Comment by diggan
6 days ago
So anyone discussing/posting thoughts about "woke" and "wokeness" are using it in bad faith? Would it matter if the person puts a positive or negative spin on it, or are some topics just straight up "no no" to discuss?
Seems like we should aim to critique the content of articles, not just critique the usage of a single word. But you do you.
I think it's okay to refer to the word "woke", but if you use it more than 3 times in your writing, then it's hard to take you seriously.
Why?
Because it's a word that gets people emotional. Getting people emotional is the opposite of what you want to do when you're trying to intellectually dissect something. But it's exactly what you want to do when you're grinding a gear.
It's just like if somebody wrote a piece about trump, but mentioned he was a felon 4+ times, you'd know they weren't writing an unemotional thinkpiece.
> I think it's okay to refer to the word "woke", but if you use it more than 3 times in your writing, then it's hard to take you seriously.
But when the essay is specifically about where "wokeness" comes from and what (pg) understands it to mean, then it has to be OK to use it more than 3 times?
> Because it's a word that gets people emotional. Getting people emotional is the opposite of what you want to do when you're trying to intellectually dissect something
Some terms are so charged that it's virtually impossible to have discussions without any emotional reactions to it. "Woke" seems to be one of those subjects/terms (at least judging by this submission), so if you try to shy away from it just because of that, isn't that a disservice as a whole? We need to be able to discuss and think about hard things too, not just fun and happy stuff.
> It's just like if somebody wrote a piece about trump, but mentioned he was a felon 4+ times, you'd know they weren't writing an unemotional thinkpiece.
But the comparison here would be an article whose purpose is to detailed how Trump is a felon, then obviously it'd make sense that it gets brought up, it's the subject of the text.
I don't think you're discussing in good faith.
I doubt you're truly unaware that everybody saying woke in 2025 unironically is angry and making an insult.
I also don't believe you could read this comment section and think PG didn't get everybody emotional (and mostly confused about his point too), or that he tried very hard not to.
2 replies →
They know they're being talked about derisively and don't like it. They want to keep doing what they're doing, but they need you to not talk about it, so they can get away with it, so they attack the term. They know exactly what they're doing.