I like to ask anybody in a tirade against “wokeness” or “DEI” what their definitions of those words are and what they find objectionable about it.
If they can define it correctly (most can’t), they usually can’t put into words what they don’t like about it other than that the idea of other people being treated equitably and respectfully makes them feel threatened , vulnerable, or marginalized. Which is absurd, but expecting these people to think beyond themselves is asking too much.
I still find it insane how racism has become political now.
WhY iS eVeRyThInG pOlItIcAl NoW
This sadly reminds me of when an Official Star Wars Youtube channel did animations to introduce the main characters to a younger generation. There’s one of Leia where they re-enact her shooting the group’s way into the garbage area.
And literally there were dozens of Far Right Star Wars “Fan” channels screaming about it, claiming that no scene like that existed in the actual movie and that they were “re-writing history to make Leia look more important than she really is”
They really are just massive sexists who pretend Rey’s a Mary Sue and that Leia never did anything but wear the slave outfit.
I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this too. Just yesterday, I was thinking “what would Mr. Rogers say/think at a time like this?”
Then it dawned on me that maybe the worst parts of society had a radically different upbringing and media exposure than myself. 1 The so-called “violent” cartoons (many of which were just toy commercials) I get and recall people keeping that stuff from their kids. But to think of banning something like (1980’s) PBS in your home, of all things. Now I understand why that messaging existed in the first place - we might be worse off right now without it.
1. Insert “we-are-not-the-same-gen-x.jpg” meme here.
My only hope about public radio/TV, going forward, is that they’re already so used to operating on a shoestring budget from the government. It will unfortunately mean more funding drives, but I will definitely be far more likely to contribute if that becomes literally their only source of income.
And maybe without money from the government, they will be more independent, as lately NPR has been sliding right as an overcorrection over idiots that think reporting objective reality is biased because it makes their side look bad.
We have entered an era where everything must be equal. Are you interviewing a highly qualified medical specialist about vaccines? Make sure you also bring in a conspiracy theorist who didn’t finish high school but has an account on twitter to present a dissenting opinion. “Every opinions deserves to be heard: today we have an alpha male and a rape victim, listeners will be able to make up their own minds about who provoked who.”
If we were living in the 1930s they’d be the same people complaining we’re being unfair to Hitler and we need to hear his perspective too.
Hell, he used the same political strategy as modern day fascist politicians: simply lying. “I’m gonna make everything better! How? Don’t worry about that, just trust me and also let me reassert Germany’s national pride!” I’m reminded of Trump’s ACA “plan” (that he doesn’t have one).
And we just let them say that, unchallenged! Maybe someone asks how they’ll do it, but viewers just hear a strong man telling a story of future prosperity and ignore any small details a journalist might counter with. In the name of “balance”, we let them spread their info hazards and pretend silly things like facts will let people come to the right conclusion.
Though quite interestingly all of Hitler’s policies revolved around massive stimuli by the government -that were funded by debts, property of jews and other unwanted people and plundered territories.
This time around it’s all about cutting government expenses, yet the worse-off buy in.
I like the accuracy of the eyes growing over time.
Just wait until the adults are people who grew up with the YouTube algorithm
Exactly why I heavily limit the amount and specifics of what my kids watch on it. Sadly I know too many kids that have been literally raised on YouTube, and they already act weird af.
Like Stuart from Mad TV?
yt has been around for some 18 years now. there are already adults who grew up with it
YouTube changed. Of cause it always had some kind of algorithm but The Algorithm is relatively new
I really hate it, YouTube has more restrictions than Cable TV now… I remember when you were allowed to reference the fact that death, bigotry, and sexual assault existed. Now on Youtube you’re only allowed to reference the latter two if you’re PragerU and tying to say these are “Good things ackshaulkly”
Yeah, we’ve gone from ‘charlie but me’ to ‘charlie pretends he’s not a Nazi on a clip from fox news’
Did Charlie get his kidney back? That damn Candy Mountain…
They seem to be talking about it (and by extension streaming) as a replacement for TV. But TV was still a big thing 18 years ago.
“TV” still does just not tv. At least kids I know are streaming descendants zombies victorious. Basically anything with singing and yes a hefty dose of YouTube thrown in.
Slightly off topic, but it just dawned on me that the youngest generation might not have as universal of a childhood compared to some before.
Like, everyone in school knew what SpongeBob was. Maybe you didn’t have a TV or you didn’t like watching it, but you knew the characters and the general gist of what happens in the show.
With kids on such giant platforms like YouTube, there’s so much variety, I wonder if the “brand recognition” will be as strong in 10 years.
I imagine that 10-20 years from now, there will be a lot more young adults bonding over vague memories of videos that they loved when little, but that they can’t find a shred of anymore. Creators will have risen and fallen through the years. Some will shut down their channels and retire, others will be demonetized, and yet more will simply disappear without a trace. There won’t be a backlog of every kids’ video on YouTube; it’s not like PBS or Nickelodeon, where popular shows might get officially archived. Instead, people will be left vaguely describing plots they can’t fully remember, all the while getting a weird look from those who don’t know what they’re talking about. They may even come to think, “Maybe I just dreamed it all up?” and give up on their search for nostalgic connection.
Until the day one person finds an old screenshot from whatever the show was and shares it. That’s when everyone will flip out because, Holy shit, that’s it! That’s the show! At which point, they will collectively and slowly realize just how messed up the show actually was.
I’m 29 and this is already the case. A lot of the early 2000s internet is already getting hard to find, and even a lot of early YouTube feels like it’s been scrubbed clean, or had stuff auto-muted/removed due to copyright that drastically affects the content. Not to mention all the flash animations and whatnot that might not have made it to somewhere as big as Newgrounds. There’s a lot of stuff I remember watching that seems to be utterly lost
Early 2000’s internet was best internet
I’m sure most kids know about Skibidi Toilet, the Paul brothers and Mr Beast.
What’s worse, is that the Paul brothers and Mr Beast use their influence to promote products directly to the children. Like Prime.
Many shows when we were kids were just drivers for toy sales though. Product placement was also huge and unregulated.
True, but I like Transformers so it’s ok
I don’t remember the people behind Power Rangers using their influence to get me to agree to being put through what amounts to torture for the hope of getting enough money to pay my bills though.
There were a good few game shows with that theme.
That’s odd, because I seem remember lots of pro-capitalist messaging on TV when I was growing up.
We were pressured to buy the toys, but we didn’t have anything on the order of IRL Squid Game.
I was playing with your idea of getting put through torture to get money to pay the bills - if you interpret that as encouraging us to get a job under capitalism, it’s basically what that amounts to!
I’ve noticed with my kids it’s more about streamers. They all know them by name. They’ll talk about their latest videos like we would with TV show episodes.
Woke is when eyes more open. Checks out.
Well, I am not “woke”, I am eepy.
You can be both. I know I am.
usually, by “woke” movies people mean movies only made for the sake of being “woke”, no? like its only message is “here’s all the diversity, look, look, at our big woke diverse movie! now, give us the moneys we are so diverse look at us and don’t bother us anymore with your agenda!”
Lol no. Often a video game will get called “woke” for simply having a female protagonist with short hair.
God forbid she’s muscular and doesn’t show stereotypical hetero-normative traits too
It’s just so fucking boring… Imagine if every story, movies, TV, video games, etc., went back to only being about straight white men?
As a straight white man, it just sounds so fucking boring. I really do not get it.
Same for society in general. What a boring fucking country with boring food and literally no culture of their own beyond bigotry, that these people want. Just because they couldn’t handle seeing a brown person doing better in life than them. To them that’s an injustice that needs to be corrected.
Assuming you’re from the US, it’s especially silly that these people are so up in arms about this given that the US was literally created on the backs of immigrants
usually, by “woke” movies people mean movies only made for the sake of being “woke”, no?
This is what people using the term really want you to think. That they’re fine with incidental/statistically correct/non-performative diversity and inclusion and are just pointing out when it happens for the sake of itself to the detriment of the quality of media.
The reality though is quite different, and people will call “woke” at almost any non-white, non-straight, or non-male character in a major role, or a non-cis character in even a passing role.
I fell for this trap on youtube. Wont name names, but at first i really thought these people only call out actual woke stuff, but later i realised everything is woke to them.
Average female protagonist? WOKE.
Like shut up dude…
Generally Republicans and Trumpists use “woke” to describe anything they don’t like that seems to slightly swing liberal rather than anything specific.
Originally “woke” was slang in the black community meaning to understand the risks of being black in the world and basically was an equivalent of saying “drive safely!” or a Midwestern “watch for deer!” in wishing one a friendly goodbye
Woke == Haram. It’s christian sharia law. You know, that thing conservatives have been fear mongering about for what like 20 years. Except want their version of it for real.
Nah, there’s a pretty huge list of “woke” video games and they include titles that have an optional 1 minute scene of homosexual romance.
I saw that, reading the list was funny because they had entries that were very obviously LGBTQ+ and stuff on their title and i imaged people being like “hmm i wonder if this game about a gay relationship is woke”
so, to just have something to be angry about
The true snowflakes are always looking for something inconsequential to have a meltdown over
That is the hyperbolic caricature conservatives apply in their head, sure.
It’s a pretty common approach to complicated issues.
Black Panther was seemingly made for the sake of being the MCU’s first black-lead movie. And it’s great. Drag can’t think of any other movies made for the sake of being woke, so we’ll just have to rely on this sample size of 1 which says woke movies are awesome.
How much are we considering earlier Marvel as part of the MCU? Because even though it was before Iron Man/Hulk and the official “start” of the current MCU, a lot of people seem to forget that the Blade Trilogy existed…
Howard the Duck.
It was ok. I didn’t get the hype around it and didn’t think it was great or as good as everyone was saying it was.
Same. I was told “It’s nothing like the other MCU movies, you’ll love it!”, and I watched it and… it’s probably the best MCU movie I’ve seen, but still very MCU.
I’m pretty sure even if that was the case, the word was hijacked by bigots to insult anything they disagree with.
The difference is it didn’t feel forced, you can only make people behave with law enforcement or having them see it your way when they reach that conclusion themselves.
There have always been shows and movies that do it better and less “into-the-face” than others.
… it felt SUPER forced in the cartoons of the 80s and 90s. It’s not really any different. Probably less ham-fisted now, if anything.
The only reason most of these things feel forced is because people are more perceptive and media literate now. It was always pretty corny. If anything I think it’s better now.
That seems like an older millennial. It’s younger millenials and gen z that are swinging conservative.
You seem to be a young boomer since they are the only ones making broad generalizations about generations as if they were a homogeneous group
Really I see tons of people making generalizations of boomers.
Ok boomer
It’s the fucking Democrats who are swinging conservative and they have been for decades.
Look, if they get just a little more conservative they’ll win over moderate Republicans.
Once we have them, we’ll be able to do all those really great things like deregulating banks, dismantling the EPA, and illegalizing abortion once and for all.
