At what year would you draw the line between the periods of before woke and after woke (BW/AW)?
Discussion
The Budweiser thing day.
2016. Not sure exactly, but the US national election seems to have been pivotal. Also 2020 with the craziness that was COVID. It's hard to define exactly those moments that helped to further polarize.
2014|2015
2012
What was pivotal then?
All the divisive topics started being front and center.
Comic Dave Smith hash a video on it.
that corresponds with the year the Mayan calendar predicted end of an old cycle and beginning of another:
Terence McKenna & Art Bell - All Interviews - Without The Commercial/Musical Breaks (youtube.com)
I started seeing it just before 2019 although it seems like it was a big deal in universities since 2010 or thereabouts. It just wasn’t on my radar until say 2018.
There seems to be a bunch of collectivist / Marxist ideologies that are all getting commingled. There’s intersectionality (oppressor / victim), ESG / climate, and even covid vaccines somehow got mixed in.
I personally group all of the Marxist stuff under “woke” but I realize some may only use the term for the social justice warriors. The common thread is that all of these ideologies are anti-family, anti-human, anti-prosperity and anti-freedom.
Thankfully I’m sensing the pendulum swinging back a bit on that craziness.
All these things you mention though are part of the rebranding by co-opting the term.
Originally it was more about being aware of the realities of systemic racism. But it got overused to the point where it was diluted.
Maybe 2013. By 2016 being "woke" was no longer in vogue and co-opted for what its become today
I think in 2013 we reached optimal saturation of people who were as unemployable as they were overeducated.
2015. It was the psychosis when Trump ran which kicked woke into overdrive
What's funny is the original meaning of woke was that you were awakened to conspiracies being real. Then some how it morphed into the present-day definition of hyper inspecting things for political correctness.
I think Jan 6, 2021 was the ultimate test
Shortly after, if not in response to, Occupy Wall St.
I tend to agree that it goes that far back.
I saw a google trends thing (I think it was) showing a massive, sudden spike in certain terminology in, e.g., the NYT. People were "waking up" to the corruption on Wall St., to the fraud of ACORN, to the Community Reinvestment Act, eyc. Ron Paul was spreading the Audit the Fed and End the Fed message. The movement was growing fast.
But the ideological roots go back much further to the 60s, mainly. Just didn't have widespread institutional support until the 60s radicals, who "went to the schools" gained in position. James Lindsay has been all over this for a few years.
2019 Washington redskins had to change their name
That makes for a compelling key event.
It became clear to me something changed in 2012-2013 as radical leftist organizations began horizontal infighting over identity rather than typical unifying class issues. I have always had a hobby of reading radical left/anarcho theory and began to notice environmental groups falling apart over radical feminists holding female only spaces vs. trans activists demanding access to them. First time I heard the term cis made my head spin. I knew then society was in for one.
Soil was prepared in the 60's
Seeds where sown in the 70's
Given water in the 80's
Pruned and perfected in the 90's
And came to bloom very soon....
9.11
started in 2015, peaked in 2020