Woke is here to stay

[jon-nyc]

His logic, ‘we’re not past peak woke because there was this incident…’ seems flawed. He’s right that the event seemed out of the moment culturally, more like something from the dark days of the Trump administration.

[Horace]

In the article, each of these was followed by a chart showing a minor blip down from a peak that had been forming for many years:

But then look at the “decline” of “woke terms in print media”:

And look at the “decline” in those who believe that “racial differences in outcomes are mainly due to discrimination”:

And look at the “decline” in “woke terms in social science papers”:

The other two are similar.

You can see that the charts don't actually support the notion that Trump accelerated anything. What happened in '11? Trayvon? Followed shortly thereafter by Michael Brown? Maybe others I've forgotten about. Those anecdotes and the moral panic they generated were the initial snowball that generated the landslide.

[Horace]

Regarding presidents and their responsibility for the woke moral panic, obviously Obama was in a position to talk the culture off the ledge, but he chose to give it a push instead.

[Copper]

woke, broke

[Horace]

Some info about CBS and their internal hand wringing about that interview:

Link to video

CBS staffers were crying in meetings discussing the interview; CBS briefly considers bringing in a DEI professional grief counselor, until they see his social media in which he is clearly a wingnut, what a shocker.

[Jolly]

@Horace said in Woke is here to stay:

Regarding presidents and their responsibility for the woke moral panic, obviously Obama was in a position to talk the culture off the ledge, but he chose to give it a push instead.

The greatest opportunity in race relations since MLK and Obama blew it

[jon-nyc]

@Horace

Curious what he considers ‘woke’ terms. When I play with google trends I get results like the below. This is consistent with what many have noticed, not least John McWhorter.

[jon-nyc]

Also ‘woke’ has been festering in academia for decades. That’s concerning in itself, but the spillover into the broader culture matters much more. I think when people say ‘we’ve passed peak woke’ they mean the broader culture, it’s not a claim that the sociology departments have reformed themselves.

[Horace]

what is that, how often people search for terms? That would be a measure of the newness of a concept or phrase or word, rather than a measure of how entrenched in the culture it is. I would look more toward usage counts in new writing than search counts.

[jon-nyc]

Where I could I looked at the trend of the topic not the search term, for that reason. Some weren’t available as topics, so I showed the search term.

[Horace]

I don't actually know what "trend" means or how it relates to search volumes. But I'll stand by my main point that you'd have to provide a convincing argument that the quantity of "woke" terms in new writing isn't a good way to measure how entrenched the ideas are in the culture.

[jon-nyc]

An example - homophobia as a topic vs a search term.

[Horace]

@jon-nyc said in Woke is here to stay:

An example - homophobia as a topic vs a search term.

I'll tell you what, you choose a metric now, and if Trump wins, we'll revisit it in a couple years to see if your prediction of a spike in that measure has become reality.

[Horace]

Just kidding, you'll be in a concentration camp if Trump wins, so we won't be able to settle that, unless the camp emissaries can bargain with Trump's fascist regime for internet access, provided to the sole victor in the pit fighting arenas. I expect you to win, and I expect you to use your prize of five minutes online time to settle this particular score on TNCR.

[Copper]

Strong, steady growth

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=new coffee&hl=en

[LuFins Dad]

How about using equity?

[jon-nyc]

Different meanings. Equity stake.

[jon-nyc]

@Horace. These probably all correlate pretty well. A resurgence of wokeness in the culture would probably be visible in most of these. Some can get goosed by world events independent of Trump or US politics. Eg ‘settler colonialism’ peaked in late 23.

Hopefully we will never know what a second Trump term would have brought.

[Horace]

@jon-nyc said in Woke is here to stay:

@Horace. These probably all correlate pretty well. A resurgence of wokeness in the culture would probably be visible in most of these.

I'll stand by my point that you'd have to provide a convincing argument that the quantity of "woke" terms in new writing isn't a good way to measure how entrenched the ideas are in the culture. Since the measures you presented tell a different story, one that more confirms your bias that Trump is the main catalyst of woke, we'd have to make some attempt at understanding why your story is different than the numbers presented in the piece I linked to. I don't expect that conversation here, I'm just noting that I'm happy with the metrics from the piece I linked to, assuming they are accurate, since they are transparently meaningful. Your google metrics are a black box to me, of unknown significance.

[jon-nyc]

Measuring words is a good way, but as I said before, there’s a difference between words produced by the general population and those of, say, Ivy League anthropology departments or the staff at Deadspin.

A detailed historical record of all social media posts would be ideal. Measuring word frequency which is objective, yet with a general audience rather than press or academic studies.