Future Iterations of Woke

“‘Woke 1.0 was crazy,’ Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said in a recent interview. The congresswoman, speaking on ABC’s This Week, seemed to distance herself from the positions of an era of Democratic politics around 2020… If Woke 1.0 is in the past, when did it die? And has Woke 2.0 risen from its ashes?” — New York Times

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Woke 1 was crazy! We’ll never make those same mistakes again. “Defund the police” was a really bad slogan, and we can all agree that it cost Democrats the 2020 election. Or at least, it would have, if Democrats had lost that election.

Either way, we must learn from our mistakes. We must grow, iterate, experiment, evolve, and commit to never ever, ever again post an Instagram picture of a black square. Unless there’s some kind of glitch on the app, which, given the state of the data center moratoria, is totally possible.

Anyway, yes, Woke 1 was bonkers. But we’ve learned our lesson, and the rest of the Wokes will be significantly more normal. Consider the following:

Woke 2: In Woke 2, there are no more public cancellations. We can admit those were patently unfair. No pile-ons, no quote-tweets, no internet mob learning a stranger’s middle name and employer because he was outside without a mask (while also screaming the n-word). If someone does something bad, the matter is handled by the legal system, which has promised to start working.

Woke 3: Okay, we’ve heard the backlash, and we agree that the legal system was too harsh! Of course it’s not a crime to make ONE crude comment about your breastfeeding coworker, every day for seven months. We want to be responsive. In Woke 3, cancellations are handled by the offender’s HR team. That’s much more reasonable, and plus, HR needs something to do, since we scrapped DEI policies (they ruined everything, and also did nothing). Innocent until proven guilty, or at the very least, a risk to shareholder value.

Woke 4: In Woke 4, we reflect further and decide “handled” is a bit strong. If you think about it, an HR intervention is simply a pile-on of one, and for that reason, it’s equally unfair. In Woke 4, concerns about someone’s unproblematic behavior are still valid. If you see a public figure post the r-word online, please screenshot it and store it on your phone. Obviously don’t send it anywhere—who are you, Flock? Palantir?—but keep it. As long as we’re still screenshotting things, we’ll be sure to deter unwoke behavior.

Woke 5: We acknowledge that screenshots are a privacy risk. And we certainly don’t want to be the whole entire reason Democrats lose another election! So, this round, we’re getting rid of technology. If some Karen calls ICE on a seven-year-old, we write it down in a little book. The book is private. The book stays in a locked drawer. But don’t worry: At the end of each year, we look at the drawer. Not in it, just at it. Also know that the drawer contains one (1) copy of White Fragility.

Woke 6: Here is when we’ll throw the book at unwoke behavior. Sorry, I mean that we’ll throw away the book of unwoke behavior. We’ve seen all the feedback on the very representative social media site X. We don’t want to be Regina George, just because that one Senator had the audacity to say they didn’t really care if people in nursing homes lived or died. Instead, if someone does something bad, we make brief eye contact with them. Angry eye contact.

Woke 7: In Woke 7, we come to understand that waiting for someone to do something bad before forgiving them is the mistake of Wokes 1 through 6, frankly. In Woke 7, we forgive everyone in advance, on a rolling basis, at scale.

Woke 8: At long last, there are no more consequences. Everyone is allowed to do or say whatever they want, with permanent immunity, just as long as they don’t commit the mortal sin of putting pronouns in their Instagram bio. As proof of how reasonable we are, we’ve invited OpenAI to build a data center in our community garden.

Woke 9: Oops. Things didn’t go so well with the data center. Somehow, our electric bill is $9,000. That’s on us. It’s our fault. In Woke 9, we commit ritual Social Justice Seppuku and cancel ourselves. We’ll shut up, forever. We’re gone. Poof. Vanished.

Woke 10: Woke 9 was nuts! It’s a bummer all the public parks got replaced by data centers. It’s too bad no one said anything. But at least we stopped using the phrase “BIPOC.” Woke 10—this one will be normal.

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Ginny Hogan and Carlos Greaves’s new book, Obey in Advance: How to Survive (and Thrive) Under Authoritarianism, is out later this month, but is available to preorder now from our store.