That's not what woke means though. You don't let trolls dictate what you understand of any other words, do you? Woke in this context means insincere and/or hypocritical support of liberal causes, as wikipedia and urban dictionary clearly list as definitions.

Both UD and Wikipedia also list other meanings of the word.

I mean, sure, for all I know the common use where you are really is exactly what you’re saying, but one thing I’ve never noticed (caveat: easy to miss when it’s text and no faces) is a member of a minority saying “stop being woke, you don’t get us at all” (everything after the coma, yes, but never calling that “woke”). Given how big the anglosphere is (and the fluid nature of language), I don’t don’t that this use has happened at least once by someone in a position to actually use it appropriately, but I mainly see one majority person saying something and another majority person saying the first guy is woke without any apparent involvement from whichever minority is the topic. Or, indeed, the “that’s just woke” accuser insisting that the token minority person who agrees with the first person that $thing is bad is wrong and needs to shut up.

Of course, I also accept that what I see on news shows is basically entertainment these days, so I don’t trust even that experience much either.

> You don't let trolls dictate what you understand of any other words, do you?

Well, the derogatory use appears to have been created by those I would call trolls, but as for other words? Heathen, do-gooder, bleeding heart, papist, yokel, redneck, fag, nerd, socialist… trolls have [re]defined words as insults throughout history.

> as wikipedia and urban dictionary clearly list as definitions.

Wikipedia absolutely does not list it as a hypocritical or insincere thing. Wikipedia defines it as "alert to perceived racial prejudice and discrimination"

The Wikipedia definition you quote funnily enough is the one I described, "Opponents of progressive social movements often use the term mockingly or sarcastically, implying that 'wokeness' is an insincere form of performative activism."

So you're confusing me quite a bit, first you tell me I shouldn't let trolls dictate what words mean, only for then doing exactly that yourself, citing the definition trolls and opponents use.

And another thing - Urban Dictionary can certainly be used to get to know what online slang, memes mean. Using it as an official definition for a word is a bit wrong though, seeing as how UD is more about tongue-in-cheek joke definitions.

So in the end, I frankly don't really know what you want to tell me, not meaning this in a rude way.

> Wikipedia absolutely does not list it as a hypocritical or insincere thing. Wikipedia defines it as "alert to perceived racial prejudice and discrimination"

Wikipedia absolutely does.

"using the term woke, often in an ironic way, as an insult for various progressive or leftist movements and ideologies perceived as over-zealous, performative, or insincere."

Which is basically what the top urban dictionary results say. I use that because it reacts a bit faster to contemporary usage. And it's obvious that is the definition was being used here.

> And another thing - Urban Dictionary can certainly be used to get to know what online slang, memes mean. Using it as an official definition for a word is a bit wrong though, seeing as how UD is more about tongue-in-cheek joke definitions.

That's not how English works, there is no "official" definition except how people use words. Dictionaries, whether Urban or Oxford, record their observations about the language, they do not define it. Woke is widely used exactly as urbandictionary and the quoted part of the wikipedia page say.

Don't take this in a rude way, but I'm frankly flabbergasted that people have such a difficult time comprehending this usage of the word. I suspect a lot of it is insincere, and all of it stems from not liking the definition or the people or comments that tend to use the word.

> Wikipedia absolutely does.

Well, yes, I wrote myself that Wikipedia quotes it as a negative thing, but in the chapter where they list examples of people using it wrongly. The official definition they write in the beginning of the article is not negative. The section we're both quoting from is literally called "Woke as a pejorative term".

> I'm frankly flabbergasted that people have such a difficult time comprehending this usage of the word

I know how people (mis)use the word. There's the original and official meanings,

- "aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues" - Merriam Webster

- "alert to perceived racial prejudice and discrimination" - Wikipedia

Then there's people who use woke as an insult and changing the meaning of the word completely, the definitions we now both talked about and can be found on UD and on Wikipedia, and I'm repeating myself here, but in the section where they list the pejorative(!) usages.

One other funny detail of using UD as official definition is that it has 60 pages filled with different interpretations.

Even funnier to me is that the 6th most upvoted definition is a quote by Paul Joseph Watson, a far-right conspiracy theorist.

I still don't understand why you pretend like I don't know the different meanings of woke. I was complaining about people using the word woke to just complain about anything left from them they don't like, which is as embarrassing and childish as people on the left labeling everyone they don't like as a fascist and thus also completely misusing a pretty well-defined word.

But it seems to me that this is exactly the strategy of someone like Paul Joseph Watson. Taking a word which is used positively by people he doesn't like, start to use it negatively while hoping that this trend catches on until the word has the opposite meaning of what it once meant, while at the same time discrediting people who used it in a positive way.

The net of it is "woke" has a definition that is basically insincerity and/or hypocrisy about support for liberal causes, that definition is explained very plainly in both wikipedia and urban dictionary if people actually care to find out, and it was clearly the one that was used by the original poster who used the word.

And probably everybody in this thread knew all that full well from the start.

I am not saying that these definitions don't exist, I am confused why that relates at all to what I said in my original comment.

All I said was that it's a red flag for me when people use the word woke to slander anything politically left they don't like. When they once used "marxist", "communist", "liberal" and other words to just quickly dismiss things they simply don't like (without these things relating at all to the word they're using), now it seems to be "woke".

Basically, woke started out as a way to say that someone is aware of social issues. You seem to like to talk about what Wikipedia has to say about this word, so let me summarize,

In the 1930, woke was first being used as "referring to an awareness of the social and political issues affecting African Americans". In 2014 the meaning slightly transformed to "raise awareness about police shootings of African Americans" and in 2017 it was added to the Oxford English Dictionary where they (still) define it as "alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice".

Only then, in 2020, did it change. "parts of the political center and right wing in several Western countries were using the term woke, often in an ironic way, as an insult for various progressive or leftist movements and ideologies"

People certainly used woke negatively before 2020, but pretending like this is 100% the meaning of it is just a lie. Is it negative in the context of this comment chain here? Yes, of course, but your statements about "'woke' has a definition that is basically insincerity and/or hypocrisy" are not true. It's one of the definitions some people use, but it is not "the" definition of the word.

Yes, today this word has a pretty negative meaning, but that's because right-wing reactionary trolls started to purposefully misuse it to put this word in a bad light. It was used in a positive way for almost 90 years apparently, and I first heard it being used in a positive way on TikTok and other social media platforms.

I don't even know why I am writing so much about this freaking word, and I still don't know how any of this relates to my original comment ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You did say that the definitions did not exist (e.g., above when you denied wikipedia had such a definition). But in any case I don't know what your initial post had to do with what was being discussed. I don't jump into any thread to post about how one or other extremist group uses some word. If you are going to accuse the original poster as being a racist or extremist or something then just come out with it. And if not, then you didn't add anything. Extremists misuse words, more news at 11.

You are misquoting me really heavily by saying that I said this definition doesn't exist.

That's what you can read in my comment: "The Wikipedia definition you quote funnily enough is the one I described, "Opponents of progressive social movements often use the term MOCKINGLY or SARCASTICALLY, implying that 'wokeness' is an insincere form of performative activism."" and then I mentioned that this is the definition for PEJORATIVE uses.

At this point I can only assume that you act in bad faith or have severe struggles with reading, seeing how you ignore most of what I say and misenterpret the cherry-picked rest.