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Comment by unconed | Hacker News Reader

Why would it not have a definition? Here's one.

"Woke": an extreme form of contradictory progressivism popularized in the 2010s, which favors censorship and ostracization over intellectual engagement.

The idea that you can't define it is an example of the dynamics at play. The notion that non-woke people know exactly what's going on is unbearable to the woke. It implies that they are not at all "changing the status quo", but that they are the status quo. That their rebellious ideology is in fact the norm in corporate HR departments and colleges everywhere. That their behavior is in no way welcome, or positive, or empathetic, and is really just a LARP of the social causes of the late 20th century, divorced from principle and fact.

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The point being that was a definition pulled out of your ass that not everyone shares, and then you got on a soap box of opinion-based nonsense that you "feel" is right. You are speaking from nowhere but an emotional place and trying to dress it up in pseudo-intellectual analyses of the state of the world, and it shows.

For some, the term Woke goes no farther than "they cast a black person in this movie."

unconed is correct.

His definition reflects very succinctly what I would consider wokeness in action. It's about consolidating power in institutions by ejecting noncompliants.

If you embrace the language you will be embraced by the institution. If you reject the language you will be removed. Your actions or nuanced takes are immaterial. Embrace the ideology as prescribed, or suffer.

Arguing by “no agreed upon definition” is a transparent rhetorical bludgeon. Famously used to shut down discussion about hipsters many years ago. I hope most people will see through it.

> “Woke”: an extreme form of contradictory progressivism popularized in the 2010s, which favors censorship and ostracization over intellectual engagement.

Yes, its used by the Right interchangeably with “cancel culture” as an abusive epithet with exactly the sense that the same faction used “political correctness” to communicate right up until they swapped in the new terms, except that the idea that the behavior attributed (falsely) as especially prevalent on the left was was novel in the 1980s in the general use of “political correctness” was updated to target the 2010s in the newer terms.

Exactly. Ask 10 different conservatives what "woke" means, and you'll get 10 different answers. It's become yet another generic word that simply means whatever the speaker doesn't like. Or, as in this thread, they can't even define it--except to say that it's bad and delusional and intellectual quicksand and... something about hierarchies? and institutions? Who knows? I obviously don't have the intellect to parse through all their codewords and layers of indirection.

To quote myself: "Woke is used because we know who we're referring to, as do you."

Woke is used because its easier to argue if you can beg the question.

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