Does woke mean anything these days? I use to think it was something do do with common sense being replaced by box ticking and messaging but it’s hard to say any more.
Woke is one of the more fun reappropriations of language to mean absolutely nothing that’s happened in quite awhile.
“Woke” (staying woke, being woke) was basically just slang for Black folks to keep their head on a swivel. “Stay Woke” was mostly just a slang term short for “keep your eyes open” or “pay attention” to danger in social situations. It most frequently got applied when it came to people trying to rob you (metaphorically or literally) but not being up-front about it. Know who you’re around, know what moves they’re likely to make to put you down and keep you there. Eventually it came to represent a larger societal idea (it didn’t take that long to encompass that meaning) where you see behind bad-faith arguments/definitions for societal progressivism, but that’s more or less the etymology of the term.
Once the social media era grabbed hold of it from its origin (which pre-dated social media by DECADES, btw) it got pretty quickly diluted by bad-actors looking to defang the phrase completely, until now it basically means “something a racist person thinks is ‘virtue signaling’ or worse, ‘reverse racism’ being unfairly perpetuated upon THEM”
It’s more or less a dogwhistle for conservative types to cry about things they don’t like personally. Has nothing to do with being “woke” at all anymore, it’s just kind of an all-purpose insult for anything the person calling it out deems beneath them in even a SLIGHTLY progressive manner.
It’s basically to the point now where its ONLY usage is either ironic, or full-blown ceding the redefinition of the term to acknowledge that the only real use of it comes from right-wing folks trying to use it like a scarlet letter.
JadedSkywalker said:
I liked Vader with the red lenses and don’t choke on your aspirations, that was very OT Vader.
Complete side-tangent: I know it’s a bit of a tiny kerfluffle regarding “the red lenses” on Vader (and he did have sort of darker amber/tinted lenses in Star Wars that often had a bit of a red hue when the lights hit them) and how Rogue One supposedly overdid it to some degree; but as someone who has cut a version of that movie and pixel-peeped QUITE a bit, a lot of the “red lenses” stuff is literally just red light IN the shot reflecting off the lenses, which otherwise still look mostly dark/black. The meeting with Krennic on Mustafar seems to be a scene that gets complained about heavily, but you can actually see the set lights casting a red glow on the scene and reflecting off the mask. It’s not that the lenses are red, it’s that there are orange/yellow/red lights bouncing off that plastic.