“Woke”

[Darat]

Ya needs to work on your comprehension, ducky. I'm not far off the page. I was spot on, saying you would have to show it was already in use rather than a bald assertion. You did so. Congratulations!

You were asking for when it was first used on Twitter - being 80 years and several technological revolutions out seems a tad off the page to me…..

Great. So the expression was found in a few examples, and had the same meaning. "Mr. Garvey done woke me up, and I'm gon' stay woke" is certainly the same usage.

Interesting that one of the issues cited was a black guy bitching about beatnics culturally appropriating black speech. I guess we have to discuss if white folk can actually use "Woke"?

You need to go back to the post you were objecting about - you seem to have forgotten what you objected to.

 

[Thermal]

If it makes you feel any better, have at it. Part of working through these things is that these conversations can be interesting to people who aren't waking up at night in terror of being canceled because they wore the wrong color socks and some sophomore at Oberlin once wrote a editorial about how those socks are offensive to the colorblind.

I mean, try not to get to "don't even think about using ranch dressing if you've never raised cattle" type stupid, but usually when people who don't at all care about cultural appropriation try to use it as a gotcha that's where it usually ends up.

Please don't misunderstand. I don't acknowledge cultural appropriation, and ridicule the very idea. No one's fashions are proprietary.

An exception is if someone is adopting a whole gestalt lifestyle to pretend to be some other group. That's a little fetish-y and weird.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

People about whom this word is being used find it offensive and wish that other people stop using it. Most people stopped using it.

That's what you call "playing stupid language games."

No, I was calling the whole "it's offensive if you replace the s with a z" schtick a stupid language game. But hey, if that self-flattering strawman makes you feel better, go for it. It's after all, what I've come to expect from that subculture.

 

[Thermal]

You were asking for when it was first used on Twitter - being 80 years and several technological revolutions out seems a tad off the page to me…..

No, I mentioned being able to identify a Tweet Zero, but that wouldn't actually prove anything.

You need to go back to the post you were objecting about - you seem to have forgotten what you objected to.

I'm good, thanks. In fairness, we just had a drunken long weekend celebration over here and I may not be clear headed enough yet for rational discourse. I don't even remember making my first post in this thread.

 

[tyr_13]

People about whom this word is being used find it offensive and wish that other people stop using it. Most people stopped using it.

That's what you call "playing stupid language games." Which is you determining what should offend other people, and in general your opinion doesn't matter.

The ones eagerly taking offense are not the people asking the word not be used, it's the people who are imagining great personal harm because they might feel foolish if corrected.

I don't think people are really integrating into their understanding of the subject just how core 'feelings' are to the entire accusation of being 'woke' are.

Putting a lot of factors aside to explain how now pointing out the US wasn't designed to match Christian Nationalism (as reflected by actual instruction given to educators by anti-woke government officials) the basic drive is an emotionally/socially defensive one. The things that get called 'woke' generally have in common are a potential to make people think others view them more poorly. Over simplified, the reasoning goes, 'this makes me feel or look bad, they must have argued it to make me feel or look bad, they must be doing that to make themselves look better'. The insecurity this invokes has to be defended against, to protect either ego or social position. An easy way (and intellectually bankrupt way) to defend from this is to attack instead. You feel threatened? Do something to make them feel threatened. I'm not being the 'bad person', you're being a bad person to attack me! You're a woke virtue signaler (other), and the actual argument's merits thus don't matter.

It's an easy ad hom. Much easier than being secure enough to either risk the social consequences of being thought of as 'wrong' for whatever the point is if you think your position is worth it, or secure enough to put the ego aside and take a correction (admit fault). Just have the courage to potentially be, or be thought of, as wrong. Stop letting the fear of feeling threatened lead one's self around. Risk growing.

 

[wareyin]

Or it could be just the way they learned the word back then. E.g., in German it used to be the only way to say it before 1990. Muslim seems to have caught up in the meantime, but "moslem" is still in the Duden as a perfectly normal word.

I think pointing out that spelling and usage in a whole different language is different from spelling and usage in English is a bit of a red herring, though. I can't open your German (?) page without clicking on a pop-up that is written entirely in German and google/chrome will not automatically translate.

It also seems to be not so clear cut to anyone who hasn't been looking for reasons to be offended on behalf of someone else, in a language you don't actually speak, that it actually means anything evil. There were actual interviews with actual Muslims on the street and pretty much it came up mostly that they prefer the way it's in Arabic, or that it sounds better. You'd think that if it actually meant "evil", you'd get a few more answers saying just that.

Not that I doubt there were actual "Muslim on the street" type interviews and all, but we don't have any evidence that they said what you claim they did, or in what language they even said it. That said, even in your claim the Muslims requested you say/spell it Muslim, and that was apparently back in the 90's. So, how is it "looking for reasons to be offended on behalf of someone else" to know that this is the way your average "Muslim on the street" prefers it spelled/pronounced? It really looks from here more on the "I don't care what they want me to call them or why, I'm just gonna call them whatever I feel like." Which...still par for the course for those who use "woke" as a pejorative.

I'm also pretty sure that one of the actual Muslims at the previous company was pronouncing it that way.

In the interview?

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

If it makes you feel any better, have at it. Part of working through these things is that these conversations can be interesting to people who aren't waking up at night in terror of being canceled because they wore the wrong color socks and some sophomore at Oberlin once wrote a editorial about how those socks are offensive to the colorblind.

Ah, dunno about others, but trust me, it's not even on my list of fears that someone whose whole achievement in life and contribution to the universe is finding reasons to be offended, will look for some reason to be offended, and dutifully be offended. As I've been saying for over a decade even on this board, if I actually even cared that someone will think less of me if I don't toe their line or that they'd think more of me if I did, I'd be in some church speaking in tongues. You'd be surprised how a little Klingon or, say, Japanese gets those guys to think you're totally in their camp

And that was the starting baseline. I've become even more desensitized in the meantime. See, even back then at least if someone was called "racist" or "sexist" or a "homophobe" or whatever on the internet, they must have actually said anything racist or sexist or homophobic. Nowadays I call that "Tuesday". As I was writing recently if you don't get called one of those long enough, check your modem, your internet is probably down.

Or some other case of someone whose whole gig is getting offended, looks for a reason to get offended, and dutifully is offended.

I mean, I've LITERALLY had someone get offended some years ago (on another site) by my signature, which was "A Polar bear is a Cartesian bear after a coordinate transform." It wasn't even the topic of the message he was answering to; it was just the signature line. I thought it was a cute maths nerd pun. He thought I was offensive and actively insensitive to the plight of the poor polar bears, threatened by climate change, yada, yada.

You get desensitized and stop taking it seriously after a while, much less fear it, is all I'm saying.


I can still find it stupid regardless.

I mean, equally I'm not actually afraid that anyone will sacrifice me to Huitzilopochtli atop an Aztec pyramid, but I can still think it's stupid for anyone to think that the Sun will die if they don't feed it human hearts

 

[Suddenly]

Please don't misunderstand. I don't acknoedge cultural appropriation, and ridicule the very idea. No one's fashions are proprietary.

An exception is if someone is adopting a whole gestalt lifestyle to pretend to be some other group. That's a little fetish-y and weird.

It would seem you don't ridicule the idea itself as long as it's the type of appropriation that bothers you. Which, ironically, people of the dominant culture using the language of an oppressed culture (woke) seems to also be an example.

I mean, all of this anti-woke stuff is implicitly directed towards affluent or otherwise privileged white people who use the word to affect a sense of moral superiority about race rather than conversations among Black people discussing how race affects them.

Or at least I'd hope so, anyway. Still, that's basically being upset about someone from a dominant culture appropriating a term from an oppressed culture for their own advantage.

So, sure.

 

[wareyin]

And that was the starting baseline. I've become even more desensitized in the meantime. See, even back then at least if someone was called "racist" or "sexist" or a "homophobe" or whatever on the internet, they must have actually said anything racist or sexist or homophobic.

"Back then" being 5 minutes ago? Because that's generally still the case.

Nowadays I call that "Tuesday". As I was writing recently if you don't get called one of those long enough, check your modem, your internet is probably down.

You may be surprised, but the vast majority of people aren't being called racist or sexist or homophobic all day every day. I wonder why that is?

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I think pointing out that spelling and usage in a whole different language is different from spelling and usage in English is a bit of a red herring, though. I can't open your German (?) page without clicking on a pop-up that is written entirely in German and google/chrome will not automatically translate.

Well, then I haven't explained it well enough. My bad.

The point was really that you can't just string assumption after assumption until you get the result you want. You don't know for example what nationality someone is on the Internet. Yet people seem to just assume that nah, it couldn't have been a German or some other reasonable cause, it must be evil intent.

In the interview?

Nah, at the smoking area. Fun guy, and into history too, so we talked quite a bit.

Plus, he was from Kossovo, so the topic of, say, Serbs vs Muslims did come up a few times. You know, bit of a sore point after the genocide in Yugoslavia. And he was pronouncing it as "Moslem", unless my memory epically fails me.

Point being, I literally didn't know until today that anyone finds it offensive, after even hearing an actual Muslim pronounce it that way.

 

[8enotto]

I had never heard "woke" in this sense until this forum. Later in the huge trans women thread a while back someone was slinging it about as an insult of sorts and I couldn't figure exactly what behaviour it was supposed to be.

Now I see it's varied and could be anything one doesn't like.
Not a word ever to become common use with me.

Different places, different slang I guess but I do hope this one fades out quickly.

 

[d4m10n]

Thanks for those links especially the one to the NY Times page - I was able to read that article in its entirety and it provides such a vivid peek back into American mainstream culture.

Quite welcome.

Turns out the linguistic pipeline from Negro idiom AAVE to beatniks hipsters is at least six decades old.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

"Back then" being 5 minutes ago?

We were talking about a starting point farther back in time, in the previous paragraph, remember? You CAN scroll back and read again what we were talking about if you forget, ya know?

Because that's generally still the case.

Sometimes yes. And then sometimes it's just a case of someone trying really hard to find something to be offended about.

You may be surprised, but the vast majority of people aren't being called racist or sexist or homophobic all day every day. I wonder why that is?

Probably because most are smart enough to not end up arguing with idiots on the internet. Less likely to get one of them brow-beating for whole pages about how you're racist/sexist/whatever if you disagree with him in any way about anything, even if he has to manufacture a strawman for that. Me, I never seem to remember to stay out of it.

 

[Suddenly]

I mean, I've LITERALLY had someone get offended some years ago (on another site) by my signature, which was "A Polar bear is a Cartesian bear after a coordinate transform." It wasn't even the topic of the message he was answering to; it was just the signature line. I thought it was a cute maths nerd pun. He thought I was offensive and actively insensitive to the plight of the poor polar bears, threatened by climate change, yada, yada.

I can see why someone would find this significant enough to bring up in a conversation about how Muslims have a problem with being referred to by a name they find offensive. It's like the same thing and proves that we should just stop caring about offending other people because the next thing you know [insert some absurd extrapolation here]

This is basically the "don't use ranch dressing if you've never raised cattle" territory I was referring to earlier.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I don't think people are really integrating into their understanding of the subject just how core 'feelings' are to the entire accusation of being 'woke' are.

Putting a lot of factors aside to explain how now pointing out the US wasn't designed to match Christian Nationalism (as reflected by actual instruction given to educators by anti-woke government officials) the basic drive is an emotionally/socially defensive one. The things that get called 'woke' generally have in common are a potential to make people think others view them more poorly. Over simplified, the reasoning goes, 'this makes me feel or look bad, they must have argued it to make me feel or look bad, they must be doing that to make themselves look better'. The insecurity this invokes has to be defended against, to protect either ego or social position. An easy way (and intellectually bankrupt way) to defend from this is to attack instead. You feel threatened? Do something to make them feel threatened. I'm not being the 'bad person', you're being a bad person to attack me! You're a woke virtue signaler (other), and the actual argument's merits thus don't matter.

It's an easy ad hom. Much easier than being secure enough to either risk the social consequences of being thought of as 'wrong' for whatever the point is if you think your position is worth it, or secure enough to put the ego aside and take a correction (admit fault). Just have the courage to potentially be, or be thought of, as wrong. Stop letting the fear of feeling threatened lead one's self around. Risk growing.

Yes, but the same can be said about the side reaching for ad-homs like "fascist" when they're the ones who don't actually have a logically valid argument. Something like 99% of the time it's not actually anything even resembling actual fascism.

Not that the opposite of calling everything "socialism" or "communism" is any better, mind you.

And yes, I get it that the purpose is to have power over someone else. Like make them change their behaviour and even way of thinking to what YOU approve. But you know what? If they counter-attack instead of letting a random nobody just have some kind of magic word that lets them have power over others... well... Good. More power to them, as far as I'm concerned. Maybe next time they'll actually try a logical argument instead of reaching for the magic word of power.

And yes, the same applies to "woke". Someone's misusing that word again? Whop-de-do, big surprise.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I can see why someone would find this significant enough to bring up in a conversation about how Muslims have a problem with being referred to by a name they find offensive. It's like the same thing and proves that we should just stop caring about offending other people because the next thing you know [insert some absurd extrapolation here]

Hmm? That determined to make up a strawman? I'm pretty sure I was explicitly saying that one gets desensitized, when people are getting offended left, right and centre over anything and everything.

If it happens often enough that there isn't an actual wolf, basically you stop caring that someone is crying "wolf". Maybe there's an actual wolf. Maybe it's again someone who's discovered that they get attention that way. Do I have time to waste on discovering again that it's the latter? Nope.

 

[tyr_13]

Yes, but the same can be said about the side reaching for ad-homs like "fascist" when they're the ones who don't actually have a logically valid argument. Something like 99% of the time it's not actually anything even resembling actual fascism.

Not that the opposite of calling everything "socialism" or "communism" is any better, mind you.

And yes, I get it that the purpose is to have power over someone else. Like make them change their behaviour and even way of thinking to what YOU approve. But you know what? If they counter-attack instead of letting a random nobody just have some kind of magic word that lets them have power over others... well... Good. More power to them, as far as I'm concerned.

And yes, the same applies to "woke". Someone's misusing that word again? Whop-de-do, big surprise.

Your false balance theater aside, what power specifically are the people denying when they call others 'woke'?

Think this one through. What specific power? You're claiming the counter attack is justified because of the risk of...?

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Your false balance theater aside, what power specifically are the people denying when they call others 'woke'?

Exactly the one you were describing and I quoted: the expectation that you just need to use magic words like "racist" or "sexist" and everyone must automatically feel afraid, drop anything else they're doing, and change their behaviour to whatever you want them to be doing instead. No need to actually have a logically sound case for why they need to give you whatever lollipop you want, you just need to sling some mud and they better start complying. Or insert convoluted bulverism for what's wrong with them if they don't.

You're claiming the counter attack is justified because of the risk of...?

Not really much risk at this point, I would say. More like just telling them that no, they're not Michael from Lucifer, the mojo of using others' fears to control them doesn't work.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Could everyone go around the room and dutifully acknowledge that "Woke" was a term used in a completely different context so everyone will stop bringing it up as if its means something?

We all know what people mean when they say "Woke" in this context. Bringing up pre-internet social/political fandoms usage means exactly diddly and squat and one of them just left town.

"Yes, yes and a Swastikas was used as a Tibetan Good Luck Symbol, that has nothing to do with Nazis using it."

 

[JoeMorgue]

Why is it people who treat various forms of "Goodness Theater" as the absolute worst thing you can do have zero problem with ******* Theater?