Define “woke.”

Woke (WOHK): Adjective

Of or pertaining to the mass formation psychosis currently gripping the United States and most of the developed world. This mass formation psychosis is led by radical leftist ideologues and driven by social media addiction. Due to the collusion between major technology companies and the US government, there is also an element of state-sponsored propaganda and control.

The mass began to form in the late 2000s with the popularization of social media. As these technologies began to replace face-to-face human reactions, it created the pre-conditions of social isolation and free floating anxiety, in large part due to the addictive nature of the algorithms which promoted content most likely to induce outrage and anger in the end-user (see CGP Grey, “This Video Will Make You Angry”). Once these pre-conditions were in place, all that was necessary to create the psychosis was a target or series of events to focus the attention of the mass.

The 2010s were characterized by several of these focusing events, starting in 2012 with the shooting of Michael Brown and the subsequent riots in Ferguson, Missouri, and continuing with numerous mass shootings such as Orlando and Sandy Hook, several landmark Supreme Court decisions on gay rights such as United States V. Windsor and Obergerfel v. Hodges, and the rise of such controversial movements as Gamergate and the Sad/Rabid Puppies. The culminating event in the creation of this mass formation psychosis was the election in 2016 of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States.

Following Trump’s election, rogue elements of the bureaucracy, the administrative agencies, and the intelligence community (colloquially referred to as the “deep state”) successfully exploited this mass formation psychosis in an effort to hamstring the Trump administration and ultimately remove him from power. These deep state actors acted in collusion with the Silicon Valley technology companies that ran the social media platforms.

Because of the inherently left-leaning political bias of these Silicon Valley companies, this mass formation psychosis always had a leftist bent, and tended to promote radical leftist ideologues as its leaders. However, in any mass formation, the leaders are often just as caught up in the psychosis as the followers. This soon became manifest in the moral and rational incoherence of its leaders (see “What Is a Woman?”), and in the various internal contradictions of their own respective causes and beliefs. While “wokeism” is inherently political, it is not primarily characterized by a unified political ideology or movement.

The high water mark of the mass formation psychosis occured in 2020 during the covid-19 pandemic, during which it took on all of the defining characteristics of a cult (see “What is the Covid cult?”). The George Floyd riots were the major culminating event, but Trump’s ostensible defeat in the disputed 2020 elections and his subsequent removal from power in the January 6th color revolution removed the central focusing element necessary for the mass formation psychosis. Since then, the deep state and political establishment has attempted several times to find a new focusing element for the psychosis, with such issues as climate change or the Russo-Ukraine war, but thus far these efforts have proven unsuccessful (see: “I SUPPORT THE CURRENT THING!”)

At this time (March 2023), it is unclear how this mass formation psychosis will end. If Trump is re-elected in 2020, it may catch a second wind, or it may be replaced by the right-leaning mass formation psychosis characterized by Trumpism and the MAGA movement. It may fizzle out slowly, or it may be defeated by the growing demand for a religious revival in the United States. Alternately, it may prove to be the precursor of a much more dangerous mass formation psychosis, this time driven by AI and the outbreak of World War III. Regardless, the events of the next 12 to 18 months will determine which course our society will take.