Minirant: Woke

As an old person, some of my biggest pet peeves are the noises young people make when communicating. “Yolo”, “swag”, “swole”, “fleek”, etc. I understand that slang evolves over time, and is slowly incorporated into our vernacular. Each generation has their own speech patterns and idioms. I still think “rad” is the best. I’m aware that this is just me being a cranky curmudgeon.

The latest one that makes me want to spin out into a violent rage is “woke”. The idea of “being woke” is that you are aware of social issues. It’s often phrased as “she woke as fuck”, meaning, she is aware of social justice issues like her privilege and microaggressions and stuff, to a very high degree. You know, the stuff BuzzFeed writers think about when they touch themselves at night.

My problem isn’t with the idea, it’s with the word. Woke. Woke is the past tense version of “awake”. It’s newfound usage is just shitty grammar. Sure, social issues should be addressed, but must we sound like illiterate children, in order to do so?

It’s the same as my problem with “swole”. As in, “He’s going to the gym to get swole.” The idea is that “swole” means “more muscles”, but it comes out as someone with brain damage trying to words good. Besides, any time you have swelling, it’s the sign of a medical problem, not something to glorify.

How did we get to the point where the dumber you sound, the smarter the topic? Isn’t that backwards? When I hear someone speak like this, my first thought is “our educational system has crumbled”, not “Hmm. I better learn more from this person. They are clearly a role model.”

At some point, morons decided that English was too hard. I mean, three kinds of “to/two/too”? That’s two complicated. Nouns? Verbs? That requires a two digit IQ. They literally couldn’t even. So fuck learning, let’s just change the language. It’s the equivalent of lowering the test requirements because stupid people couldn’t pass the test, and felt bad. Yes. These dolts should feel bad for not being smart. We should shame these people so they try harder to not be stupid. We shouldn’t be encouraging them to stay true to themselves regardless of how unintelligent they are. In ancient times, we would force these people to join the circus. “Hey, after we see the clown and the bearded lady, let’s laugh at the millennial making sounds come out of their mouth while hashtagging.”

Then someone decided that it was racist. It’s racist to force black people to speak English correctly because everything is racist now. I’m not even one of those “this is ‘Murica, so speak ‘Murican” people. I’m just saying that the rules of language exist for a reason. If you’re trying to communicate effectively, words and their usages need to be universal. Sure, I could decide that “moon” means “spoon” and “glass shards” means “ice cream”, but if I told you I was going to use a moon to eat my glass shards, you’d think I was insane. Because I’m not communicating effectively. I shouldn’t just accuse “the man” of forcing me to “comply” with their silly “word laws”.

I shouldn’t have to get a Moron to Human Dictionary just to read the internet. I have a hard enough time trying to figure out whatever the fuck Trump is saying.