Many people predicted that the SARS-CoV-2 virus crisis spelled the end of ‘woke’ culture (also known as the Twitter blue checkmark people, the social justice warriors). In fact, woke culture created this crisis in the first place. Had it not been for the social media outrage, the virus would have played out very differently. For example, the UK was initially planning a herd immunity strategy (i.e. no lockdowns) but social media outrage forced them to reverse course (time will show this was a mistake, if it’s not clear already).
Now after losing interest with the virus, social media outrage has turned its eye onto a new topic. As with the virus, it started with a legitimate issue (police harassment of black people in the US) but then quickly degenerated by the outrage positive feedback loop into nonsense (calls to tear down the statue of Churchill in London, looting and occupying a district of Seattle).
What the woke people don’t realize is that they’ve already won. They control the global narrative and most of the institutions (both government bureaucracies and private company workforces). Unfortunately the people fuelling this collective hive-like outrage behaviour don’t understand what they’re doing and the swarm isn’t able to provide discernable goals or intelligent solutions to bring actual progress. The fury unleashed on anyone who doesn’t conform, and the collective mind-time consumed by everyone dealing with the outrage, is effectively subjecting the world to a massive outrage tax.
What is the solution? Social media isn’t going away. The world population needs to develop a herd immunity to outrage, similar to how we’ve developed immunity to advertising. This will happen slowly as people realize what’s happening. Until then we can expect a new outrage cycle every quarter or so.