The Specter of 'Woke' Surveillance

A new Superman film came out recently. Directed by James Gunn. It should be good, just knowing about the people involved. However, all my want to see it collapsed after social media brought me a debate on if it is 'woke' or not. Knowing there is that debate has killed all interest in watching it for now. But, I want to know. Why?

Over the last 5 years, there has been a substantial increase in using, and misusing, the word 'woke'. What started as coded language within African-American communities, to communicate the idea that one must be aware of the systems of oppression around them. It has become a bastardised amalgamation of political and social ideas broadly meaning 'progressive', 'pushy', 'sensitive', 'aware of socio-political issues'? It's almost impossible to arrive at a concrete definition of it this new, digital, algorithmic, 'woke' because it incorporates such as wide set of ideas, which are entirely dependent on the audience.

However one interprets the algorithmic 'woke'. It is impossible to avoid. Anyone who has been online or engaged in any vaguely social or political discussion, you have heard of this 'woke'. And if you are someone who has grown up with, or are deeply entrenched in, social media algorithms. It has been thrust upon you without consent or warning.

So I open up YouTube and browsed my subscriptions. A review of the new Superman. I flick through it, mildly interested. I enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy 2 for the most part. After growing up on Teen Titans and Batman: The Animated Series, DC has more superheroes I like than Marvel – who I only got somewhat into during the latter half of pre-Endgame MCU. Then, at the end, I just so happened to jump to them discussing if the film is 'woke' or not.

Immediately, I stop and close the video, and just sit with myself. Digesting that this film I was a bit interested in has been tainted. For now, at least. See, in this era of social media and algorithmic engagement, no discussion happens in isolation; no thought can truly be private. Now, even tangentially, this film has become attached to years of cultural fighting – and media monetisation – that I didn't want to know about.

If you watch, read, or think anything. Through years of being bombarded with endless 'debate' about 'wokeness', from any side. When rage and arguing makes so much money for sites, media, influencers, and content creators. It's impossible for one not to know exactly how characterised others would think about it. Don't you want to know how people who don't think like you, hate what you love? Watch it! Hate it! Get angry! Look at them!! Come back next time, get mad as hell!!! 

Your mental health, and happiness, be damned.

Technology companies and savvy creators need to exploit and capitalise on our dysfunction. A reader or a viewer is not a person, it's a part of an audience who respond as a group. If you look at practically any group, their culture will have rules and violations. Ideas and actions that are fundamentally abhorrent, vile, disgusting – regardless of their authentic or algorithmically/fabricated created origins. Exploiting these rules is one of the most effective ways to cultivate a returning audience. Not to see what one does artistically, but to get their cognitive fill of anger for the day.

I'm not above this, I'll admit it. In fact, I'd wager to say that almost everyone who has grown up with algorithmic social media has, at some point, fallen into the 'anger trap'. Even though I have been trying to escape it, The Algorithm brings anger to me. It keeps me addicted; trapped. Imprisoned in algorithmic hate.

When modern media economies require clicks and view-time, an 'anger trap' is just the most effective way of doing this. I don't like it, but I'm not ignorant. Looking at my favourite YouTubers, when they make something positive about their own lives; immediate dud of a video. Getting angry over what some celebrity has said about the group you belong to? Instant success with views and, most importantly, money.

As a famous cartoon once declared, “[You] can't live on good intentions.” A landlord asking for rent doesn't care about 'good intention', and neither does an algorithm ran by YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, or even traditional companies looking for virality.

It's almost genius. I could nearly respect this for its deep understanding of human-beings. If it wasn't so harmful. Find a group, exploit their values, provoke anger, get a response (from the other side), show to audience, repeat. It's the endless cycle of anger and hate that social media, as well as traditional medias, have exploited for profit.

So why on Earth did see what was about a minute of discussion around 'woke' kill my interest? It has nothing to do with the film, I haven't watched it. It could be great, or could be rubbish. I simply don't know. But I can't watch it in isolation. Even if I watched it alone in my flat, my mind is connected to the wider social 'debates'.

Not even about the film. Anything that happens which I have been exposed to as being 'woke' by media, my mind will immediately start racing about how I “know” other people will respond to it. They will respond “knowing” how other people will respond. And it continues like a mutilated, awful ouroboros.

Even I, someone who knows how ultimately daft online arguments about 'wokeness' are, cannot avoid this. It's so deeply entrenched in modern media and cultural discussion.

Online 'debates' about some alleged 'wokeness' of any media is ultimately a waste of time. I never, ever, engage in them. Never reply to comments or post TikTok videos. However, it doesn't matter. I can't exist online and 'be better' than these anger farms, nobody can. Reply or not, just knowing that they are happening is enough for this surveillance to take hold.

Now everything from film and TV to everyday engagement is compared to these 'debates' we know are going on. Even if you don't engage, or even hate it. Thought and feeling is being controlled and limited by simply knowing.

People caught in this anger machine are not free to feel or think. We're all linked together in this shared pool of anger towards one another, despite never having seen each other or exchanged words directly. Everybody is simultaneously together in anger, but isolated in consumption via algorithms, TV channels, or even tertiarily through family & friends. Each a group, perfectly distilled by those looking to exploit them into in vs out.

As I return to the authentic definition of woke and wokeness. I can't help but feel sorry for the people who use and used it as intended. Their very useful language has become the catalyst. The neurotransmitter through which all in-group anger and profit-driven 'debate' flows through. Down the spine of society and into the nervous system of culture and politics.

Despite the relative uselessness of this algorithmic 'woke' for discussion, its roots have remained unchanged. When people debate 'wokeness', the anger is entirely centred on a specific group. Like African-Americans, women, queers, the disabled, neurodivergent, or any group at the centre of exploitable social tension.

Seeing a 'debate about wokeness' has become a warning sign. Not just for the immediate anger and further social isolation that these companies want. It warns that me or my friends are going to be 'debated'. Not for the quality of our character, but for existing in some media.

The anger cycle eliminates empathy and compassion. Now people have become potential dollar signs or popularity in the eyes of others. Even if someone engaging in these discussions is interested in neither. They want to defend themselves against The Great Other that they have been taught will destroy what they love. Regardless of how real this threat is.

And so it is. 'Woke surveillance' continues. Everyone under its gaze constantly monitor themselves, each other, and the media they consume. When 'woke' occurs, it instantly brings the greatest emotions to the surface for monetisation and attention capturing. This is the new prison social media has created for us, enveloped in endless culture wars, isolation, and alienation.

In a way, I sympathise endlessly with the people who have lost this important cultural language. I remember in the early/mid 2010s when 'trigger' and 'triggered' started to enter online cultural discussions.

My prior understanding of a trigger was some stimuli that triggered an automatic nervous response based on prior traumatic experiences. It was something at the time I was still understanding in my self. I knew the clear triggers and how to avoid them, but it took years of self-introspection to manage my response to triggers. Despite that, it is still an automatic response that can't be truly controlled.

My first exposure to the term outside therapeutic and trauma-managing communities was through people mocking 'Tumblr SJWs' for overusing the word. Shocking videos aiming to make the viewer angry, enraged, at what some stranger has posted online. Like the algorithmic 'woke', this 'triggered' became provoking shorthand to buy the viewer into reacting to merely seeing the word in the title, headline, post, or thumbnail. Ironically, becoming nothing but a trigger for algorithmic growth, attention, and revenue – a fate trigger now shares with woke.

Now I am robbed of a word to describe an automatic emotional, neurological, response to stimuli provoking association to traumatic events. Even in more 'progressive' and minority spaces, where the word has been claimed somewhat more usefully to label upsetting topics. What is lost is the weight I would use it with, an attempt to convey that this stimulus, which might not be a subject, but something like being touched, causes seconds, minutes, hours of flashbacks and relivings. Where the present is replaced with a dissociated reality rooted in the worst experiences.

So I discard the word. The ideas and meaning remain, but now go on a journey to find new language to express this experience. Hoping, praying, that it does not become mainstream, it does not become digested, it does not become algorithmically viable; it does not become profitable.