I will add that this problem is the most good faith version of the complaints with “woke” media/fiction (the bad faith one being of course people who simply don’t like any progressive ideas at all, no matter how they’re packaged). Writers and creatives in general spend a lot of time in the Twitter/X bubble and learn these patterns, then have their characters speak the same way, or follow the same logic. To anyone who isn’t deeply embedded in the same bubble and looking for validation, this ends up feeling extremely stilted and unnatural at best, and downright deranged at worst.
I will add that this problem is the most good faith version of the complaints with “woke” media/fiction (the bad faith one being of course people who simply don’t like any progressive ideas at all, no matter how they’re packaged)
I’ll avoid specific examples to reduce the risk of derailing the thread, but I would define “woke” as “prioritizing waging identity-group conflict above other values”. A piece of fiction has many dimensions on which it could be good or bad: novelty, consistency, believability, immersion, likability of characters, depth of characters, emotional range from plot events, predictability of plot, humor, and many more. A woke piece of fiction would be one in which it’s clear that many decisions have been made by a woke ethos, which considers it a good tradeoff to make significant sacrifices on those dimensions in order to advance its preferred identity-group conflict(s); the more woke, the more extreme those sacrifices.
I think there are many issues with the term in how it’s used to mean very different things, but what I’m referring to specifically is a stylistic trait—there are certain kinds of language, of tone etc that tend to be more common in art produced clearly with that specific slant, that are not necessarily perceived as trade-offs rather than just “this is how my tribe talks”. And that’s the one thing where I say there’s a huge disconnect, because it’s often just specifically the language of Twitter politics; the same terminology, the same arguments (with the same flaws, if that’s the case), and the same snappy, performative tone going for the “own” over anything else.
I will add that this problem is the most good faith version of the complaints with “woke” media/fiction (the bad faith one being of course people who simply don’t like any progressive ideas at all, no matter how they’re packaged). Writers and creatives in general spend a lot of time in the Twitter/X bubble and learn these patterns, then have their characters speak the same way, or follow the same logic. To anyone who isn’t deeply embedded in the same bubble and looking for validation, this ends up feeling extremely stilted and unnatural at best, and downright deranged at worst.
I’ll avoid specific examples to reduce the risk of derailing the thread, but I would define “woke” as “prioritizing waging identity-group conflict above other values”. A piece of fiction has many dimensions on which it could be good or bad: novelty, consistency, believability, immersion, likability of characters, depth of characters, emotional range from plot events, predictability of plot, humor, and many more. A woke piece of fiction would be one in which it’s clear that many decisions have been made by a woke ethos, which considers it a good tradeoff to make significant sacrifices on those dimensions in order to advance its preferred identity-group conflict(s); the more woke, the more extreme those sacrifices.
I think there are many issues with the term in how it’s used to mean very different things, but what I’m referring to specifically is a stylistic trait—there are certain kinds of language, of tone etc that tend to be more common in art produced clearly with that specific slant, that are not necessarily perceived as trade-offs rather than just “this is how my tribe talks”. And that’s the one thing where I say there’s a huge disconnect, because it’s often just specifically the language of Twitter politics; the same terminology, the same arguments (with the same flaws, if that’s the case), and the same snappy, performative tone going for the “own” over anything else.