That is kinda of the crux of, at least one, argument against woke. That school of thought has dominated so much of zeitgeist that the idea that they are “fighting the man” without admitting that they have become the gatekeepers has become so tired.
They aren’t fighting the establishment, they are the establishment and have become boring and expected.
As someone currently experiencing having contracts and opportunities cancelled because I don't think JK Rowlkng should be raped to death for her opinions, I'm not convinced that people are getting bored with wokeness. I think as long as it can still be used as a weapon against people, it will continue to be the dominant ideology. I don't think the zeal for cancellations has ceased, but it's become so ordinary now that it's just happening without so much of a fuss.
Right, I mean, what I say here mainly applies to industries that depend on selling things to the masses. The publishing industry is mainly just a pyramid scheme for people who don’t know what else to do with their English degrees, so it’ll take it some time to catch up, if it ever does. :)
Still, a British Fantasy Award nomination isn’t nothing! (And the winners get announced in a couple weeks, right? Best of luck!)
So in my world, the topic of whether JK Rowling should be raped to death never comes up. I would have no reason to agree or disagree (why the heck would I agree someone should be raped to death? I mean, I had to read all those books out loud to my kids back in the 1990s, so maybe I was a bit annoyed at her, but "raped to death"? I don't know how your jobs/contracts are negotiated, but why would she even come up?
Woke, however you want to define it, may have peaked but it's not going away. I wouldn't dismiss anything as having puttered out. American society in 1980 didn't look or sound like it did in 1968-1972, but it didn't reverse either. Some of the changes were for the better, others for the worse and others neutral. But nevertheless, the culture had permanently altered.
Can I play-act as the entire readership of your substack for a moment and say, "HOLY CRAP, YOU VOLUNTEER AT A PRISON, AND YOU DIDN'T TELL US?"
Prisons are like tiny Forbidden Cities scattered across America; they're the most secretive places that most of us will ever drive past. Insofar as the rules of any NDAs and propriety allow, PLEASE share stories about this!
Maybe "wokeness" is entirely orthogonal to popularity and the games died due to quality. What if Concord died because it was trying to enter a market already dominated by Fortnite or Overwatch?
It's not like those games couldn't be labeled woke. Overwatch introduces gay backstories for characters and covers the maps with rainbow flags for Pride. Fortnite did outreach for the Harris campaign and has events where players reverently walk though the DC while listening to the MLK speech. I don't play these games so can't say much that's too specific.
I'm not saying that this is good or bad, just that it doesn't seem to correlate with sales. Maybe we could even say the opposite and the failing "woke" games could mean that "wokeness" is winning so much that even mediocre games dabble in it.
Barely related, but your offhand comment about diversity never including fundamentalist Mormons reminds me that Fallout: New Vegas had an entire DLC heavily influenced by Mormonism. The main character of the DLC is very open about his faith and it figures prominently into his motivations. It's done pretty well.
“Concord is woke” is a retarded retcon. Concord was a failure, you hate wokeness, therefore you want to attribute that failure to wokeness therefore Concord was woke. Fucking nonsense. Concord failed cause it was janky as fuck.
I’m not the one accusing Concord of wokeness. I’m just making the observation that it was widely perceived as “woke” among the people who like to argue about these things online. I have no opinion on the question, I’m just reporting what I’ve seen.
Horizon 0 dawn- I mean not actually woke but has female protagonist which apparently counts right- very successful
The Last of Us 2 sold 10 million copies worldwide lol
Overwatch 2- much maligned, very woke but also *very* successful (you wouldn’t think so to hear the player base bitching but it turns out online bitching don’t mean shit)
Well, what you’ve seen is bullshit retconning that tries to retroactively accuse anything deemed “bad” as being bad because it’s “woke”. If something is good, whether or not it’s woke, wokeness will not be mentioned. Baldurs Gate III for example, by their usual measures would be considered woke AF but they’re awfully quiet about it. It’s not rational discourse, it’s not analysis, it’s not politics. It’s a bunch of fucking retards on videogame forums, and the fact that you uncritically include it in your work means your work is likely of the same calibur. Try a little harder bud, you want to do this for a living, right?
Maybe I'm late to the table, maybe I'm too bought-in, but while I definitely see there as being a terrible profusion of speak-this-lingo-or-be-cancelled exclusive classism, I also think that, like, diversity and inclusion are generally good things?
To make this real concrete: both of my kids are naturally deaf, and one will likely never see English as his native language. And there's a terribly meh show called Blippi that we've let infect our homes. But PBS has this weird program where they insert a frame around children's shows and have an ASL translator do a wonderfully expressive translation while the show goes on. And, like, I know I really should probably be sitting with my kid and having long discussions in ASL about baby-Thomistic ethics between bouts of super-attentive parenting, but in fact ... the delight on his face when he sees someone signing along with a video he (tragically) already loves, and the way it inspires him to keep working on signs, is actually really cool. Especially when I'm actually pretty tired from 9-hour days + 2-hour commutes + extra time trying to learn sign + more time just feeling guilty about how terrible I am at learning languages.
And I'm pretty sure that this is the result of a motivated team of "fuck-the-hetero-ableist patriarchy" folks pushing through what they consider an "ultra-inclusive" set of policies, and then white male rich execs throwing a bit of pocket change of it because it'll make them look socially respectable. So, like, probably both extremes of wokeism behind this: the hyper-partisan crusaders and the rich status-maintainers. But it's still nice.
And I wonder if this "hey, someone at least is trying" sense is what my lesbian neighbors felt about the silly left-wing signs posted down the street. I mean, it didn't stop them from getting their tires slashed and their gas tanks poisoned. And they did move out, so the tire-slasher's actions won over woke words. But it was still an indicator, maybe, that at least someone in the neighborhood clearly, militantly, would not like their car to explode.
It's similar for me with "woke" entertainment. Like, The Last of Us 2 was clearly designed with queer representation in mind, but it was great--because, at the end of the day, all the characters felt like humans (or, at least, like what real humans would be if they were stuck acting like violent video game characters). So many female characters in tentpole movies really aren't great--not because they are too woke, but because they're written by old men who have no interest in how women actually navigate the world. (These men do want to seem woke, though, so they make up for stupidity with slogans.)
At the end of the day, if I have to make a choice, I guess I'd be okay with the representational left burning to the ground if it meant the material left actually made progress. Like, if you take away the signed Blippi and instead put enough political force to ensure that deaf folks had more than a 50-50 shot of being employed (or that the unemployable had some sort of dignified way of surviving), that would be nice. But I feel that this would be expecting far too much of society.
Ah, well. Life goes, as they say, from bad to worse. Lacrima rerum sunt, etc.
That is kinda of the crux of, at least one, argument against woke. That school of thought has dominated so much of zeitgeist that the idea that they are “fighting the man” without admitting that they have become the gatekeepers has become so tired.
They aren’t fighting the establishment, they are the establishment and have become boring and expected.
As someone currently experiencing having contracts and opportunities cancelled because I don't think JK Rowlkng should be raped to death for her opinions, I'm not convinced that people are getting bored with wokeness. I think as long as it can still be used as a weapon against people, it will continue to be the dominant ideology. I don't think the zeal for cancellations has ceased, but it's become so ordinary now that it's just happening without so much of a fuss.
Right, I mean, what I say here mainly applies to industries that depend on selling things to the masses. The publishing industry is mainly just a pyramid scheme for people who don’t know what else to do with their English degrees, so it’ll take it some time to catch up, if it ever does. :)
Still, a British Fantasy Award nomination isn’t nothing! (And the winners get announced in a couple weeks, right? Best of luck!)
Oh that happened before the cancellation. I was never going to win it but now if I win there'll be outrage.
Oh. Well now I just feel bad for bringing it up lol
Lol! Thanks though :)
There are people who desire to find witches and stone them. Appeal to reason only offends them.
So in my world, the topic of whether JK Rowling should be raped to death never comes up. I would have no reason to agree or disagree (why the heck would I agree someone should be raped to death? I mean, I had to read all those books out loud to my kids back in the 1990s, so maybe I was a bit annoyed at her, but "raped to death"? I don't know how your jobs/contracts are negotiated, but why would she even come up?
You've never heard of people being cancelled? Maybe have a bit of a read up on the subject.
Woke, however you want to define it, may have peaked but it's not going away. I wouldn't dismiss anything as having puttered out. American society in 1980 didn't look or sound like it did in 1968-1972, but it didn't reverse either. Some of the changes were for the better, others for the worse and others neutral. But nevertheless, the culture had permanently altered.
I equate it with a tsunami, it flooded everything and the waters are receding but the damage done, the landscape altered.
Can I play-act as the entire readership of your substack for a moment and say, "HOLY CRAP, YOU VOLUNTEER AT A PRISON, AND YOU DIDN'T TELL US?"
Prisons are like tiny Forbidden Cities scattered across America; they're the most secretive places that most of us will ever drive past. Insofar as the rules of any NDAs and propriety allow, PLEASE share stories about this!
I would also be interested to hear more about that.
Maybe "wokeness" is entirely orthogonal to popularity and the games died due to quality. What if Concord died because it was trying to enter a market already dominated by Fortnite or Overwatch?
It's not like those games couldn't be labeled woke. Overwatch introduces gay backstories for characters and covers the maps with rainbow flags for Pride. Fortnite did outreach for the Harris campaign and has events where players reverently walk though the DC while listening to the MLK speech. I don't play these games so can't say much that's too specific.
I'm not saying that this is good or bad, just that it doesn't seem to correlate with sales. Maybe we could even say the opposite and the failing "woke" games could mean that "wokeness" is winning so much that even mediocre games dabble in it.
Barely related, but your offhand comment about diversity never including fundamentalist Mormons reminds me that Fallout: New Vegas had an entire DLC heavily influenced by Mormonism. The main character of the DLC is very open about his faith and it figures prominently into his motivations. It's done pretty well.
I would generally agree that Rob Henderson is right-coded other than this post of his from a few month ago: https://www.robkhenderson.com/p/this-one-is-for-my-fellow-latinxs
I can't tell if it's meant to be tongue in cheek or not, since he repeats it in the body.
“Concord is woke” is a retarded retcon. Concord was a failure, you hate wokeness, therefore you want to attribute that failure to wokeness therefore Concord was woke. Fucking nonsense. Concord failed cause it was janky as fuck.
I’m not the one accusing Concord of wokeness. I’m just making the observation that it was widely perceived as “woke” among the people who like to argue about these things online. I have no opinion on the question, I’m just reporting what I’ve seen.
Hades- very woke, very successful, not mentioned
Horizon 0 dawn- I mean not actually woke but has female protagonist which apparently counts right- very successful
The Last of Us 2 sold 10 million copies worldwide lol
Overwatch 2- much maligned, very woke but also *very* successful (you wouldn’t think so to hear the player base bitching but it turns out online bitching don’t mean shit)
I mean I could go on…
Well, what you’ve seen is bullshit retconning that tries to retroactively accuse anything deemed “bad” as being bad because it’s “woke”. If something is good, whether or not it’s woke, wokeness will not be mentioned. Baldurs Gate III for example, by their usual measures would be considered woke AF but they’re awfully quiet about it. It’s not rational discourse, it’s not analysis, it’s not politics. It’s a bunch of fucking retards on videogame forums, and the fact that you uncritically include it in your work means your work is likely of the same calibur. Try a little harder bud, you want to do this for a living, right?
Maybe I'm late to the table, maybe I'm too bought-in, but while I definitely see there as being a terrible profusion of speak-this-lingo-or-be-cancelled exclusive classism, I also think that, like, diversity and inclusion are generally good things?
To make this real concrete: both of my kids are naturally deaf, and one will likely never see English as his native language. And there's a terribly meh show called Blippi that we've let infect our homes. But PBS has this weird program where they insert a frame around children's shows and have an ASL translator do a wonderfully expressive translation while the show goes on. And, like, I know I really should probably be sitting with my kid and having long discussions in ASL about baby-Thomistic ethics between bouts of super-attentive parenting, but in fact ... the delight on his face when he sees someone signing along with a video he (tragically) already loves, and the way it inspires him to keep working on signs, is actually really cool. Especially when I'm actually pretty tired from 9-hour days + 2-hour commutes + extra time trying to learn sign + more time just feeling guilty about how terrible I am at learning languages.
And I'm pretty sure that this is the result of a motivated team of "fuck-the-hetero-ableist patriarchy" folks pushing through what they consider an "ultra-inclusive" set of policies, and then white male rich execs throwing a bit of pocket change of it because it'll make them look socially respectable. So, like, probably both extremes of wokeism behind this: the hyper-partisan crusaders and the rich status-maintainers. But it's still nice.
And I wonder if this "hey, someone at least is trying" sense is what my lesbian neighbors felt about the silly left-wing signs posted down the street. I mean, it didn't stop them from getting their tires slashed and their gas tanks poisoned. And they did move out, so the tire-slasher's actions won over woke words. But it was still an indicator, maybe, that at least someone in the neighborhood clearly, militantly, would not like their car to explode.
It's similar for me with "woke" entertainment. Like, The Last of Us 2 was clearly designed with queer representation in mind, but it was great--because, at the end of the day, all the characters felt like humans (or, at least, like what real humans would be if they were stuck acting like violent video game characters). So many female characters in tentpole movies really aren't great--not because they are too woke, but because they're written by old men who have no interest in how women actually navigate the world. (These men do want to seem woke, though, so they make up for stupidity with slogans.)
At the end of the day, if I have to make a choice, I guess I'd be okay with the representational left burning to the ground if it meant the material left actually made progress. Like, if you take away the signed Blippi and instead put enough political force to ensure that deaf folks had more than a 50-50 shot of being employed (or that the unemployable had some sort of dignified way of surviving), that would be nice. But I feel that this would be expecting far too much of society.
Ah, well. Life goes, as they say, from bad to worse. Lacrima rerum sunt, etc.
"Why are these things always about black lesbians with asymmetrical haircuts and fat Muslim women with vitiligo?"
Um...they are? Especially that second one? And what makes you think that woman with vitiligo is Muslim? She's not really dressed according to hijab...