I’m hispanic and I’ve finally started the last step in mastering the english language, yet… if there’s anything very curious about american english is how some words are used on the internet and one of them is therm *”woke”.* I know it means literally that someone has just *waken up* but I don’t understand it’s use.
I’ve seen it specially on gaming related subreddits because I freaking like videogames, but what does it means?
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It means “aware of injustices in society”.
For normal people it means “recognizes that society is unfair, especially towards minorities,
”
For a large minority of right wing voters it means “any opinion or idea about society that makes me uncomfortable and/or offends me.”
For a very small minority of left wing voters it means “willing to ruin a good time by taking offense to anything that makes me uncomfortable.”
Woke is the new “politically correct.” It has no fixed meaning.
A bunch of people are going to give you biased answers that contradict each other because this is probably one of the more contentious terms in common use today.
From one perspective, woke means that you’re conscious of the way people from different backgrounds are treated and mistreated (now and in the past) based on their race, sex, sexuality, etc. Being conscious of that, you often want to counteract mistreatment in various ways and keep awareness of that treatment at top of mind so that it’s never accepted as normal.
The opposing perspective is that “woke” represents *excessive* concern about mistreatment of different groups, to the point of seeing that mistreatment even where it doesn’t actually exist and/or exaggerating its significance where it does. Because you exaggerate its importance, your effort to keep that mistreatment at top of mind is annoying, obtrusive, and in some cases perpetuates the conflict between groups that leads to mistreatment – and may even be mistreatment of a different kind.
Complicated question. It started out as meaning someone is aware of various negative social issues.
It then became a negative label for highly corporatized activist pandering. “I’m an actual millionaire who blames countries’ problems on rural farmers in poverty, I’m entitled to say that because I donated a few dollars to charity” type deal.
Now, it has become a label conservative use for anything they don’t like. My manager said the company is becoming woke because a few employees that were actively signing paperwork to leave the company were not putting forward thier best efforts to get promoted.
Performative noblesse oblige.
It’s literally a way for people of color to say: “It’s dangerous out there, stay safe, and be aware.” That’s how the term entered common usage about a century ago. It was a warning to remind each other that racism is a factor and you need to be aware of it.
Currently its most often used, in the context you described, to say: “I’m a cantankerous old person and I’m cranky about what the kids are doing.”
It means being an unhinged leftist
It means “socially aware” or “aware of the state of the society you are in”.
By far its greatest use at the moment is as a term of insult towards socially progressive or activist people from those who are regressive and resistant to improving social equality.
It means whatever fits the agenda of the person saying it.
It started as black slang. It was used in a serious manner and was used to describe being “awake” to see the reality of people’s struggles, oppression, a broken system of injustice, etc.
The word has since been stolen by many people with many differing agendas and the meaning has been butchered and mutilated so that it can fit whatever narrative they’re trying to use it for.
**In general**, the word *mostly* means “representation and social justice”. This can mean making sure your case of characters in a video game or movie or show is diverse in race, religion, sexual orientation, etc.
This is about as unbiased of an answer as I can give you.
To dive a bit more into the part you’re probably confused about.. a lot of people accuse Hollywood of being “woke” and forcing a “woke agenda”, by recasting historically white characters as black, making characters gay for seemingly no reason, having remakes of stories with women instead of men, etc. They accuse major studios of going too far with their representation, to the point that it feels forced and insulting. If you see people talking bad about “woke culture”, this is likely the context they’re referring to. People who defend it will usually say that bad representation is still better than no representation, or they’ll say that these things aren’t nearly as forced as people claim, and that the reason people are saying it’s forced is because they want to find an excuse to bash women/gays/minorities in general in the media.
So then you get two (or more) groups of people arguing about the definition of a word that started as slang in the first place and has been taken to an extreme.
“Woke” arose in Black American communities to mean something like “knowledgeable of social issues, particularly those affecting racial minorities”.
It eventually came to be used more or less as a pejorative for “liberal” or “leftist”. There’s been an attempt by some conservatives to intellectualize it as a new ideological phenomenon or as a particular point of view, but they generally don’t use it that way.
[Example 1](https://x.com/mtgreenee/status/1403366754777137153?s=46&t=UPR-XoDlBPgaq7GjNY5saA)
[Example 2](https://x.com/benshapiro/status/1602688552818581506?s=46&t=UPR-XoDlBPgaq7GjNY5saA)
[Example 3](https://x.com/tpusa/status/1689052836712390656?s=46&t=UPR-XoDlBPgaq7GjNY5saA)
Whatever socially conscious thing the GOP doesn’t currently like.
Originally it was just a term meaning those who have opened their eyes to systemic issues in society, political, economical, and sociological, that are inherently biased and allow for the suffering of minorities in various ways, and in some extensions of the definition any policy that is environmental or aimed at alleviating suffering of humanity as a whole.
In the last couple of years, however, the term and the practices used to alleviate these issues have been coopted by the extreme left and right to serve political or societal agendas and it has just become another worthless political label in the eyes of most people. The far-right labels any attempt to address racial issues, criminal issues, societal issues, or environmental issues as “woke” and a blatant attempt by the left to erode American freedoms. The far-left goes to illogical extremes in what they label to be societal biases or harmful societal structures and uses any sort of deviation from their vision as regressive and harmful to the progress of humanity.
I just avoid the term. It has too much baggage anymore.
Probably varies a shitload depending on who you ask
It means “things person doesn’t like”
Woke = An excessive focus on perceived power disparities – especially when related to race, gender and other identity groups.
There’s a longer backstory to it. But since early-2021 that’s essentially what woke means when people use it.
For example, if a movie features an over the top scene where characters talk about racism in an over the top way people find annoying – it will often be called woke by its critics.
The literal use, as you said, is “I woke up early today” describing the act of rising from sleep.
However there are also figurative and idiomatic uses like “He woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning” to mean someone is in a bad mood, or “Wake up and smell the coffee!”, which is a way of demanding someone acknowledge a fact or truth about a situation they have ignored. Similarly, it can be used figuratively like “The warm temperatures woke me up from my winter depression”, which has a meaning closer to “stirred feelings” or “change of heart”.
Which is to say, there are usages of “Woke” which are used to mean something like “gain clarity” or “find awareness”.
This is the meaning that you’re seeing all over the place on the internet. Specifically, it is about gaining awareness of systemic social justice issues and/or oppression. Someone who is “woke” has come to recognize or acknowledge that some process, law, behavior, tradition, habit, etc, is racist/sexist/whatever, rather than ignore it. “Wokeness” in media often takes the form of increasing representation of under-represented minorities, or stories from diverse creators usually ignored by the mainstream.
An advocate would say that the more acknowledgement of these things, the better. The more people, politicians, companies, and organizations who speak out about them, the more faster things will change and wrongs can be made right.
A critic would say that pleas for more woke attitudes can morph into demands, especially when accompanied by the forces of market or political power. The result can be an excess of *performative* or *insincere* woke behavior, done out of pressure to conform or stave off criticism.
When you see subreddits freaking about their video games or movies becoming “woke”, what they mean is that they think fear of consequences for not being woke enough is leading game developers or movie studios to make poor creative decisions that make the product worse. However, it is often difficult to tell apart people who genuinely believe that to be the case, versus those who are genuinely offended by diversity of representation or thought in media.
All I’m going to say is that if you were to tell me in like 2014 that this term, which I ever only saw online, would enter the greater mainstream political lexicon, I would have laughed and called you crazy.
It depends on who is using it. It is a word you can safely ignore. It is almost never used in useful conversations.
It’s honestly a term I only really hear from Republican talking heads and as far as I can tell it means “something that I don’t like”.
The naive interpretation is that they truly don’t understand the term. The cynical interpretation is that some people don’t want to discuss social injustice issues and instead attempt to reframe the term away from that context.
It’s a catch-all term for various liberal, progressive, and leftist groups and their beliefs, generally used sarcastically by conservative opponents as a pejorative.
Mainstream media has completely overtaken the word woke and put it in whatever category that seems fit. But originally, at least my friends and I used it as a term for being aware of the powers that be, and the messed up shit they do behind closed doors. Being awake, being aware of what’s really going on
Woke means “non-conservative”.
I kid, I kid.
It means “aware of and interested in resolving discrimination”.
It’s essentially the continuation of the marxist ideology of class warfare in modern terms. The opressor/oppressed classes seem to be chosen based on outcome. If a group is successful in comparison with another group then the thought is that the successful group has profited at the expense of the unsuccessful group. Things like racism, sexism, etc. Are blamed as being in-built functions of our institutions, because successful groups of people built them. This way of thinking branches into things like group justice, aka justice on a class/race/gender level, instead of individual justice.
That’s the basic “woke” ideology. It’s essentially a continuation of the “social justice warrior” ideology that popped up with millenials.
I do not mean to generalize you, but I see your flair says Mexico, and as someone that’s learning Spanish, I’ve seen many Spanish Speaking people with conservative views, so you may not like this.
Woke is a term used both casually (by leftists, liberals if you will) that basically serves as a reminder to snap out of the American thought pattern of not having to worry about what’s happening in other countries and “wake up” to how privileged we are compared to other places, and derogatory by rightists, conservatives basically used in rants like, “these woke liberals identifying as a she/they”
Whatever the fuck you want it to mean. Not unlike the use of problematic. I straight up don’t trust anyone who uses it without irony. It’s a convenient buzzword that many people use when they don’t want to be explicit with their jackassery.
“I don’t like that this movie has gay people” Can’t say that because now people will think they hate gay people (they do).
“This movie is woke.” Meaningless statement. Most people have an idea they’re referencing the existence of gay people, but that’s the subtext which is grounds for plausible deniability.
It’s a way of mocking those who are perceived to be to self righteous about the latest political craze. Naturally it is only applied to someone else.
Here’s the history of the word.
It started as a word that meant being aware of and recognizing the issues faced by people of color. That was the whole meaning.
Then, people with various other issues co-opted the word to apply it to their issues and woke started to mean being aware of and recognizing social issues in general like racism, gender inequality, LGBT+ issues, etc.
All of the social media bickering that takes place included a large contingent of people who went out of their way to pick fights, be uptight and shitty, and a lot of well-meaning yet very misguided narratives were thrown around and any disagreement with them meant you were the enemy.
Those who were treated this way started describing people who act like that as woke. Once that happened, the previously “woke” people abandoned this word and then started saying only the out of touch people use that word and they act like they never used it to define themselves.
Somewhere along the way, bigots started using it to describe anything that was more inclusive than they liked.
Now, it has all of those meanings.
Using the word woke in this decade on ironically means you’re a panicking republican
Woke is what’s destroying America. Don’t bother.
It’s largely settled on meaning, being liberal or progressive to a cringe degree.
“Woke” in a political context means that whoever you’re talking to is terminally brainpoisoned by the culture war.
I would define it as pertaining to the political ideology that surrounds the concept of [critical theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory). I would especially apply it to topics pertaining to identity groups in some way like race, gender, and sexual orientation.
Basically “woke” people get too obsessed with that stuff, tend to make it their entire political ideology and often times their entire personality, and tend to be very evangelical with spreading their views, and very intolerant and punitive toward those who don’t hold such views.
It kinda becomes like a religion.
In gaming there’s the controversy with sweetbaby inc where a lot of people are noting that this company is explicitly trying to impose its morals on the subject into games in such a way that it might lead to worse story lines and stuff. And sure, there are radical “culture warriors” out there like that who do try to do that. And some people tend to wanna push back on that stuff.
I do think they overestimate the importance of doing so. Like, I personally aint huge on “wokeness” myself, but as long as those people arent explicitly peeing in my cornflakes and TRYING to piss me off, I’m like eh whatever. Games can be woke and fun, it aint a huge huge deal, and honestly, what i think the right wing critiques of wokeism are often missing is that companies are turning to consulting firms LIKE sweet baby inc because they fear backlash from consumers if their games’ narratives DONT tend to conform to such ideology. And that ultimately, these guys just wanna make money, and that the manifesting of “wokeness” into the equation is just a secondary factor and that companies are businesses trying to make as much money to normal, and if that’s the cultural zeitgeist and they are rewarded for doing so, they’ll tend to push hard into that stuff.
It’s an idiots term for enlightened.
Holding to an uncensored view of history and society.
It means things morons don’t like from what I’ve seen…
Not sleeping
It used to just be a meme word that meant something along the lines of “unconventional, but smart”. And now it’s just a nothing word that gets thrown around whenever a right-winger disagrees with a left-winger.
It’s a floating signifier for postmodern/Marxist/critical race theory ideology. In practice it pretty much just means that discrimination and inequity are results of systemic and/or subconscious structures within society rather than being the consequence of individuals just having prejudice.
To add, I’d say that ‘woke’ people best see and identify with themselves as they fit into the greater hierarchy of the “white capitalist patriarchal superstructure”. I.E, while I may be white, I could belong to xyz minority group and experience other vectors of oppression that exist within a system that’s really only mean to serve straight white men.
It’s a really stupid and reductive way to view the world.
Source: I was a woke college student and was taught all these things
Woke started in the black community as a term for people that were aware of the oppression of black communities as opposed to the people that are just “sleeping” unaware of how they are impacted by oppression.
Woke then got appropriated by liberal white people to generically mean any political awareness. Then it got appropriated again by conservatives to mean any liberal idea. Go woke go broke is a popular saying among conservatives when a company appeases to anything conservatives don’t like like LGBTQ inclusion, diversity, or social economics.
I’m old enough to remember when woke was just when your friend got a little too high and would rant about aliens and how the terrorists were winning because the DoD was spending $3 million on a porta potty in Alaska
You have here several definitions about what “woke” originally meant. But today, in practice, it means whatever conservatives wake up and decide they don’t like. Usually that means whatever they think liberals like.
I’m not joking. Even the people who write books on “wokeness” [can’t explain](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFNbAmCjRaA) what it means.
Anything Ron DeSantis doesn’t like
Liberal in a way that is deemed annoying
The self-perception of being enlightened or nearly enlightened, particularly in comparison to ones ideological opponents.
Woke is equity over equality. Woke is removing gifted programs from schools because the racial balance of kids in gifted programs isn’t equal. Woke is believing in victimhood as a virtue. Woke is practicing bigotry of low expectations. Woke is believing in hierarchies of oppression. Woke is believing the only way to account for past racism/sexism is reverse racism/sexism.
The new hip term for politically correct, slowly becoming derogatory, like when they tried to coin the term “Latinx”