If you don't live online, you may have missed the controversy over
Hogwarts Legacy, the latest computer game to have been spun out of the multi-billion Harry Potter franchise.
A small but amazingly vocal band of activists launched a vicious campaign against the game because of its connection to 'transphobe' J.K. Rowling. Then the game came out and was instantly a phenomenal success - the most popular game ever on the streaming platform Twitch, physical sales of 12 million in its first two weeks of release, earning its makers $850 million (£709 million) in revenue. These cold, hard, commercial facts are like a glass of cold water in the face.
The balance sheet shows that we have a very skewed understanding of the popularity and reach of 'woke'.Elsewhere, we see the smash West End success of Steven Moffat's play
The Unfriend, despite its star turn by notorious 'Terf' ('trans-exclusionary radical feminist') Frances Barber. A friend showed me a hilarious social media post from a true swivel-eyed woke believer who apologised to his followers for attending, and said that, though he'd loved the show, he'd made a point not to applaud Barber at her curtain call. Outside the worlds of showbiz and entertainment, we have recently witnessed the spectacle of Nicola Sturgeon self-destructing after her gender reform bill smashed into reality.
One dares to hope: is woke dead? We keep waiting for a tipping point that never tips. There have been so many false dawns, hefty straws that you think will surely break the camel's back then don't.A global pandemic, it was believed, would make people appreciate that gender pronouns are not humanity's most pressing concern. But Covid-19 quickly established its own culture wars, as keyboard warriors began arguing about which marginalised groups were suffering most. A major land war in Europe should have been serious enough to bind the progressivist fist for a month or two. But the conflict in Ukraine has barely touched the sides. Even the recent possibility of an alien invasion doesn't seem to be having much effect on concentrating the crazed human hive mind.
But hang on.
Maybe it's a case not of sudden death, but of a gradual recalibration, a slow unwinding of the sense that 'woke' matters that much.
According to a recent YouGov survey, only a small majority of British people say they know what woke means while 30 per cent say they have 'never heard the term being used'.
The same poll showed that, as public awareness of the word has slowly risen, the number of people who consider themselves not to be woke has increased. Of the quarter of respondents who admitted to using the term, around three-quarters said they employed it in a pejorative way. So, for all the undeniable media Sturm und Drang, most Britons don't think much of 'wokery' if they think about it at all.
Recent research from Policy Exchange shows very clearly that
woke corporates are viewed with cynicism. Only 10 per cent felt that such entities made political statements because 'they genuinely believe in them'.
And there was extreme distaste for the practice of firing employees for expressing legal political beliefs on social media out of work hours, with only 12 per cent in support. Again, we see the chasm between the executive class, which takes woke concerns seriously, and the punters, who do not.
Lots of us would like to reclaim our culture from the insane progressivists who have hijacked it over the past two decades. But there remain big obstacles. The biggest is that
almost every western institution, public or private, big or small, has a cell of woke activists in it, enabled by their elders.Our increasingly ageing population is, bizarrely, characterised by this deference to youth.
Older people seek out the political validation of teenagers and young adults, even children, when it really ought to be the other way around. Think of middle-aged people wearing 'ally' badges, burly policemen shying away from upper-middle class Extinction Rebellion protestors, or the publishing execs who tell authors: 'We couldn't get it past our junior members of staff.'
Pandering to the young is always a pitiful, undignified spectacle. The formulation 'the wrong side of history' is a factor here too. Netflix has shown the way ahead, letting staff go who noisily objected to the money- spinning output of Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle. As Douglas Murray and others have argued, giving in to these people only encourages them.
Things seem to be changing at the macro-level; the micro-level, not so much. In the past couple of weeks we have seen the cancellation from an arts festival of a show by comedian Samantha Pressdee because two 'queer' comedians said they find her 'very scary'. The suspicious stifling of the new album from Morrissey, which features an angry song about the Manchester Arena bombing; Waterstones shortlisting for its Children's Book Prize a graphic novel (
Welcome To St Hell by Lewis Hancox) in which a teenage girl's naked breasts are labelled 'fatty lumps that need to be gone' and her vagina 'my imaginary willy'. Chunks of Roald Dahl's books being rewritten by idiots. If woke is receding, it is a slow and painful process.
But the reason these things continue to happen is that we can't deal with the reality of the actually tiny numbers of aggrieved activists - in the low hundreds of thousands at most, and existing almost exclusively in the highly developed world. The power of the internet is that it amplifies small but noisy groups and makes them sound like public opinion. We are allowing ourselves to be dictated by a handful of hooligans, a gang that even the other kids don't like.
Perhaps the best cause for hope is simply time. New things will be needed to stimulate the new young. Firebrand wokeists who came of age in the 2010s are now in their forties.
Those junior publishing staff will be senior staff soon, and maybe they'll have to deal with young upstarts who think (often correctly) that they are barmy and bigoted.In the UK, an incoming Labour government might be a factor in the dying of woke. You may think this unlikely, given the party's love of taking the knee and diversity 'training', but let me explain. The defenestration of Margaret Thatcher and the coming of Tony Blair led to our pop culture, populated as it is by middle-class bien pensants, unclenching its socially concerned muscles and expressing itself. Look at the joy of daft
Reeves and Mortimer after the grim Ben Eltony political shoutiness of 1980s comedy. And not for nothing were the scabrously incorrect
League of Gentlemen and
Catherine Tate Show the products of a time when the Tories had been 'seen off'. That's a silly way of looking at the world, yes, but it's how TV commissioners think.
Right now we stand at a crossroads. Let's consider two futures. In Future A, people look back on the 2010s and early 2020s with bemusement. 'How mad that time was!' celebrity talking heads will tell the nostalgia shows of 2043. 'What were we thinking!'
Or we might get future B: the gradual degradation and collapse of western civilisation as this cultural awfulness snowballs through it, as personal liberties taken for granted for centuries evaporate, as crazier and crazier grievances are indulged, as the pillars of the institutions rot, as the state becomes nothing but a gigantic simultaneously totalitarian and crumbling HR department.
I'm very much hoping for A. The numbers are very definitely pointing to A, after all.
If it's B, what a sad society it will turn out that we were, to have been brought down by such a negligible bunch of ninnies.
Reader Comments
And with that I'm going to stop before I get ugly.
I'm in hospital and in need of some needed boost for my lagging spirits, I turned to my extensive music collection on YouTube, only to find a lot of it had been branded as " inappropriate " inappropriate to whom?
I listen to it with my headphones on, not that the content is questionable anyway, so what right do these morons at YouTube have to impose a ban on content that only their SICK minds find inappropriate.
To give an example, I was born under a Wand'rin' Star by Lee Marvin is now deemed inappropriate, what a load of BOLLOCKS.
So is Woke dead, no is the answer and it is spreading liken to cancer throughout society.
That is "wokeness" in a nutshell. It is born of resentment and dissatisfaction among those who truly have little cause for those emotions, because they have never known what real suffering is. The most militant Jews about the Holocaust are those who never spent a day in the camps. Those who did, a dying breed, now almost all passed away, are those who are most ready to forgive. Having experienced the ugly face of brutality and pain, they do not want to bring more of it into this sad world. But those who never actually experienced it, are the ones who are most ready to take revenge on behalf of those who did. That, again, is why the majority of those who march for Black Lives Matter are spoiled white women. They have never experienced discrimination, and would probably not be able to handle it if they did. Indeed, as a white man I have found the greatest forgiveness and friendliness over these matters among Black people, and I have found Native Americans the most ready to accept white people for themselves, putting aside the history of genocide and brutality. Those who have personally known suffering are the most ready to forgive, while those who have not are the most incensed by the injustices of the past.
By the way, I do actually have prostate cancer, and hope to die of something else before it gets me. Again, I apologize to you all for my emotional outburst. Thanks for listening.
As to the little outburst: not to worry.
In short, my treatment for this alleged condition has resulted in collateral damage far beyond the reassurances given and my life has been ruined. ( I will not go into detail )
I was given 10 years to live almost 4 years ago, I'd rather have died a man than what remains of me after those Frankenstein's abused my body.
I compare the diagnosis of prostrate cancer to that of Covid, a means of population control, but in my case my end days will be all the more painful as a consequence of my TREATMENT, radio beam therapy ( Radiology couldn't shine a torch at a freight train )
I'm sorry to hear of your news and truly hope your journey is more comfortable, we are all Brothers in Arms here at SOTT.
I also researched alternative treatments, and found that dandelion root powder, (much cheaper than the tea or the capsules,) inhibits prostate cancer: [Link] and also Graviola powder: [Link] both available on Amazon. I take the dandelion root daily, about 1/2 a teaspoon in a little water, but not the Graviola. (The dandelion powder is not pleasant, kind of like grass tea, but the benefit is worth it IMHO.)
I too won't get into all the treatment details, but it started off with a prostatectomy operation, then when the bugger came back, radiation, then 3-monthly injections of Lupralide, which reduces testosterone to near-zero, because testosterone is like cotton candy to prostate cancer. That Lupralide treatment is not fun, as testosterone regulates very many important metabolic processes.
After about 3 years I was so debilitated from that, that someone said what you need is collagen, so I researched that, and found it also regulates many of the same metabolic processes as testosterone. So I got collagen powder on Amazon and have been taking it for about 3 months, with miraculous improvement in my energy, strength, sleep, muscle tone, the works. Here's my recommended brand of collagen which I take daily in a hot drink, (it does not dissolve in cold liquids.) [Link] I recommend the unflavored option - it is completely flavorless and dissolves instantly in coffee or tea.
Thank God for medicare. All this would have cost hundreds of thousands out of pocket, but medicare has paid for almost all of it. Best of luck to you, and I hope this helps you.
- LG.
I'm a great believer in alternative therapies and now do take Panax Ginseng, Ginkgo Biloba and a comprehensive array of vitamins and nutrients daily.
These products come with an umbrella of benefits for me, which are helping to maintain my general health, improve my vitality and I have found the Panax most useful for my cognitive ability, help keeping me focused and mentally agile as I suffer from a functional neurological disorder, which results in total paralysis ( hence my recent hospitalisation ) and leaves me feeling total drained.
The human body hey.
Personally I find your comments unhelpful.
This life on this planet is not all there is - there is a much finer life awaiting us after this physical shell finally wears out. It's like getting rid of an old car that is getting too expensive to maintain, then after a while we go out and get a new car. (Whoopee!) We are here on this plane to learn and become wise, because one learns, much more memorably and intensely, by our own experience rather than by being told something. The pains of the body are part of the learning experience. And a good education is always expensive. You may find this video helpful: [Link] You can also search on YouTube for other videos by that guy - just search for "Christian Sundberg."
Adoobie Thanks for your encouragement!
Winternights, I think Adoobie was trying to be helpful and encouraging, not trying to minimize your experience. Medical schools are heavily endowed and funded by Big Pharma, and it is quite true that med school training emphasizes drug treatments about 95%, and lifestyle choices about 5%. Big Pharma WANTS us sick, not well, as that is how they make their profits. So they preach treating the symptoms of disease, not the causes. This is just a fact. We all have enough to deal with personally, than to argue amongst ourselves. I hope you guys will make peace and be happy. Kind thoughts to all, LG.
[Link]
[Link]
Larry Romanoff, the author, has lived in China for 12-13 years, and his site is very good in regards to the China situation.
The real question is why do governments, mockingbird media, and corporations support the Woke identity BS? Why are some young people, primarily teens and perhaps those in their 20s captured by it? What purpose does Wokeism serve and who profits?
All of the media, governments and corporations were onboard. They were all in synch. This means that it is the globalist psychopaths that have tried to engineer this remolding of society toward a dystopian civilization of no families, no mother, no father, test tube babies and incubators with genetic engineering and transhumanism.
How were children and teens captured? Primarily due to the education that promoted it as the result of the No Children Left Behind of Bush and the Race to the Top/Common Core federalization and dumbing down indoctrination.
‘Woke’ is a social justice idiom that never reached its full potential. It had far, far, far more potential than social Justice vs. consciously aware & ‘woke’ to the matrix/demiurge construct system. The playing field is rigged & controlled.
I wouldn't bet on it. Stupid people bred like rats. Remember the opening scene in IDIOCRACY?
[Link]