I'm not declaring this as a principle, I'm making it as an observation. And it makes me very sad.
With very few exceptions-- mostly those cultural spaces that trade in nostalgia-- it seems that the only entertainment, commentary, comedy etc. that doesn't reflect woke assumptions about the world are those that set out to be explicitly anti-woke or at least non-woke.
The contrast is huge. It's like passing from a coloured world to a black-and-white one. I'm not even using those terms evaluatively. Make the anti-woke subculture coloured or black-and-white as you please. The point is that it's a completely different experience, one way or the other, to the mainstream.
The difference is so huge, in fact, that I've noticed that public figures who turn against woke on one topic (usually people who have been the victim of a witch-hunt for wrong-think) nearly always pass over fully into the anti-woke camp, or at least a good deal of the way. The cynical view of this is that they're "grifters" who've lost one audience and know which side of their bread is buttered.
My less cynical view is that, once the spell is broken, it's broken. Consensus seems less trustworthy; "expert opinion" seems less objective; words like "outdated", "backward", "reactionary", or "problematic" suddenly seem like words, vapour.
That's the bright side. The less bright side is that woke is still the air we breathe, even if it has had to retreat from some of its more ambitious forays. (Excuse the mixed metaphor.)
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