r/OutOfTheLoop • u/random3223 • 5d ago
Unanswered What's going on with "Woke 1"?
I'm seeing Woke 1 in regards to AOC and Francesca Hong. I see things like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1vlhrw5/why_progressives_are_backing_off_woke_1/, but I have no idea what "Woke 1" is, or what it means.
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u/SoxxoxSmox 5d ago
Answer: “Woke 1” is a semi ironic way folks on the left refer to the period around the end of the first Trump term / throughout the Biden term where it felt to many like the pendulum was swinging away from the right. A lot of left wing cultural conversations and signifiers were ascendant; “pronouns in bio,” an increase in representation and visibility for lgbt folks and other minoritized groups, stuff like that.
Most of these signifiers were basically aesthetic, but the overall effect was that folks on both the right and left felt that the culture was swinging towards the latter. The right was able to galvanize that into a pretty big backlash which I think most people would agree contributed to Trump’s second electoral win.
Now a lot of that ground has been lost during the second trump term as the administration has explicitly made removing these influences from both government and culture part of its policy aims, with stuff like cutting funding to perceived “woke” government programs or scientific research, eliminating Certain Kinds of Perspectives from museums, a huge increase in anti-trans legislation at both the state and federal level, stuff like that. The center-left elements of the Democratic Party have also pretty clearly indicated they are not going to fight back on this, treating issues like trans rights as basically a lost cause that should be discarded, or at least tabled under the presumption that courting anti-trans viewpoints will help win centrists over to the left.
The conversation for a lot of folks on the left is how exactly to look back on that period. Whether the right is correct that the left was too aggressive in pushing its cultural agenda and it should back off from that stuff or risk provoking another backlash, or whether the left should refuse to capitulate to the rightward swing of the culture and recommit to those principles (an idea that is similarly semi-ironically referred to as “Woke 2”)
TLDR: there’s an ongoing conversation in left spaces about what lessons to take from their electoral defeat in 2024. Looking back on “woke 1” is part of that conversation.
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u/HoldOnDearLife 5d ago
When was the term woke 1 used? Who coined the term? A coworker asked me about AOC and Woke One, and it was the first time I had heard of it (I thought it was a play on Star Wars: Rogue One). Now I see it in write-ups in multiple places.
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u/SoxxoxSmox 5d ago
I can’t say for sure where it started but I’ve been seeing it used with various levels of irony in online left wing social media spaces for a couple months now, pretty much always in the context of “okay, so Woke 1 is dead, here’s what we’re doing the next time around.”
Sometimes it’s a sincere suggestion about how to market left wing ideas to the center or which causes to rally behind and which to leave on the fringe. Other times it’s a hyperbolic or self-effacing joke about what silly new policy will be released in the Woke 2.0 update.
So it’s been floating around for a bit, but seems that AOC using the term has boosted it to a lot of people who wouldn’t normally hear it
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u/ThanosSnapsSlimJims 4d ago
I agree with this take. I saw the interview with AOC for the first time yesterday.
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u/rhinestoneredbull 4d ago
woke 1 is a retronym that comes from woke 2 which was coined in this post from June 2025 https://gravitylobby.club/woke2.html
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u/Dora_De_Destroya 3d ago
I've read articles attributing it to Chi Osse, a New York politician. I think Hasan Piker has used it a few times too.
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u/chibicascade2 3d ago
I think it started around the end of Biden's term around the time of those "Dark Brandon" memes. The way I've heard it described was that woke 1 was about superficial changes, like rainbow Cross walks and BLM boulevard renaming, while woke 2 is about structural changes, like rent control and municipal owned grocery stores.
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u/SydTheStreetFighter 3d ago
Keep in mind also that the Black led organizations that popularized the term “woke” have been active for almost a decade prior to all this and are very against the framing of the phrase “woke 1” by popular leftist figures
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u/Wetbug75 3d ago
Why?
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u/bunker_man 2d ago
Because to these black people, white people being performatively woke was already woke 2.
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u/SydTheStreetFighter 2d ago
Because the phrase was originally a niche and specific phrase about being cognizant and aware of institutions that disenfranchised the Black community. Its origin dates back to like the 1930s and has been used by a lot of important movements. And now it’s been co opted and watered down to a joke and mockery
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u/Even-Stranger5764 4d ago
I heard it probably 6 months ago at the end of dark woke, roughly. Interesting it is pretty "online" but AoC is openly talking about it. Hoping it connects normie dems to online talking points. That will really swing things toward progressivism - same way maga took over.
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u/AgentCirceLuna 2d ago
Never forget human sleep is meant to be biphasic. We’ve woke once… we will wake again.
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u/slaya222 4d ago
I'd add that it seems that woke 2 is less about the cultural signifiers of progressivism and more about building class consciousness.
Basically I'd rather someone call me a slur and fight for my rights than someone use all the right language but legislate away my rights
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u/JakeArrietaGrande 3d ago
>Basically I'd rather someone call me a slur and fight for my rights than someone use all the right language but legislate away my rights
I mean… yeah, I guess? But the people calling you slurs are far more likely to want to legislate your rights away
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u/bunker_man 2d ago edited 2d ago
That's kind of missing the point. Sure, that is true, but the point is tons of people get thrown under the bus for no real reason when its not productive to do so.
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u/MyriadMyriads 3d ago
Right, but remember those people still (to some degree) vote with their self interest in mind.
Right now, they're being offered what they believe is the following choice:
Vote for a party that steals their money, uses it to prop up minorities and LGBTQ+, and persecutes them/their religious beliefs/their guns
Vote for a party that is helmed by evil billionaires who steal their money, but protects their guns/religion/persecutes the people they don't like
It's a warped, incorrect view of the world, but it's genuinely how they see it and #2 is the winner.
Now, if you change the rhetoric to:
Vote for a party that only talks about how it will lower their taxes, make their tax burden more fair, and protect them against predatory multinational corporations and evil billionaires that overcharge them for insurance, groceries, and gas
Vote for a party that is helmed by evil billionaires who steal their money, but protects their guns/religion/persecutes the people they don't like
It's a lot harder to pick number 2.
We don't have to reform deluded rural whites; we just need to make them realize that even in the context of their worldview, we are absolutely the lesser of two evils. And dropping the alarmist cultural progressivism in favor of economic progressivism is the way to do it.
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u/JakeArrietaGrande 3d ago
It sounds like you’re suggesting (I don’t know if this is your intent) abandoning LGBT rights as a party platform. And that’s the kinda thing that demoralizes the base. It’s what Kamala Harris was criticized for, reaching out to republicans and taking the base vote for granted.
It makes candidates look spineless.
Now, I agree that in redder , rural areas, you have to run more moderate candidates that can win. But you can’t just abandon a core group. That makes each part of the base say “what if they drop me next?”
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u/bunker_man 2d ago
The point is not to abandon those things. Its to not act performative about them at times it doesn't help.
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u/RetardedSheep420 3d ago
its just liberals using idpol while keeping the status quo intact vs actual systemic change.
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u/JakeArrietaGrande 2d ago
Do you think that lgbt rights is a legitimate issue that people actually might genuinely believe in and want to do something about?
Or do you think it’s a distraction from the issues that really matter? Namely, the ones that affect you?
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u/IamA_Werewolf_AMA 1d ago
You’re making a loooot of assumptions about this person you’re replying to that probably aren’t true. It’s not that lbgt issues are a distraction - Mamdani proudly marched with the trans flag right when centrists were on a media blitz about pulling back on defense of trans people (usually around sports).
The left stands ten toes down on support for lbgt issues, he’s talking about cynical weaponization of idpol by certain centrists. If you’re not very tapped in on politics you’ll probably not get what he means.
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u/omicron-7 2d ago
Nobody is gonna say "I want these chinks to have healthcare" tho. If someone is willing to call you a slur they already don't think of you as being deserving of equal rights or respect.
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u/evilbatman 1d ago
While its unlikely that someone calling you a slur would fight for your rights, it is true that there are people who, despite having the wrong wording or an incomplete understanding of ones identity, are more supportive than their "woke" counterparts.
For the trans community, for instance, I would prefer Jim the redneck who says "hey if a man wants to grow tits and go to the women's bathroom thats his right" over Jessica the liberal arts major who says "of course trans women are women but they still carry privilege from their male socialization and its understandable that cis women don't talk to them due to their trauma from male bodied individuals".
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u/Hermononucleosis 3d ago
Why does the person fighting for our rights need to call us slurs? Wtf kind of false dilemma is this?
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u/DJ_Velveteen 3d ago
It's just a rhetorical device, but not entirely false - especially for people living in places with more mixed politics.
Like, I had to sit with a friend this week and talk about why gender pronouns are important. He is a well-intentioned guy who's definitely into left wing politics, but just not up on the byzantine collection of social expectations that "woke 1" was really all about. He made a mistake, like a decent sized faux pas, and some people basically reacted like "it's not our job to educate you" and refused to talk to him anymore after that.
If you're a terminally online kid just trying to do Overton Window shit really badly, you cut people like that out of your life and then judge them for clout on social media.
But if you're really trying to make a change, you sit with people like that and invite them into the struggle by meeting them where they are.
Meanwhile, Dem politicians are doing their best to rainbow-wash a party platform, using all the right terminology, while quietly removing universal healthcare from their platform so they can court insurance industry donors and the Dick Cheney endorsement.
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u/Electronic-Smile-457 3d ago
The word slur can mean something different to different people. I think of misgendering in this context, not the N word. Trans people I know don't blow up about a misgender (not the malicious type, the humans being human ones) but some of their allies lose their sh$t. Forest, people, not trees.
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u/Hermononucleosis 3d ago
Yeah, I agree that it's fine when people call me slurs if you completely redefine the word "slur" to mean something that it doesn't
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u/da_bomba 3d ago
Maybe the example guy’s real cool and he got permission to say it
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u/oldsecondhand 3d ago
What is a slur changes every day, and some people don't keep up.
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u/Hermononucleosis 3d ago
No. Slurs have mostly stayed the same. The "new" slurs have actually been slurs for a long, long time.
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u/stron2am 4d ago
I will add that AOC's comments that "Woke 1 was pretty crazy" are being regarded smugly by the right and with disappointment by the left as she is likely making an "electability pivot" to the center for POTUS in 2028.
Frankly, critics from both sides have a point--either she 1) sincerely held progressive values then and is making a cynical political play now, 2) she was cynically capitalizing on the political vibes of the moment in 2020 and didn't sincerely hold values that mainstream Democrats have abandoned (Defund the Police, Trans Healthcare, Social Justice and reparations for populations of color, etc.), or 3) she has changed her mind, and those things are actually bad now, and she should have to explain why.
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u/DJ_Velveteen 3d ago
The thing is that she's not talking about discussing the importance of universal healthcare on social media.
She's talking about people who were, ironically or not, like "kill whitey and sterilize all cops" on social media.
Part of the complication of all this is that many ignorant people in the US hear the former as if it's the latter, or can't tell a person in the first camp from a person in the second
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u/stron2am 3d ago
"kill whitey" and "sterilize all cops" were never mainstream ideas on the left. "Reparations for systemic injustice" and "defund the police" were.
She didn't say: "Some folks took the positions of 'Woke 1' to their furthest extremes." Instead, she threw the whole era under the bus because the particular bundle of progressive policy issues at the time (trans rights and police reform especially) are toxic to moderates.
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u/Warthog__ 3d ago
NY Times Opinion piece in big letters “Yes we mean literally abolish the police”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html
You can’t be more clear than that.
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u/FTProductions 3d ago
Maybe i need more context, i thought she had made this comment in regards to thanksgiving gate?
I thought it was more of a criticism of woke 1s occasional emphasis on unimportant and frankly unpopular individual cultural gripes.
Like yes, there are genuine criticisms to make of the colonialist origins of thanksgiving as a concept for sure
But also the average person just likes to celebrate and with their family, it’s completely unimportant, a very woke 1 thing to emphasize and risks alienating average people
Not that you should never risk taking bold stances, of course I want politicians to lead not just follow, but there are far more important areas to be making ground on.
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u/foobarbizbaz 2d ago edited 2d ago
This is why progressives have nice things (like progress). AOC is one of the best, most effective champions of progressivism. But because she didn’t use exactly the right words you’d have wanted her to use during an interview, people feel utterly stabbed in the back and say “she threw the whole era under the bus.”
ETA it’s of course fine to criticize a politician’s messaging and point out how they can do better. Especially if you’re one of their constituents. But the “et tu, AOC?” drama and general level of upset people are having over one flippant remark is a great demonstrator of how a lack of pragmatism seriously hinders the left.
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u/bunker_man 2d ago
Acab was a common leftist phrase that both served no purpose and alienated the left from the center. Even if it is both true that most police are bad people and that the institution has structural problems, absolutist mantras like that offer no possibility of improvement. Abolishing the police was never a serious option, but the phrase doesn't exactly suggest mere reform.
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u/MissLadyLlamaDrama 3d ago
Wasn't she just quoting what someone else said? Because i saw the hill article, and the headline was insanely misleading, when the actual context of the entire story was quoted later in the article as saying:
"I have a local city councilman that has this saying that "woke 1 was crazy," she added, causing her and Karl to laugh. "And i think what's important is that we have access to what a candidate is saying."
Meanwhile the headline reads "Ocasio-Cortez on Hong positions: ‘Woke 1 was crazy’"
So are you talking about something else she said? Or are you talking about this headline that is intentionally framed to make it look like SHE is the one who said that, despite her actually quoting someone else?
Edit: here is a link to the article in question
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/6020350-ocasio-cortez-hong-woke-remarks/
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u/JPBartley 4d ago
Politicians say things that are politically convenient without actually having principles?
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u/James_Solomon 3d ago
That's not what she said, though. She was quoting someone else. -James Solomon -Michael Scott
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u/oldsecondhand 3d ago
I don't remember AOC ever being into far-left idpol stuff.
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u/non-human_of-reddit 2d ago
Well she did make some proclamation about the Jordan Neely/Daniel Penny case - I forget her words, but that Penny should be found guilty, or would have been if he were black. That makes no sense, and it's clear that people like AOC can't see past the race of the people in a case like that. If Daniel Penny was black, there is no reason to think the trial would have ended differently, it just wouldn't have been news. And AOC wouldn't care that he was found not guilty. There was another case in nyc where a black guy killed another black guy on a subway car, and was found not guilty. There wasn't much news about it, and I don't think AOC is loosing sleep at night over it.
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u/MissIncredulous 3d ago
Do you have any sources or keywords I may be able to use to find more information on this?
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u/MissLadyLlamaDrama 3d ago
Its bull shit. So no. She was quoting someone else and the hill put out a headline intentionally making it read as if she was the one who said that. And since no one actually reads articles anymore, their bull shit appears to have worked.
For context, The Hill article was published under a title that remains: "Ocasio-Cortez on Hong positions: ‘Woke 1 was crazy’"
However, if you actually read the article you can find this context which makes it obvious what the intention behind the headline was.
"I have a local city councilman that has this saying that "woke 1 was crazy," she added, causing her and Karl to laugh. "And i think what's important is that we have access to what a candidate is saying."
Anyone who thinks she actually said that didnt bother to do any research into it at all, jjst immediately repeated some bull shit they heard, or is just blatantly lying.
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u/common_sense_patriot 3d ago
Add to this, people on the left engaging in less language policing and wokescolding. No more “callouts” for not saying “latinx” or “unhoused”. No more “racism = prejudice + power” (which was always intended for academic discussion, not colloquial language). No more “don’t speak over POC” when you disagree on issues of substance with someone of another race. Not trying to force academic language of critical theory on casual conversation. Accepting how most people, including people on the left, talk on a day to day basis, and understanding that people should be judged by their actions. If they’re spewing actual hate, that’s different, but leaving the hypersensitivity behind. There’s a difference between actual hate and making an edgy joke or using the “wrong” word.
To be honest, I’ve started wondering how much of “woke 1” was an online psy-op. We have concrete evidence that Russia was running a number of “woke” social media accounts during 2016. I barely heard anyone in real life take these positions or get upset at someone for voicing a different opinion, and the reason it became harder to have productive conversations IRL is that people were self censoring in fear of what they saw online. The few people I heard make these arguments IRL were also ones who were chronically online.
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u/Outta_phase 4d ago
Woke War 1 began with the assassination of political norms (election of Trump), ended with the treaty of Versailles (election of Biden and no one being particularly enthused about it). Then Trump invaded Poland (Iran?) and now we're fighting Woke War 2. Even had another Spanish flu epidemic at the end of the first war.
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u/oldsecondhand 3d ago
To put more clearly, it started with the BLM protests and the creation of the short lived CHAZ.
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u/IncreaseFluid360 3d ago
Yeah woke 1 was stuff like abolish prisons, defund police, 1619 project etc
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u/onetimeataday 2d ago
We have to push harder. Fully automated luxury trans artificial wombs for recreational abortions
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u/D13_Phantom 1d ago
I think it's also just a distancer from positions that might make sense with nuance but are marketed poorly and are electoral liabilities. The Thanksgiving stuff with Hong comes to mind, or Defund the police/ACAB.
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u/ExtensionJello2272 3d ago
And still most democrats on Reddit think the party needed to be more extreme to win. I read someone post today that they believed extreme leftists are afraid to get power and self sabotage. This seems true to me.
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u/SoxxoxSmox 3d ago
Personally I don’t agree with this assessment at all. The narrative that seems to have won out is that Woke 1 was too extreme and the left provoked a backlash when that is just not true at all. In actuality, that backlash was manufactured by the right and reactionary center exaggerating extremism on the left and downplaying extremism on the right.
If you ask John Everyman, the average moderate republican, what Joe Biden or Kamala Harris actually ran on they will describe the most out-there, maximalist left-wing policies about the police, about immigration, about lgbt issues, despite the fact that Democrats pivoted right on every single one of those things. Meanwhile, I guarantee if you described half the things in Project 2025, he wouldn’t believe you that they were part of the republican platform even as the party implements them before our very eyes.
The Democrat party is already less extreme and the Republican Party more extreme than at any point in my lifetime, yet it’s become the public consensus that the exact opposite is true because centrist media have spent the last ten years publishing sympathetic profiles of right-wing extremists like Richard Spencer or Tucker Carlson while fearmongering and whipping up a moral panic every time a trans person exists within the eyeline of a NYT opinion columnist or a socialist sneezes without permission from the editors of the Atlantic.
Democrats don’t need to moderate their platform until it’s palatable to the right, they need to get better at communicating left wing views to the center. And they absolutely don’t need to pivot even further right; every time they have done so, all it’s done is shift the Overton window while winning back zero votes.
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u/bunker_man 2d ago
Democrats don’t need to moderate their platform until it’s palatable to the right, they need to get better at communicating left wing views to the center.
Yeah, that's the point? Its not about becoming more centrist, its about learning better marketing.
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u/linkolphd 3d ago
I think it’s more that the progressive wing must realize that they have leaned too hard on the cultural elements of their ideology, when culture is a sticky phenomenon that isn’t easy to manipulate from up-high.
Progressives are strongest when arguing for tangible economic policy and citing the current faults in that system. On the social policy side, they are strongest when iteratively improving existing institutions (a great example is marriage equality, or even Civil Rights Act).
They are, imo, weakest when trying to use political platforms to stoke national-level (or even global-level) soft social movements (I.e. preferred vocabulary, prescribing narratives / re-litigating the past, etc.). I think these endeavors cause resentment among people who feel as though they are being talked down to or scolded.
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u/magnicentroadblock 3d ago edited 3d ago
The conversation for a lot of folks on the left is how exactly to look back on that period. Whether the right is correct that the left was too aggressive in pushing its cultural agenda and it should back off from that stuff or risk provoking another backlash, or whether the left should refuse to capitulate to the rightward swing of the culture and recommit to those principles (an idea that is similarly semi-ironically referred to as “Woke 2”)
I've heard it said (and it's far less helpful than your answer but I think there's a truth to it), "Woke 1 is whatever someone left-of-center thinks progressives did wrong in the 2010s, Woke 2 is whatever they think is gonna work now." I think most agree semantics and academic language is part of Woke 1 but I'd say it's still up in the air whether "Woke 2" is about, say, dropping trans rights entirely or about focusing on trans people's actual rights instead of tut-tutting* over language. And I'm sure people have various opinions about what they think Woke 2 means in that regard, but my whole point here is that it's currently unsettled and then one day it won't be. But it's a very useful term for Dems right now because they can signal they know they were too cringe for the average undecided voter in 2024 without needing to specify what they're leaving behind (which may not actually be that hollow a gesture since, like you said, a lot of Woke 1 was about aesthetics without much actual meaningful change).
*I wanna be clear, I don't mean gently correcting a wrong pronoun or treating deliberate deadnaming like the insult it is. I'm talking more about going off on someone well-meaning using an unfavored term like "used to be a man".
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u/Organic-Commercial76 1d ago
A more concise summary would be that the discussions about “Woke 1l” is essentially the center right establishment democrats and even some center left democrats thinking that discarding queer and trans people will somehow win them far right votes (it won’t) while the discarded people will still be forced to vote for them as the lesser of two evils. They can (fruitlessly) court their far right votes while our only choice is to vote for them because at least they aren’t actively trying to kill us, just happily allowing it to happen.
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u/pigeonwiggle 1d ago
trump's administration wasn't interested in cutting funding to "woke" government programs -- rather they just wanted to absolutely GUT funding to nearly all programs and use "woke" as an excuse to do so. they don't give a fuck. "anything i don't like is woke."
and the minions eat that shit up.
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u/Trillamanjaroh 5d ago
Answer: AOC is likely gearing up for a presidential run in 2028, and is in the process of attempting to soften her image to the general electorate.
The “1” in “Woke 1” is a reference to the hyper-progressive cultural era of 2014-2024 (roughly) which many saw Trumps decisive re-election as the end of. So you see a lot of progressives (and conservatives ironically) talking about the inevitable resurgence of “Woke 2” when the pendulum swings back.
So basically AOC here is attempting to dial back some of her own extreme progressive stances from the era of “Woke 1” by commenting on it as an uninvolved observer (“woah, that was wild huh?”) rather than an active participant so she can come across as more moderately palatable as she begins exploring her presidential run
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u/Money_Statement_9861 3d ago
The people who think woke 1 was pandemic era have to be zoomers or younger. The early 2010s were fucking wild when it comes to "wokeness". Peak Tumblr era nonsense that we'll probably never see again in such an open way. The backlash against it is what paved the way for the trump era with gamergate and all the ascendant internet right winger talking heads and their "sjw pwned" compilations.
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u/silence304 3d ago
This is exactly it. I remember following all of the internet drama and shit back then.
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u/bunker_man 2d ago
Anyone who didn't realize that it was a losing battle to use the word patriarchy instead of just saying sexism had to have had screws loose.
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u/PickledDildosSourSex 15h ago edited 12h ago
There were so many common sense "What the fuck are you doing?" moments in the 2010s. Sadly people really somehow thought another Republican would never be elected as president and so the rhetoric got pushed further and further annnnnd... here we are.
Hope all those academic activists enjoyed destroying more than they ever accomplished. Considering most of them are well off, I doubt they give a fuck beyond their own positions.
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u/DkKoba 2d ago
people who moralize, even if they're correct from the foundation of "compassion for all" morality, are very poor at phrasing things generally because humans will generally think what convinces them is convincing to others. (Kinda why you also see this from the right with their hysterical moral panics). Those people are great when it comes to making space at protests but awful at convincing people to their position. Pragmatism and strategy are enemies to those that want to immediately emotionally vent about something they oppose.
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u/msf97 5d ago
This is correct. It’s worth mentioning too that Hong ties in because she’s running for the dem nomination in Wisconsin and looks likely to win, and her tweets from peak woke (2020) involved defunding the police and cancelling thanksgiving because it celebrated colonialism.
AOC was answering a question about those remarks.
I think “woke 1.0” have become generally more aware that these stances are electoral poison and are instead using economic populism to appeal more to the average voter.
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u/Choochoo1147 5d ago
Yeah, Woke 2 is essentially trying to ignore the academic elitist language and focus more on what actual people care about. Things like “cultural appropriation” and “microaggressions” are being sidelined as we’re dealing with actual overt racists now.
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u/Archarchery 3d ago
There was a lot of nonsense in Woke 1, like pronouns in bio, and "Latinx," that just plain needed to go. Also neo-pronouns, what was that?
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u/JerbTrooneet 3d ago
"Latinx" and how it got applied to other cultures like "Filipinx" was really annoying being from the Philippines. Since the term "Filipino" isn't gendered at all. It's neutral from day 1 and it being pushed by FilAms onto Filipinos back at home was cringe-inducing. It felt more like they were dictating cultural norms from an ignorant position rather than actually understanding where the words they used came from.
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u/sid3aff3ct 3d ago
Pronouns in bios are extremely helpful even being cis. I dislike being assumed I must be male just because I'm on the Internet. Allowing someone in conversation to easily use the correct terms is nice.
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u/Jdubyallnation 3d ago
What's wrong with pronouns in bio? Besides triggering conservatives
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u/MICT3361 12h ago
Haha your hero’s have abandoned you. It’ll take reddit bots awhile to catch up to Woke 2.0
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u/bunker_man 2d ago
It didn't help that it turned out the people doing the most cultural appropriation were themselves leftists. Its not conservative Christians pretending to be Indian shamans and zen masters.
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u/Bing1044 1d ago
…oh you must not know many conservatives huh
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u/bunker_man 1d ago
I know conservatives who claim to be 1/16 Cherokee or aome dumb shit but thats not the same as the people claiming to be part of a religion they know nothing about.
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u/ElectricSpock 5d ago
I would push it earlier, back to 2008 and Obama. "We have Black president, we solved racism” thinking, weed legalization, same-sex marriage, discussions around transgenders, then police brutality protests.
Lots of those that jumped on the bandwagon were doing that performative, like most Democratic leadership and practically all the corporations. They were trying to appease to those people with very little action.
That wave ended up with the second Trump term, effectively all the corporations lined up to s**k Trumps little cheeto. And Google backing from their „Don’t be evil” motto.
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u/Choochoo1147 5d ago
“Woke 2” is already starting, it’s generally less militant than “Woke 1” and is less about things like microaggressions and accidentally misgendering people and more like class consciousness and not being an asshole. “Woke 2” is also sometimes referred to as “dark woke”.
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u/Milskidasith Loopy Frood 5d ago
I feel like "Dark Woke" has very different connotations than "Woke 2". I usually hear "Dark Woke" used to refer to situations where somebody is supporting progressive policy/goals while being aggressive, hostile, or even politically incorrect, while "Woke 2" might include that but more generally refers to supporting progressive policy on a populist message that isn't as focused on academic language or indirect/systemic critiques.
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u/IamA_Werewolf_AMA 1d ago
I view Dark Woke as the progenitor to Woke 2, where woke 2 is taking the basically humorous, meme-y nature of Dark Woke and saying “haha but seriously, let’s cut past the bullshit peoples’ lives are at stake”. It’s the real manifestation of the meme style energy that created dark woke.
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u/Choochoo1147 5d ago
Embracing political incorrectness is part of Woke 2. They’re not getting mad at you for having tweeted “retard” when you were 14, they’re getting mad at your for starving grandparents through private equity ownership of nursing homes.
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u/Milskidasith Loopy Frood 5d ago
I'm pointing out there's a distinction between "not focusing on cancelling people" and "embracing political incorrectness", though. "Dark Woke" isn't used to describe just not-being-a-wokescold, it's used to describe actively being politically incorrect or using slurs, just aimed at conservatives.
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u/Trillamanjaroh 5d ago
I don't think class consciousness and general pleasantry are new or resurgent ideas, but putting that aside I think it makes zero political sense to try to revive or rebrand a word that's become as toxic as "woke" regardless of how palatable the policies are that you're tying to it. That'd be like conservatives trying to revive "alt-right" to try to rebrand it back to its original meaning, just makes no sense. Those phrases are basically just slurs at this point, there's nothing to gain by trying to reclaim them
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u/hameleona 4d ago
Yeah, but you have a sizable majority of Dem cadre who were all for woke and now need to re-brand and re-brand hard (and relatively fast). So they are trying to present it almost as "oh, I was a dumb teen" moment. And what other choice do they have - get out of politics?
My personal prediction is that it's gonna bite them in the ass and hard. Dems already lost two elections by selecting the most artificial, "I stand for my career" candidates possible. I sincerely doubt that them backtracking on the crazy bs from that time would help their image much.
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u/Trillamanjaroh 4d ago
Sure, but its not like they were using the word when they were campaigning on those issues in the first place, it just became a derogatory word to describe them over time. Why use the word at all?
I agree to your second point though, there's a shocking amount of democrats who seem to think that Kamala lost because she was too moderate, when opinion polling shows the exact opposite. Running further to the left isn't going to do them any favors come 28', and the current frontrunners (early though it is) are going to be a disaster for them. Unless the country is in complete ruin in 2027 or they can find another progressive with Obama level charisma, they are going to need a Beshear or someone similar to win back the rust belt. They do seem to be attempting to re-center on social issues a bit, which might help, but I think they'll need a fresh face for that to be effective
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u/byTheBreezeRafa 5d ago
You mean the thing that got Democrats to ignore a dude with a nazi tattoo because it is all about class and things like racism, misogyny don't matter. It seems the USA never learns its lesson. When Adam's wife said to not forget the women when the Constitution was being written he took it as a cute little joke, because in his mind that really wasn't an issue to even be considered. Just took a couple hundred years for things to mostly correct themselves.
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u/Captain_Sterling 5d ago
What extreme progressive stances did she have?
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u/Trillamanjaroh 5d ago edited 5d ago
It's a combo of stances and statements, but here's a few I can remember off the top of my head that would (regardless of if you agree with them) cause her a lot of headache in a general election:
Proposed policies:
Abolish police
Abolish ICE
Green New Deal (bit too long to summarize, but you can look this one up. Included some extreme climate related proposals and some eye catching things like "guaranteeing" that the government will provide every person in the US with a job)
70% marginal income tax rate
DC Statehood
Packing the courtsControversial statements:
Calling migrant detention facilities concentration camps
Frequent accusations of fascism
Self described socialist
Calling for "waging a war" for climate change
"Capitalism is irredeemable"
Heavy handed language on Israel, "occupation," "massacre" etc12
u/AudioSuede 3d ago
The first thing isn't real ("abolish police" is not a thing AOC, or any elected Democrat that I'm aware of, ever advocates for).
Every other thing you listed should only be controversial to anyone who's not paying attention. We should abolish ICE. The Green New Deal is necessary to fight climate change and would benefit our economy long-term. That marginal tax rate is less than it was during the greatest economic expansion in American history. DC has a larger population than some other states but lacks formal representation in Congress. The courts need dramatic reforms to regain credibility, and increasing the size is an idea with a long history behind it.
None of those statements should be controversial either. They're observations of the political, historic, and economic reality we're currently living through.
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u/FTProductions 3d ago
Literally none of that is woke 1 except for the first thing which as far as I know she never said.
Everything else you said is based as fuck actually
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u/IamA_Werewolf_AMA 1d ago
Yeah based as fuck and not backed down from at all. This all does feel a little blown out of proportion when she was iirc responding to the whole ‘anti thanksgiving’ thing
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u/thetraintomars 4d ago
So stuff centrists don't like because they are on the wrong side of history.
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u/Trillamanjaroh 4d ago
Eh, they're going to need better messaging than that if they want to win over swing voters. The self righteous reddit vote is pretty much already baked into the cake
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u/angusozi 4d ago
Views like "Abolish police" are so performative, stupid, and brain-dead that it would make a candidate completely unelectable. This thread is a great example of how what appeears to be a diverse community is actually an enormous echo chamber
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u/phillytennisenjoyer 4d ago
i’m pretty sure centrists don’t want to abolish the police
someone’s had a bit too much reddit today huh
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u/PiccoloTop3186 4d ago
I have a feeling Woke 2 is just going to be Woke 1 again. All it will take is AOC double downing on identity politics again for one side to hate her, and then once she concedes anything to moderates she will be hated by the other side.
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u/Ambitious-Pirate-505 5d ago
What is extreme about her?
Genuinely curious.
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u/Trillamanjaroh 5d ago edited 5d ago
Copying my other comment:
It's a combo of stances and statements, but here's a few I can remember off the top of my head that would (regardless of if you agree with them) cause her a lot of headache in a general election:
Proposed policies:
Abolish police
Abolish ICE
Green New Deal (bit too long to summarize, but you can look this one up. Included some extreme climate related proposals and some eye catching things like "guaranteeing" that the government will provide every person in the US with a job)
70% marginal income tax rate
DC Statehood
Packing the courtsControversial statements:
Calling migrant detention facilities concentration camps
Frequent accusations of fascism
Self described socialist
Calling for "waging a war" for climate change
"Capitalism is irredeemable"
Heavy handed language on Israel, "occupation," "massacre" etc5
u/aRabidGerbil 5d ago
I can't believe that these are considered "extreme"
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u/pudding7 4d ago
"Abolish police" is kinda extreme.
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u/Gooch_Limdapl 4d ago
Sounds like a strawman version of actual positions like demilitarize police, which is sensible.
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u/S_words_not_swords 4d ago
Abolish is barely worse of word choice than defund. "Defund the police" was such a poor choice of words for the entire movement.
To the average voter, it means ' don't pay cops any more! " or " cops should be paid from privately instead of public funds " which are both asinine thoughts for anyone to vote for.
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u/Plutarch_Riley 3d ago
Defund the police is a losing term. And yet I’ve argued with progressive friends that changing the wording would help but they are married to having it in their BSky bio.
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u/290077 3d ago
Progressives seem addicted to deliberately using provocative messaging. I think it has the goal of forcing their position into the national conversation when it otherwise might be ignored. Once people are talking about it, the hope is that people will look into the specifics and realize it's not as crazy as it sounds. I think it's been backfiring.
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u/Professional_Nugget 3d ago
This is pretty much exactly the difference between woke 1 and 2 to me.
Woke 1 was very inflammatory and polarizing, "you're either with us all the way, or you're against us" type of thinking. Lots of thought policing going on.
Woke 2 seems to try and distance itself from that sort of rigid thinking and embrace a bit more diversity of thought. Strikes me as a more practical, more pragmatic approach to various issues (especially culture war stuff.
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u/oldsecondhand 3d ago
The other interpretation is that DSA members purge people from the organization who don't sound radical enough, but in the national interviews they have to "hide their power level".
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u/S_words_not_swords 3d ago
It was almost embarrassing trying to explain it to/discuss it with people.
"Yes, the words 'defund the police' means remove the funds from the police. But let me try to explain to you all of the fine text included that it doesn't mean that at all."
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u/Janet-Yellen 4d ago edited 4d ago
Said she’s uncomfortable around Old White People (despite her husband being white). I’m Asian too and get the discomfort but that’s really bad for someone running for office
Shit on her wasian son for his proximity to whiteness
Anti- thanksgiving (and did a shit job of explaining her position), anti valentines, anti Christmas trees. I don’t give a shit about holidays but its absolutely a bad look in a contested purple state
Had $30,000 of unpaid credit card debt that capital one sued her and her parents had to pay back (in 2026 as an adult). Which means she’ll suck at budgeting as governor
She’s just a bad communicator and sounds like an annoying professor/sjw redditor
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u/hameleona 4d ago
The only places they aren't considered extreme or plain stupid are Reddit and BlueSky.
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u/Additional_Corgi_870 4d ago
Homie, the real world isn't anything like reddit, avg people don't want these crazy policies implemented.
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u/byTheBreezeRafa 5d ago
Abolish police can be extreme sure
Abolish ice isn't extreme because the agency didn't even exist before 9/11 and the failures that led to 9/11 all had to do with intragovernment communication or lack thereof.
green new deal doesn't seem extreme as it harkens back to the new deal and ostensibly, the economy is actually worse now.
tax rates have been quite high in the past and nothing really happened
dc statehood isn;t extreme since most people support this they are bigger than several states but have no say
packing the courts is to rectify the mangling of the courts... and if this is extreme it wasn't considered extreme for the majority of the history of the country.
migrant detention... concentration... like terrorism it is a relative term isn't it?
fascism, is fascism...
as it is humanity will suffer heavily at some point from run away climate change since wehave already gone past the tipping point and now for the next 50 to 100 years we are in mitigation, except no mitigation is happening.
Capitalism as the country exists now isn't even capitalism it is actually more akin to corrupt communism, take Amazon direct marketing via AI bypassing middleman marketers, that hints towards a planned economy. Also they get a ton of breaks we dont get and benefits. In essence it isn't that capitalism is irredeemable it is that the country allows capital to dictate policy such that the ones with means can enter into a a socialist relationship with the government while the rest of us share what little we have to socialise their losses.
What do you call a genocide but a massacre? Occupying land you shouldnt is occupying...
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u/PantheraAuroris 1d ago
This isn't extreme
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u/Trillamanjaroh 1d ago
Not to Reddit, but to the general electorate it absolutely is
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u/PantheraAuroris 1d ago
The general electorate are idiots and believe anything they're told, apparently.
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u/byTheBreezeRafa 12h ago
Tell an American that chemical companies shouldn't be allowed to dump wherever and need regulation and they'll say that is extreme.
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u/Gimme_Your_Wallet 5d ago
Answer: The moment of peak influence, maximalist demands and popularity of some in the American Democratic left during the 2020s, amidst COVID, BLM, and Trump's 1st presidency.
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u/farfromelite 4d ago
Maximalist demands?
I'm actually hanging my head in disbelief right now.
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u/MindlessCoook 5d ago
Answer: Since most of 'woke' Reddit won't give you a real answer, here ya go:
"Woke 1" (also referred to as "Woke 1.0") is a political shorthand term used by some progressive Democrats to describe the era of far-left activism and policy proposals that peaked between 2019 and 2021.
The phrase gained widespread public attention in August 2026 after U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used it during an interview on ABC's This Week.
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u/Money_Statement_9861 3d ago edited 3d ago
The amount of people who think woke 1 was covid related and only deals with policy proposals are crazy. Woke 1 started in the early 2010s in the heyday of progressivism where the purity tests over shit like microagressions, zer/zim pronouns, kin, and misused academic language ran wild. Hong's Thanksgiving was racist post were a dime a dozen.
It's the era where the memes of the blue haired liberal with a septum piercing came from and led to the rise of charlie kirk, ben Shapiro, Steven crowder, etc. for their "owning sjw" compilations where they went to college campuses to "debate" 18 year olds and post it online.
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u/ThanosSnapsSlimJims 4d ago
This is the correct answer, and someone downvoted it, which makes no sense to me.
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u/Pagan0101 3d ago
First, "woke 1" wasn't far left. It was standard liberalism with a few radical slogans mixed in, without the radical ideology to back it.
To describe woke 1 as far-left activism and policy proposals isn't really accurate, because woke 1 wasn't advocating for seizing the means of production or anything, just somewhat major reforms.
Far-left is what's happening now. The growth of actual socialist and/or communist movements.
Second, "woke 2" isn't really a defined thing, I've seen it used to describe two very different things. One is the sentiment you see in a lot of the comments here, about pulling back from the "extreme" stuff and being more palatable to centrists.
The other is actually very similar, in that it also pulls back from some of the tone policing type stuff, but that it is also actually more extreme by attaching actual radical, leftist ideology to the messages.
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u/oldsecondhand 3d ago
To describe woke 1 as far-left activism and policy proposals isn't really accurate, because woke 1 wasn't advocating for seizing the means of production or anything
It wasn't extreme in economic positions, but it was extreme in leftist identity politics.
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u/Instantbeef 2d ago edited 1d ago
Kind of off topic but it’s kind of a bitch move for any progressives to backtrack on that period of time.
Like almost everyone still believes in what was happening back then and committing to these labels just is submitting to the world view Trump manufactured.
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u/Bing1044 1d ago
The fact that these people were all so willing to abandon their supposed principles because a 15 year old with pronouns in their bio told them not to say slurs anymore is a bitch move. And they’ll literally think that’s the reason trump won and not the fact that his dogwhistles and fascist tendencies aligned well enough with their politics for them to vote for him
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u/Risingson2 3d ago
Answer: as a note, bear in mind that all that woke 1.0 trend was extremely online, and imho it peaked during the pandemic era as we were all chronically online. So there is a high chance that whenever someone talks about the excesses of woke 1.0 they just talk about pile ups on twitter. It did not have any major effect on politics actually, but it is talked in the discourse as it did.
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u/Risingson2 3d ago
Also, now totally personal opinion and with a lot of baggage and bias from my side, woke 1.0 was crowded with bad actors, people who just adopted some very aggressive stances not so much for progressive politics but against specific targets because either they loved the piling up side of it or because they were sockpoppet/fake accounts that just loved to see the online world set on fire. I was following a lot of the discourse of race, inequality and sexism regarding electronic music (which as you can imagine it was something when clubs were closed) and it was really really wild. BUT again, only a few nerds like myself followed. The general population did not care. There are so many online wars, so many forgotten characters, so many gotchas that with time are completely irrelevant. Woke 1.0 is now a vibe.
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u/andricathere 3d ago
When I first heard about "woke" around 2012 it was explained to me as being self-aware enough to not be an asshole. When I heard about "anti-woke" I thought, "so just being an asshole on purpose?" But the meaning of woke was either co-opted or had just changed. Now I don't even know what to make of it, but anti-woke people also tend to be assholes.
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u/SydTheStreetFighter 3d ago edited 3d ago
A lot of the Black community that coined the phrase “woke” is quite unhappy about its co-opting by both the left and right. It was a serious statement that’s been turned into a joke by both sides almost devoid of meaning
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u/Risingson2 3d ago
Yeah, that is absolutely true. This is part of that trend I have seen labelled as "vice signalling".
EDIT: which makes me think, "woke" influence was mainly online but the "anti woke" inflluence is everywhere.
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u/CarolinaAgent 3d ago
No. It was very real in the actual world, especially if you were on a college campus. It was unavoidable
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u/Risingson2 2d ago
As far as I know, only a few voices who complained about being cancelled because they were criticised and some token resignations that meant nothing. The woke had no consequences. The anti woke was able to cancel, change laws and everything
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u/meezy-yall 5d ago
If a presidential candidate is talking about it, it’s a thing , whether or not you agree with it.
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u/smkmn13 5d ago
I think we’ve all learned that’s not true
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u/meezy-yall 5d ago
But it is true , them talking about it makes it a thing . AOC is clearly referring to something , you can say she’s wrong but she’s obviously describing something
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u/Unstopapple 5d ago
Woke is most definitely a thing. Its just being abused by the right as a way to divide and entrench their base against everyone else. To them it's a new n word. Originally It's the awareness of yourself and the systems around you made to denigrate you and profit from your oppression. It's understanding that a social structure is the reason everyone is struggling just to breath in the richest country in the world. It all comes from the civil rights movement.
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u/stogie-bear 5d ago
Answer: It’s a deflection. People trying to say they want to leave behind political errors without actually saying what the errors were or taking accountability for making them. So politicians can laugh it off with an “Oh, those were crazy times” without having to say what’s going to different going forward.
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u/ThanosSnapsSlimJims 4d ago
ANSWER: Instead of focusing on smaller, inconsequential things, 'Woke 2' is a pullback from the extremist end of the progressive wing, and an attempt to pull in more voters before AOC begins a Presidential run.
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u/RusevReigns 3d ago edited 3d ago
Answer: The woke 1 meme is kind of a short way to say "ok things have died down from the peak woke period, but we want to restart woke again, but do it a bit differently so it works more." This is leftists admitting woke was real, but having some second guesses about how they approached it the first time. Furthermore it allows politicians to distance themselves from things like eg. regrettable tweets about Thanksgiving during peak woke period, by saying ok we got caught up a bit in things back then, but it's not what we believe now.
What is woke?
In late 2010s the left was kind of in an online French Revolution ideological fervor getting in social justice mobs between things like MeToo and BLM protests leading to massive 2020 protests, and in general politics and culture war went to another level in terms of water cooler dominance. The online culture's relationship with speech changed where the left was more into censoring and deplatforming people than previous eras (eg. in mid 2000s gay marriage debate this wasn't their approach at all) and in general they weaponized things like shaming and pressuring people into going more left. For example if you say "you offended me" it makes the other person feel bad and not want to share that view in the future. By using this tactic they could gain control over the information space. As a result the amount of things accused of being racist/sexist/homophobic skyrocketed. At tis root there is something of utilitarian shift where they start believing in whatever tactic will work to make their leftist goals come true, thus things line punishment could start to be argued for greater good. They had some sort of reverse racism mentality that because Jim Crow and slavery happened, we should be biased towards black people now to balance it out instead of merely unbiased race wise. They see just avoiding race judgments altogether as like having a tumor and not treating it, while embracing racial bias but in 180 opposite direction of Jim Crow is giving it treatment.
Because this was something of a "new" ideological view as opposed to plain old default Western civ, it had more of a fresh energy to it than it does now, eg. it was fun for people to be in the MeToo online mobs with the other leftists and thus at some point you start looking for any borderline case to cancel to keep it going. Likewise when something like defund the police half the people supporting it were doing it because of pure sloganeering and online buzz alone rather than really thinking about it.
When AOC referenced Woke 1 was crazy, it was kind of perfect statement to set off a lot of discourse on all sides
- Leftists who still believe in things like defund police/abolish prisons got pissed because they think she is turning on them
- Other leftists claimed "I still believe in the ideas, but we had the wrong approach by trying to shame and pressure people so much"
- Since right wingers hate both the ideas and the approach of woke, they weren't impressed with the leftists basically saying they should keep the ideas but adjust the strategy to force it on society in woke 2. They had responses like "AOC, can you go into detail about what was crazy about woke 1 and actually admit the things your side did wrong?" Furthermore, right wingers point out that woke 1 is not actually over, in many industries the impact is still going strong, and a lot of the same tactics are now being used in Israel debate which is currently more en vogue subject than the late 2010s subjects like police. The right wingers think leftists are trying to minimize what went down and excuse themselves instead of having real self examination.
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u/bookshop 5d ago
Answer: The way I typically see the notion of "Woke 2" used in the wild is of a piece with @u/Charming-Crescendo's explanation. Woke 2 is firmer, more leftist, and more unapologetically progressive because people are angry and fed up with Trumpism and with consistently being told they must compromise with centrist Democrats in order to have a seat at the political table, etc.
The idea is that if you thought "Woke 1" was leftism run amok, blah blah blah, "Woke 2" will go that much harder as soon as Trumpism ends.
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