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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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Colorblindness has never been acceptable to "woke" and was part of the liberal predecessor before racism became cool again. [...] I'm not sure of the inclusion here. Representing the brief overlap period where colorblindness was collapsing and woke was ascendent?

Yes, you're correct. I don't think "woke" is a new phenomenon, I think "woke" is the way the current young generation shows that they "get it" in a way that the older generation does not. And yes, representing how the current idea of "woke" was ascendant while the previous version of "politically correct" was collapsing. My point was at no point does "we are past peak X" mean "and that means that everything will go back to how it was before", it just means that "X" is now unfashionable and will be replaced by a new, fashionable "Y".

And yeah, the "poly / furries" thing is the classic prediction for what the new "Y" will be, but I'm pretty sure it's actually going to be "etc", because if it were the predictable "poly/furries" then the old uncool people could easily "get it", and that would be terrible.

(As a note, I'm not saying "wokeness is just fashion and therefore has no effects on the real world". I'm saying "wokeness is fashion, and therefore you can predict what will happen with it the same way you predict other fashions". Any real-world consequences of things done for fashion are still just as real as real-world consequences of things done for other reasons)

That is a really interesting perspective, and it makes a lot of sense. I have always viewed it as a fashion, but I hadn't considered the poison pill aspect like that. Ooh, how about instead of poly/trans we go with "chatbots not being real people doesn't matter, they are real enough for me and you disrespect them when you call them artificial". Wrap your head around that Dad!