The cost of being woke.

Bonjour à tous !

Back with a new video on woke culture and activism. Why does activism equal to suffering? How is that suffering instrumentalized?
Don't forget to like, comment and subscribe, merci :)

RELEVANT SOURCES/RESSOURCES:

Alan Jacobs, Wokeness and Myth on Campus, The New Atlantis , Summer/Fall 2017, No. 53 (Summer/Fall 2017), pp. 33-44 (I do not agree with the thesis of the author as it could apply for conservatives as well but I found some interesting concepts there)
Yann Moulier Boutang, Sandra Laugier, DÉCOLONIAL, VOUS AVEZ DIT « DÉCOLONIAL » ?
Association Multitudes | « Multitudes », 2021/2 n° 83 | pages 5 à 14

MUSIC:

SOCIALS:

À bientôt, Alice

[AliceCappelle]

Quick update: I finally defended my master's dissertation and might even get it published ✨Congrats to those of you who are graduating or completed another year of college or high school, I wish you the best of luck for the future and hope you enjoy this new video! ☺️

[jesusismybestie]

I really struggle with online activism because it's difficult to disentangle from the ego: I'll often share things and then immediately delete them because I question "Am I sharing this because it will really affect change, or am I sharing this to curate a certain image of myself online?" It's a relief to be able to begin safely going back into the world in in-person community, where action doesn't always just mean sharing my opinion online.

[Sisyphus]

I think that social media has sped up the evolution of language to the point in which many words (fetishization, racist, bigot, internalization) have lost their essential meaning and, through this, their ability to create action. This is helped by the ever-improving capacity for corporations and marketing to use these terms for profit and promotion, emptying them of any real significance. If social movements are truly reliant on words that channel action, then we are heading for some dark times.

[violetcitizen]

One of the most damaging things that the right have achieved is to trivialise "woke words". I often find myself trying to express an idea without using words like feminism, privilege, the system, etc. because as soon as people hear these "buzzwords" (which would otherwise convey the point much better), they tend to shut down and be dismissive to ideas they would otherwise agree with. Sometimes the point gets diluted when translated to "bro terms", and I would like there to be a cultural shift where people's rhetoric is critiqued on merit rather than word selection.
Merci :)

[blueperson]

The decision of being an activist is really important, at least here in Mexico you gotta think if it worth it, because you will probably be dead, a lot of activists have been killed in the recent years, so it's important to think very carefully

[FreeToBe_Me]

Everyone is “ethnic.” Even white people have ethnicities.

I wonder how “ethnic” became a descriptor for non-white?

[imaninline]

Cooperations appropriating and commodifying wokeness feels down right dystopian. Something about Kendall Jenner ending racism with a Pepsi really just hits my fight or flight.

It’s like you can participate in all the movements you want to, so long as it makes us money but the second any real steps towards change are made that could potentially threaten revenue it’s destroyed.

[camiloarosemena]

I support social justice, and I like your praise of it. But I feel that a huge part of the people who claim to be in this movement only do a ton of moral showing off by claiming over and over again that they are on the "right side of history" and attacking and canceling so many people who don't agree with their "stance", without considering their context or education, while not really doing anything to support actual people going through these injustices. I think we should talk/listen to each other more and create more empathy, instead of creating these weird isolated bubbles. This kind of behavior from this considerable chunk of people in the social justice movement is one of the huge fuelers of extremism on the other side.

[mschell]

I think everyone should be aware of social injustices. But I don’t think everyone should be an “activitst”, per say. To be honest, most people are not equipt for that (and thats totally okay!) Because pushing people to become an activist leads it to be performative.
In my opinion, social pressure for everyone to be “woke” harms a lot of movements. It allows for a lot of misinformation and oversimplification. I think its important to be knowledgeable of social injustices, but not everyone can and should be discussing things that they actually don’t know much about, and using academic language usually taught about in depth in college and graduate programs. (And I think this is what they were trying to portray in the video with the woke vs racist: performative activism oversimplifies topics with lengthy histories and nuances)
You don’t have to know about every bad thing or every oppression in the world to be a good person, and you certainly don’t have to be an activist, especially for everything.

[elysianfields]

I am too selfish and self-centered to go out there playing Jesus Christ. Instead, I try to be the example of the change I want to see. I try to do things correctly and with responsibility and honesty. This is already a way of influence people.

[ProfessorTurnipAlpha]

"You, as an individual, can change the system." This is such a perfect oxymoron. The contradiction in the messaging is very intentional, and has been very effective in stalling real change.

[marixlife]

As a French American living in America, I often feel disconnected from France, but watching your channel helps me feel a bit more in the know with France and what my family might be seeing. I would love to hear any recommendations for other French youtubers (et oui, je parle français) in one of your future videos 💕

[lesparks]

A problem from both sides, is that we distill each other's argument to an overgeneralized/simplistic and jingoist heurism. Then we can dismiss the others view. When we group people into specific bins, it is much easier to view the people in that group by the group definition. However, many people can be part of many different and disparate groups. To define that one individual by the group, will preclude the observer from understanding the individuals.

If you are "woke" you are a communist. If you believe in Individual rights, you are a "racist." If you believe in Social Justice, you are "lib". If you are fond of your "country", you are a....see the argument gets too distilled and we dismiss the others argument and we defend our position as, "we do not want to give false equivalency" to the other side. Their position is soooo reprehensible, they are not worthy of dialoging with. Then there is anger and violence. No mutual understanding.

For the pathos, both sides do a poor job of framing the narrative to help the understanding. Instead we weaponize the pathos to bolster our positions and "rally the troops."

[chandranelson]

My wife is trans and is a trans activist. We’re almost used to death threats and slurs. I don’t know what the answer is except to keep fighting for trans rights and hope that the death threats are idle threats.

[Magnulus]

You really hit the nail on the head here: corporate appropriation of social justice is like having a friend who doesn't do you any real favors and just hangs around to eat the food in your fridge. It feels good at first to be affirmed by somebody else, but in reality he's just a lazy bum who is no good.

[taylorbryant]

I’d love to hear more about “slackivism” during the start of the pandemic last year. I feel like I’m in a weird limbo where I’m not sure if I was doing enough or if I was doing anything at all.

[lemuelsap]

As helpful as it has been in bringing systemic issues to a wide audience, social media has fundamentally altered authentic activism and authentic being-a-person in general. Our identities have become so visible through social media, that being a person is inseparable from how we represent ourselves online. You're not until it's on your twitter, instagram or whatever. As you pointed out, social activism can merely become a way of projecting a kind of identity for the world to see, not an actual cause you're willing to sacrifice your time, energy, money for.

It's not that we didn't have this tendency before social media--now it's just sooo much easier, whereas before the internet, you actually had to do more real activist work to look like a social activist, to satisfy your ego.

I also think there's a degree to which the systemic issues themselves undergo a kind of dilution on the internet, endlessly represented and repeated until the actual lived experience of those issues becomes lost along the way.

I suppose that despite this dilution that occurs, social media can benefit those social causes simply by garnering attention. But in truly changing people's personal views on those issues, I'm not so sure.

[AlexBlank]

Thank you for talking about this. I feel like sometimes there might be some stress over how to be or how not to be an activist in the "right" way, what constitutes a "real" activist, and so on. Maybe it's just my desperate desire to know where I stand and see where the boundaries are (when there aren't, and shouldn't be, any), but it seems as though whenever you do or do not say something, there is always a way to be called out on it: you speak/do too much or too little, or you focus on the wrong things, or it's not your place. Maybe it's only in my head. Still, at the end of the day, we just want to make the world a better place. Even individually, we might never tackle all of the problems or be right about everything, but at least we truly want to understand and do something at our own pace, and I think that matters.

This was a bit of a rambling comment, I suppose I'm still figuring this out for myself :)

[brandongarrett]

Even if you are a relatively quiet "slacktivist" (vs. an all out activist) there are significant phycological repercussions I think. I share my "woke" material only with my spouse, and 2 or 3 closest friends. Living in the rural bible belt south (USA), being even somewhat "woke" (and mostly an "in the closet type" woke by the way) has destroyed so many of my relationships with friends, parents, grandparents, etc. I haven't even had any direct confrontations over said subjects, but that is because I know how primitive, and far right the majority of my surrounding colleagues is. I don't even bother to push controversial information in front of them. Trust me, it would be blasphemy to them anyway. So now, in an effort to keep the peace I have almost no one to talk to outside of social media that I can have meaningful conversations with.

[gnoelalexmay]

Interesting video, but...
Isn't the right wing's adoption of MLK's colour blind outlook a good thing? Just as a hyper-fixation on race (and gender) is likely to have some very negative side effects.
(also, re colour blindness, on the whole saying they're the 'very same' conservatives is misleading, as adults in 1963 are at the ends of their lives now, and today, the general small-c conservative is pro race equality & pro gay marriage).

When considering those opposed to wokism, it's easy to look at the far-right, but general small-c conservative (ppl with a largely a-political conservative mindset), classical liberals, and most working class folk, are very critical of the woke ideology, veiwing it is a liberal elite phenomenon, and are often very concerned about loss of free speech, excessive identity politics, and excessive activism in journalism, teaching and corporations.
Lastly, I feel the woke ideology has been really quite damaging to all the minorities it ostensibly fights for. You mentioned some of the elements responsible, such as slacktivision and its adoption by corporations - but much of its manifestation is very intolerant, and prone to believing its detractors to be morally wrong.
There's a rebust defence for ppl that oppose wokism BECAUSE they oppose racism etc.