging manner, so I would need more concrete examples of what that means.

[gnicholas]

Linguist (and heterodox thinker) John McWhorter has written about this shifting usage:

> For example, it’s only recently that he noticed the term “woke” being used beyond black Americans in just the way that “politically correct” was used before it was a pejorative. And already, he observed, it is beginning to take on the same baggage as PC once did.

from https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/06/the-futili...

[rootusrootus]

> Does anyone else think wokeism has gone too far

Yes, because it is locked in a feedback loop with the folks who have recently decided to start saying the quiet part out loud. If people could just all around stop acting like jerks, everything would be much quieter. But nobody thinks they are the jerk.

[michaelmrose]

Maybe it's not so much an indication that reality has gone too far so much as it is that we aren't all equally aligned with reality.

You say that you are a little afraid to speak up but realistically you are being deliberately dramatic. Shall we start a campaign to get you booted from your job tomorrow because you are being dramatic? It's not a crime nor a reason for outrage. You face at worst a down vote

[overgard]

People get in trouble for decade old social media posts all the time. There's a lot of weird vindictive people that will go through ten years of twitter posts to be like "gotcha". The only way to not worry is to never have a high profile, or be extremely careful what you say in writing.

[overgard]

I think the vast majority thinks that, but the extremists (for or against) are the ones carrying the megaphones because media craves controversy.

[psyc]

I agree with them on most issues. I appreciate them raising and theorizing about their more fringe issues. What I don't appreciate are their tactics and aggressive enforcement.

[odonnellryan]

No. Why do you think it has gone too far?

[d0mine]

'wkeism' as a tool reminds me about authoritarian states introducing laws that are impossible not to break by design and then applying them selectively to obliterate any dissent.

[moltke]

We knew where it was going decades ago but it was considered too fashionable.

[robbyking]

I don't think "wokeism" has gone too far, I think accusations of it have. There are plenty of high profile sex offenders and homophobic/transphobic celebrities who continue to get work.

Instead what I see is misrepresentation of what "wokeness" is; I often hear conservatives say they're "not allowed" to discuss race/sexuality/etc., when in actuality what has happened is most of American has just moved on from finding homophobia and racism entertaining.

[lashloch]

After reading your comment, I think it hasn't gone far enough.

[hpvic03]

... and my crime is?

Mentioning the idea of wrongthink?

You're kind of proving my point.