Hate influencer Chaya Raichik – who goes by “Libs of TikTok” online – is trying to take her show on the road, and it doesn’t appear to be going well.
Raichik gave a speech yesterday at the Indiana Memorial Union at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, alongside Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN).
During her speech, she ranted about “pornographic” books in schools and moved on to her hatred of everything “woke.”
…
Some students started laughing.
“Um, do you have a question? Is something funny?” she asked, apparently not expecting people to find her over-the-top concerns funny.
“How do you define wokeness?” someone in the back asked.
Raichik tried to respond: “Wokeness is the destruction of normalicy [sic] and… And… Um… Uh…” More students started laughing.
“… of our lives,” she said, apparently thinking she was finishing a sentence.
Instead of protesting outside, we should go inside and laugh at people like this. Make them worry that the crowd is just there to humiliate them.
Demonstrating the absurdity of fascist claims publicly is one of the best ways to take the wind out of their sails and stop their appeal to potential sympathizers
Ridicule has a much bigger effect on these people. They enjoy hate because it’s fully what they expect, but to be belittled is a direct attack on their ego.
Hate implies the strength to be a threat and when it’s from enemies it can be invigorating. Ridicule is terrifying to our tribal monkey brain.
The poor little snowflakes. Can’t they take a joke? It’s a free country, people should be able to say or do what they want in their lectures. They’re just trying to make sure America isn’t destroyed by pansification. Why won’t everyone wake up!?
We did wake up, you could say we’re woke, even.
Govenor DeSantis’ lawyer clearly defined “woke”.
"The governor’s general counsel, Ryan Newman, said, in general, it means “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.”
There ya go.
I guess I’m woke, then.
You would be. Fuck you and your common courtesy! #MakeLifeSuck #AnalPineapples
#Asleep
Anyone who’s the slightest bit empathetic is. But “conservatives” have poisoned the term.
Then we’ll have to reclaim it.
Eh. I’ll never be more committed to the term than they will be repelled by it. Maybe we can go back to using “decency” or “empathy”…
So just to be clear… They admitted to the actual definition and are still against it.
Ok folks, we on the left need to start pushing an “anti-puppy kicking” stance just so we can watch the right adopt a “pro-puppy kicking” stance because they have an intrinsic NEED to be in direct opposition to everything that comes from the left.
…well maybe something less harmful than actual puppy kicking, but you get the point.
You jest, but this is literally how some 4chan “culture” was conceived, how they take ground. They just kind of, passively associate otherwise innocuous things with their in group, such as, getting a bowl cut, wearing a hawaiian shirt, drinking milk, using the OK symbol. Having a shaved head, using image macros of a frog from a somewhat decent indie comic, stuff like that. Then, over time, people notice these symbols, begin to associate them with the group, and then the in-group can use the out-group’s “ridiculous” reaction as internal propaganda, in order to make their opposition appear ridiculous, and appeal more to moderates who just see the surface level aesthetics of some people getting mad and some people goofing off with something innocuous. This is a legitimate political tactic that has been used and abused quite thoroughly. Generally, though, yes, you would want to use something more innocuous and stupid, rather than something blatantly disagreeable, like kicking puppies.
wearing a hawaiian shirt
Goddammit, really? Those motherfuckers ruin everything.
I don’t think it’ll get you looked at funny in public, most places, at least, I really hope so, for half my closet’s sake, right. But it’s definitely become associated with the proud boys and “boogaloo boys”. The boogaloo being a word used to describe a highly racialized civil war, purge, day of the rope, what have you, which is coming any day now, rapture style. I think mostly derived from stuff like the turner diaries. A lot of them end up wearing hawaiian shirts because it goes along with their post-ironic fashwave aesthetic. So, probably don’t wear a hawaiian shirt to your protest, but, you should’ve probably been going in black bloc stuff anyways.
God damn, I have terminal online brainrot, huh?
The term “boogaloo” comes from the Internet joke of naming sequels of things like Race War 2: Electric Boogaloo.
There is a post above in my feed about a man from Florida (of course) who was running an animal torture syndicate where he would crash small animals for other people enjoyment.
We should protest that, I’ll be a wokie it it gets rid of animal cruelty.
If you don’t agree that America is the greatest country on earth that has never done anything wrong then you’re a woke fascist antifa communist
…minus the fascist
you’re slightly mistaken, they won’t adopt a pro-puppy kicking stance, they’ll adopt a pro-putting down stray dogs stance. Or something.
So just to be clear… They admitted to the actual definition and are still against it.
This is not surprising in the least. Seems like pretty fundamental to conservative beliefs.
The fun part is, that definition is eloquent.
Raishik obviously isn’t.
Big surprise, she gets laughed at for .05 seconds and instantly gets triggered. Typical bully behavior. She has no problem dishing it out, but the minute it starts to come back at her she wants to be a fucking martyr. This permanent victim mentality is the textbook exemplification of 21st century conservatism.
“Woke” is a name for their moral panic. It literally translates to, "anything I don’t like. ’
The actual definition is, “Aware of issues in society, especially issues of social justice.” Like everything else they hate or that makes them feel shitty about themselves so they start hissing the word at anyone they don’t like as a slur like, “liberal” and, “progressive”.
Embrace the hate. I am a progressive liberal and I am woke. Your hate validates that I am correct.
I mean, is us slang that was “defined” in 2017. Sp what it is us still up for debate it seems like
I think it’s meaning is clearly defined and well understood. The christofascists have attempted to co-opt it is a slur to refer to anything they don’t like which causes confusion for them and their weak minded followers but that doesn’t mean that the definition has changed.
It’s the same idiotic functional equivalent of hating Antifa. Oh, we’re PRO fascist are we then? Anti woke? Oh, we prefer the ignorance of unconsciousness, do we?
They earn my mockery. Every damn day, working so fuckin’ hard to be shit humans. The absolute least I can do is reward them with a good point and loud laugh.
Yes. You think the antifascists are your enemy? I’ve got news for you, you’re a fascist.
I had to educate my boomer parents over and over again about it. Reganism sure did a fucking mind job on that generation.
Black American folk singer-songwriter Huddie Ledbetter, a.k.a. Lead Belly, used the phrase “stay woke” as part of a spoken afterword to a 1938 recording of his song “Scottsboro Boys”, which tells the story of nine black teenagers and young men falsely accused of raping two white women in Alabama in 1931. In the recording, Lead Belly says he met with the defendant’s lawyer and the young men themselves, and “I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there (Scottsboro) – best stay woke, keep their eyes open.”[4][12] Aja Romano writes at Vox that this usage reflects “black Americans’ need to be aware of racially motivated threats and the potential dangers of white America”.[4]
For conservatives it’s morphed into anything that’s important to others that they don’t like. For most others it has remained a way to describe conscious recognition of the injustices that have been codified into our mores and laws, and which remain as problems that need to be solved.
I don’t care for the word in this context, but only because conservatives have successfully morphed it into a near-slur, the way they twist and ruin just about every other word they use regularly. (For example, the word “patriot” is now forever tainted…)
Woke is an adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) meaning “alert to racial prejudice and discrimination”.[1][2] Beginning in the 2010s, it came to encompass a broader awareness of social inequalities such as racial injustice, sexism, and denial of LGBT rights. Woke has also been used as shorthand for some ideas of the American Left involving identity politics and social justice, such as white privilege and reparations for slavery in the United States.[3][4][5]
The phrase stay woke has been present in AAVE since the 1930s. In some contexts, it referred to an awareness of social and political issues affecting African Americans. The phrase was uttered in recordings from the mid-20th century by Lead Belly and, post-millennium, by Erykah Badu.
It most certainly existed way before 2017, but as “stay woke” or in other forms. It always had a meaning though.
Two protestors who were chanting were taken away in handcuffs, according to The Bloomingtonian. Authorities haven’t said whether they will face charges.
What charges? For chanting? Isn’t chanting free speech? Were they creating a blockade? Were they causing harm to someone? Or just vocalizing dissent?
Hurting the feelings of a cop? Straight to jail.
Disturbing the peace?
I hope you’re joking but it’s hard to tell sometimes.
It’s so crazy to me that they throw this word around and they haven’t come up with a shared definition. I know the article cites that lady who stumbled with the definition last year saying “it’s hard to explain in a 15-second sound bite” but after all this time, you’d think they’d have figured out some kind of ELI5 explanation.
I also don’t accept that same person’s line of “It is sort of the understanding that we need to totally reimagine and redo society in order to create hierarchies of oppression” because I’d argue what so called “woke” media tries to do is be aware of inequalities that already exist, not create them. But I suppose if they said it that way they’d have to recognize that current systemic inequality is a real thing.
Lots of reasons to hate on the anti-woke movement but at this point, this in particular really bothers me for some reason.
It’s so crazy to me that they throw this word around and they haven’t come up with a shared definition.
They can’t because there isn’t one coherent definition that wouldn’t crumble under the most basic scrutiny. As an example, from what I can tell they seem to behave as if the definition of woke is “things I don’t like right now”, which is a ludicrously stupid idea to try to build a laws around, much less a movement.
Any conservatives that are reading this, please feel to correct my assumption of your definition of “woke” any time anyone asks y’all can’t give any sane answer that gives anything concrete to what you’re trying to communication.
I think you’re right in some cases. Maybe this woman is one of those cases.
I think that for some others “wokeness” is fairly well defined but they know that it is a dog whistle. They know that if they were to explicitly define it they would say the quiet part out lond. They would reveal that “wokeness” means “acceptance, inclusion, and celebration of fundamental differences between people”. They would reveal that being “anti-woke” is just a way to say “Hi, my name is Ron and I’m a bigot”.
If she doesn’t know it’s a dog whistle she’s a moron. That’s not to say that reasonably intelligent people can’t be duped, just that she’s one of the major faces of anti queer bigotry in America today. She’s the modern Anita Bryant with a bit of Cathy Brennan thrown in. Any ignorance she holds of the cost of her actions is willful
The word is thrown around a lot and most people do use it as they want, but from my observations of the online medium, “woke” is usually used for companies that insincerely pander to minorities with a token act of ‘kindness’ that also has discriminatory undertones.
The most common example I’ve seen to have the word used is for comic book live action adaptations or remakes in which a red-haired character otherwise known as a ginger is replaced by a black actor. The ‘woke’ meaning here is companies being intentionally racist in their malicious compliance to add minorities as a quota with the unsaid, yet implied wordplay.
For those who don’t get it, ‘Ginger’ -> ‘N…’
Edit: Of course, for some people, any race replacement for any character is ‘woke’. Also, now that I think about it, most recent movies and animations with women as leading characters get called ‘woke’ as well, often compared to Ripley or Connor from Alien and Terminator movies.
So yeah, in a sort of sense, ‘woke’ would probably be akin to saying ‘insincere pandering’, or that’s how it’s meant to be portrayed?
The most common example I’ve seen to have the word used is for comic book live action adaptations or remakes in which a red-haired character otherwise known as a ginger is replaced by a black actor. The ‘woke’ meaning here is companies being intentionally racist in their malicious compliance to add minorities as a quota with the unsaid, yet implied wordplay.
So your conclusion is that its racist to replace a historically red-haired (white person I assume?) character in a fictional story with a black actor? Do I have that right?
No you do not. My conclusion in that regard is that those using the word in that context do so with that meaning in mind.
My personal opinion on racism wasn’t expressed in the reply.
My personal opinion on racism wasn’t expressed in the reply.
Apologies, I mistakenly assigned ownership to you. Let me try again:
So your conclusion is that those using that word believe it is racist to replace a historically red-haired (white person I assume?) character in a fictional story with a black actor? Do I have that right?
I believe that some of them wholeheartedly do. How many actually do so and how many just use it as an excuse, I can’t tell.
I can respect your analysis of them ,but we’re back to the original challenge. You are having to try to tease out a definition from their own inconstant behavior because they cannot define woke.
So your conclusion is that its racist to replace a historically red-haired (white person I assume?) character in a fictional story with a black actor? Do I have that right?
That is an example of what people call woke, yes. Idk about it being racist but I do recall the whole little mermaid movie being called woke because they recasted with a black actress.
Not saying if I support that decision or not, just saying that to me the definition is pretty clear when it comes to race swapping of existing characters.
This is a great example of their problem then. Why can’t they just say that then? If that is “woke” to them why can’t they say:
“In a fictional story about a fictional half human/half fish creature should obviously be white skinned, and making the fictional half human/half fish character played by a black actor is not right.”
Perhaps because their claim is indefensible? Mermaids are fake. There’s no reason the human half of the character is white. Even the white author the fairy tale is based upon never described the mermaids hair or skin color:
“In Andersen’s fairy tale, the Little Mermaid is described as follows: “her skin was as clear and delicate as a rose-leaf, and her eyes as blue as the deepest sea.” And if you’re wondering if Andersen’s Little Mermaid had that signature bright red hair that has become synonymous with mermaids, the answer is unclear.” source
So its not even violating the original story to cast a black actor.
This is where I go back my statement in my original post that they can’t define “woke”. I’ll quote myself from the prior post:
They can’t because there isn’t one coherent definition that wouldn’t crumble under the most basic scrutiny.
This is basic scrutiny, and their claims crumble.
Perhaps because their claim is indefensible? Mermaids are fake.
I wouldn’t say that’s indefensible. It’s making a decision that says it’s better to have an actress with X colored skin instead of Y colored skin, even though it doesn’t add anything to the story.
I don’t expect you to agree, but to me that ruins a movie. It should only be done if it adds to the story, like in house of the dragon where the race swap made the strong boys stand out way more.
Again, I don’t expect you to agree, but please note that just because most conservatives that hold this viewpoint are an idiot doesn’t mean all arguments about this point is idiotic.
I wouldn’t say that’s indefensible. It’s making a decision that says it’s better to have an actress with X colored skin instead of Y colored skin, even though it doesn’t add anything to the story
Please defend it then. Why does a white skinned actor on a fictional person/beast make it a better movie in any capacity? Or perhaps, why does having a black actor subtract from the story?
Even if your answer is subjective, you should be able to explain your reasoning for it.
Idk why your getting downvoted, OP asked for a definition and you gave one.
Maybe they disagree with it or maybe they disagree with the word having one at all. Doesn’t really matter, it’s just casual chatter.
It’s probably cause of the last line you wrote before the edit.
Maybe. But I wrote it because understanding is a rare commodity and someone would’ve asked. Someone usually does.
What I’ve found based on my experience in lemmy is that people sometimes can take words and phrases at face value unfortunately. So you got to kind of translate things a little.
It’s so crazy to me that they throw this word around and they haven’t come up with a shared definition.
That’s actually kind of the point. It’s like how they use the words “communism” and “socialism.” It’s a word they’ve made wholly synonymous with “unquestionably bad,” and it’s defined by what it isn’t rather than what it is so it can be whatever they point at when they say it. Keeping the meaning vague and amorphous is a way to self-police their own thoughts, and short circuit any meaningful discussion or debate before it even starts. It creates a boundaryless field of discomfort they only experience as a gut feeling. As soon as a conversation starts to stray into the territory of acknowledging that people who are different than them might nevertheless be full human beings they get that bad feeling in their gut and say, “I don’t know… That sounds kinda woke.” And everyone knows that anything “woke” is unquestionably bad. Ta-dah!: uncomfortable thought successfully avoided. Thought that may have led to a change of the status quo successfully avoided.
Even when we’re talking about the thought influencers on the Right who are consciously aware of the above, they can’t be seen to define it publicly because that would mean they would have to be honest about the seed of hatefulness they’re dancing around when they use euphemisms like this. When someone asks them how they define “woke,” they can’t answer, “You know… N*gger stuff.” That would instantly discredit them in the eyes of just about everybody, and they wouldn’t be able to pretend to be a serious person making a serious point anymore.
Also, by pinning its meaning down with a definition it would lose much of its power as a propaganda tool. It would lose its universality. It would mean something specific rather than whatever that thing is that you don’t like.
it’s defined by what it isn’t rather than what it is so it can be whatever they point at when they say it
Omg, your so right about that.
Cause then all you have to do is find something that you don’t believe that is obviously wrong. You can call that socialism, and then do guilty by association from there.
It’s simpler than that. Being “woke” means being self aware, to look at the world critically. For example, it means that when a politician tells you “the economy is better than ever”, you look around and determine if your economic circumstances are better than they used to be. Maybe they’re correct and you are an outlier, maybe they’re using metrics that don’t accurately reflect your life - you don’t internalize what you’re told blindly, you look at everything you’re told critically
And it’s not a big step from looking at the system critically to realize “hey, our system is absurdly stupid, on a fundamental level. It could definitely be changed for the better”. That’s not what being woke is - that’s just a natural realization when you stop accepting what is and think about what could be
So the “war on woke” could be seen as a war on people who don’t blindly accept what they’re told. The term is mostly used correctly, most people just don’t know what it actually means
Yesterday I came across the exact same article, but it was in a French newspaper about a French right-wing politician. Her definition was that if you ban books you’re woke, so I guess De Santis is woke now?
Anyway, I’m pretty sure they don’t really want to define it, it’s better to have a vague concept to rage against.
Ugh, I hate the dickhead move of pretending not to understand someone with a mask. What a child.
Don’t know much about fhe context here, so I won’t defend this person if she’s actually pretending. That said, I wore masks consistently, and completely understand their value, and would never complain about people wearing them, but…
Holy hell are people harder to understand when wearing them. I know it’s a me problem, and I know why it’s a problem, so I completely understand why somebody would say that.
Still not enough to justify not wearing one.
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Context matters. In a room one-on-one, yes, absolutely it’s like a phone call. Out in public, the non-verbal cues matter much more. As a concrete example, phone calls in the quiet are just fine, but I can’t use a drive-through.
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It’s only a few minutes in - at the 2:15 mark approximately; it’s the guy up there with her in the vest. Just look at his facial expression and body language - he’s trying to score points for the AntiMa crowd. He’s just being a douche.
Well that’s pretty inexcusable then.
Get real close and laugh directly in their faces open mouthed. Ask if they wished we had covered our mouths if they complain.
or like… don’t be an asshole who gets in people’s faces.
What fucking shithead.
What a spinach tree.
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Did you read the article? It’s in there
🗿
Just an FYI: ‘woke’ is what happens when you computer “resumes from sleep”.
woke on lan
Watch out, language like that will have idiots ripping out their network adapters next.
Probably for the best that they cut themselves off from the Internet.
Probably for the best that they cut themselves
I’m not seeing a problem there.
People who are ‘anti-woke’ can’t identify a network adapter, they can’t even define ‘woke’.
Don’t be so sure, plenty of technically inclined people exist on the right. A lot of old Gen-X and Boomer tech graybeards are sucked into this shit.
They’ll still have shitty TV channels to tell them who to be angry at.
good, see how long they can manage their own network for. It’ll be funny.
If only
I mean, clearly it woke. You sent it the Magic Packet. Magic Packet leads to woke event.
I was going to post this but just knew someone had beaten me to it.
im gonna start writing books, titling them like this, only for the contents of it to be deep retrospective on the sociology and behaviors that lead to this kind of shit.
Hey! You found the book my dad was given as a child instead of “Everybody Poops”
though the article doesn’t embed a video, it does mention one.
this is the only one I could find, uploaded two days ago: https://youtu.be/ot_f5b6ucAQ?si=6IRxIDl6baE-l0QZProps to the guy who asks if Al Qaeda is woke. These two have to be some of the dumbest people alive.
Where is the wokeness part? I couldn’t find it just scrobbling through.
I tried to scrub through too but had to stop because they are both just so awful
edit: it’s about 48 seconds inThank you. I wasn’t about to listen to her for 40 whole minutes.
Right in the first couple minutes.
Thank you.
I find is very funny because I seem to remember the conservative chant back in the 2010s was “wake up america” or "wake up sheeple "
People “woke” up.
Conservatives: “No not like that.” “Woke is destroying America”
Aw does she not appreciate turnabout?
Oh she committed the cardinal sin of the classroom. She gave power to the peanut gallery.
“Woke is something that’s very hard to define, and we’ve spent an entire chapter defining it,” she said. “It is sort of the understanding that we need to totally reimagine and redo society in order to create hierarchies of oppression. Sorry I, it’s hard to explain in a 15-second sound bite."
What the actual fuck? If you can’t explain something competently in a 15 second sound bite, then you have no place trying.
How is there still not a rational explanation of what this word means that we are supposed to be so afraid of? Except, you know, how it was originally used for BLM protests. Fucking conservatives can’t even steal words correctly.
Sit the fuck down and shut up.
