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Valve don't exactly like to give out sales numbers, so we often have to make educated guesses but sometimes with huge hits like Black Myth: Wukong, it gives us a slightly clearer idea on how the Steam Deck is actually selling.

For a while I've been tracking the top sellers lists on Steam to see where the Steam Deck ranks. It's important for us especially that it does well, since it's a Linux device (SteamOS) flowing out into the hands of the public. And masses of improvements there benefit Linux gaming as a whole from driver improvements to Proton upgrades.

The thing is, the top sellers lists on Steam go by revenue, not units sold. The Steam Deck costs (in comparison) a lot more compared to games so naturally it will rank quite high anyway most of the time. But, here's where the fun begins. Black Myth: Wukong is a huge hit, a truly massive seller. According to the official X/Twitter account, by August 23rd it had hit already 10 million sales across all platforms. Right now another 4 days later, both VG Insights and Gamalytic put it somewhere around 14 million sold just on Steam.

When you look at the global top seller list on Steam right now, removing free to play titles so just those you have to pay for you end up with:

  1. Black Myth: Wukong
  2. Steam Deck
  3. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2
  4. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

All three of those games will be selling a lot and the cheapest of them (Black Myth: Wukong) is £49.99. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 for example, is currently the second most-wishlisted game on Steam while also being a top seller on pre-orders. So, this shows pretty darn well in no uncertain terms, that the Steam Deck from Valve is also clearly selling a lot of units too right? Probably quite a few more than a lot of people thought. Likely even more than I thought recently too. Keep in mind that by November last year, Valve said the Steam Deck had already sold "multiple millions".

Perhaps no surprise then when we see developers getting their games Steam Deck Verified well ahead of release, like the upcoming Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

So then, how about Fortnite on Linux / Steam Deck? Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said when it hits "tens of millions of users" that it "would actually make sense to support it". We must be pretty close by now right? Why ignore a platform that's sold multiple millions, and is clearly just continuing to fly off the shelves?

But, another thing, this also goes to show that Valve are likely in no rush at all on a Steam Deck 2. They simply don't need to do one right now. Also shows why Valve continue to roll out new Steam Deck features on Steam like the reviews filter, a most played games chart and why there's no rush to get SteamOS on other devices.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Tim Sweeney is a prick. And I don't care for Fortnite in the slightest. I'm waaaaay to mature for that crap.

Yeah something a "mature" person would say 😂🤦‍♂️

People who use the term "mature", don't even see the irony of their statement

Aleo Dragon Age: Veilguard looks like a terrible, woke mess. Do not recommend.

I have already played Space Marine 2 on my Linux box, it works great if your hardware can handle it. It runs at about 28 fps on my laptop running arch. Story has been quite good so far and it plays kind of like God of War with guns.

And if steamcharts show about 1.5 million Steam Decks and we presume there are alot more, how do we account for the difference?


Last edited by Cato-the-younger on 28 August 2024 at 8:27 pm UTC
dvd Aug 28
Tim Sweeney is a prick. And I don't care for Fortnite in the slightest. I'm waaaaay to mature for that crap.

Yeah something a "mature" person would say 😂🤦‍♂️

People who use the term "mature", don't even see the irony of their statement

Aleo Dragon Age: Veilguard looks like a terrible, woke mess. Do not recommend.

I have already played Space Marine 2 on my Linux box, it works great if your hardware can handle it. It runs at about 28 fps on my laptop running arch. Story has been quite good so far and it plays kind of like God of War with guns.

And if steamcharts show about 1.5 million Steam Decks and we presume there are alot more, how do we account for the difference?

What is woke?
slaapliedje Aug 29
Tim Sweeney is a prick. And I don't care for Fortnite in the slightest. I'm waaaaay to mature for that crap.

Yeah something a "mature" person would say 😂🤦‍♂️

People who use the term "mature", don't even see the irony of their statement

Aleo Dragon Age: Veilguard looks like a terrible, woke mess. Do not recommend.

I have already played Space Marine 2 on my Linux box, it works great if your hardware can handle it. It runs at about 28 fps on my laptop running arch. Story has been quite good so far and it plays kind of like God of War with guns.

And if steamcharts show about 1.5 million Steam Decks and we presume there are alot more, how do we account for the difference?

What is woke?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpPBCx_vHYA
What is woke?
Depends who you ask. Originally it came from a comment made by some black guy and had to do with waking up and smelling the coffee about racist shit. Antiracist liberals adopted it. Some of them got finicky about it.

Because of this, American alt-right Republicans and those influenced by them, who have a serious hate on for the mere idea of admitting that racism exists and has real impacts because, like, they're the beneficiaries, have begun using the term to mean "Absolutely anything I don't personally like, all of which shall now be considered evil and communist".

In the context of a game, it probably means something like, some of the characters are different races, genders, orientations or whatnot, which is terrible and woke because nature intended that all game characters be manly, muscular white males. Or it could just be any random thing, which got designated "woke" just because an anti-woke type didn't like it.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 29 August 2024 at 5:59 am UTC
TheBard Aug 29
So then, how about Fortnite on Linux / Steam Deck? Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said when it hits "tens of millions of users" that it "would actually make sense to support it". We must be pretty close by now right? Why ignore a platform that's sold multiple millions, and is clearly just continuing to fly off the shelves?

I've seen more consistency in /dev/random's output than Tim Sweeney's statements.
What is woke?
Depends who you ask. Originally it came from a comment made by some black guy and had to do with waking up and smelling the coffee about racist shit. Antiracist liberals adopted it. Some of them got finicky about it.

Because of this, American alt-right Republicans and those influenced by them, who have a serious hate on for the mere idea of admitting that racism exists and has real impacts because, like, they're the beneficiaries, have begun using the term to mean "Absolutely anything I don't personally like, all of which shall now be considered evil and communist".

In the context of a game, it probably means something like, some of the characters are different races, genders, orientations or whatnot, which is terrible and woke because nature intended that all game characters be manly, muscular white males. Or it could just be any random thing, which got designated "woke" just because an anti-woke type didn't like it.

Not quite. Woke is putting in LGBT, different races and random "representation" and "diversity and inclusion" for absolutely no reason where they have no place.

Take Amazons "Wheel of Time" TV adaptation. They randomly put black and Indian characters into Two Rivers that was stated in the books to be a village isolated from the outside world for 2000 years with the occassional peddler coming by to share news of the outside world. They were described as essentially "white Englishmen" in the books. However, there were many other nations in the books - with Turians being similar to Indians/Arabs, the Sharans being essentially Nubia (and black), the Seanchan being Asians/Japanese, etc. Instead of staying true to the source material they start putting in "diversity and inclusion" into things in a forced manner when there was already alot of it in the books just in different ways. And this is not the only example.

If we take Veilguard, it is based in DA:O that didnt have this and in fact seems to be forcing this entire narrative into places it makes no sense. If they made a new IP where that made sense and it wasnt done in a forced way nobody would have a rpoblem with it.

Take Concord for example, nobody wants to play the game because the "diversity snd inclusion" feels forced and in your face.

In addition, the forced "diversity and inclusion" is only applicable to white people but not other races. All black movies and shows (yes those exist) for example are not forced to put random white people or asians or whatever into their product where they have no place. For some reason white people are.

It has nothing to do with "right wing" or "white people benefitting from it" and everything to do with it 1) being in your face 2) forced 3) forcing it into places where it doesnt make sense. If it was about the "right wing" ooga booga that people claim, Wukong and Stellar Blade would never have been successful as its made by the Koreans/Chinese. They were just a good games, didnt force "diversity and inclusion" on anyone and were interesting.

Woke is essentially a manifestation of the "Social Justice" religion heavily based on and sharing similarities with Puritan movements. It has the concept of Original sin, Christian Ressentiment, it has rituals, Mass and all the trappings one could attribute to the Puritan denomination of Christanity. Just with a different name and manifestation.


Last edited by Cato-the-younger on 29 August 2024 at 4:59 pm UTC
Tim Sweeney is a prick. And I don't care for Fortnite in the slightest. I'm waaaaay to mature for that crap.

Yeah something a "mature" person would say 😂🤦‍♂️

People who use the term "mature", don't even see the irony of their statement

Aleo Dragon Age: Veilguard looks like a terrible, woke mess. Do not recommend.

I have already played Space Marine 2 on my Linux box, it works great if your hardware can handle it. It runs at about 28 fps on my laptop running arch. Story has been quite good so far and it plays kind of like God of War with guns.

And if steamcharts show about 1.5 million Steam Decks and we presume there are alot more, how do we account for the difference?

What is woke?

See my response above
What is woke?
Depends who you ask. Originally it came from a comment made by some black guy and had to do with waking up and smelling the coffee about racist shit. Antiracist liberals adopted it. Some of them got finicky about it.

Because of this, American alt-right Republicans and those influenced by them, who have a serious hate on for the mere idea of admitting that racism exists and has real impacts because, like, they're the beneficiaries, have begun using the term to mean "Absolutely anything I don't personally like, all of which shall now be considered evil and communist".

In the context of a game, it probably means something like, some of the characters are different races, genders, orientations or whatnot, which is terrible and woke because nature intended that all game characters be manly, muscular white males. Or it could just be any random thing, which got designated "woke" just because an anti-woke type didn't like it.

Not quite. Woke is putting in LGBT, different races and random "representation" and "diversity and inclusion" for absolutely no reason where they have no place.

Take Amazons "Wheel of Time" TV adaptation. They randomly put black and Indian characters into Two Rivers that was stated in the books to be a village isolated from the outside world for 2000 years with the occassional peddler coming by to share news of the outside world. They were described as essentially "white Englishmen" in the books. However, there were many other nations in the books - with Turians being similar to Indians/Arabs, the Sharans being essentially Nubia (and black), the Seanchan being Asians/Japanese, etc. Instead of staying true to the source material they start putting in "diversity and inclusion" into things in a forced manner when there was already alot of it in the books just in different ways. And this is not the only example.

If we take Veilguard, it is based in DA:O that didnt have this and in fact seems to be forcing this entire narrative into places it makes no sense. If they made a new IP where that made sense and it wasnt done in a forced way nobody would have a rpoblem with it.

Take Concord for example, nobody wants to play the game because the "diversity snd inclusion" feels forced and in your face.

In addition, the forced "diversity and inclusion" is only applicable to white people but not other races. All black movies and shows (yes those exist) for example are not forced to put random white people or asians or whatever into their product where they have no place. For some reason white people are.

It has nothing to do with "right wing" or "white people benefitting from it" and everything to do with it 1) being in your face 2) forced 3) forcing it into places where it doesnt make sense. If it was about the "right wing" ooga booga that people claim, Wukong and Stellar Blade would never have been successful as its made by the Koreans/Chinese. They were just a good games, didnt force "diversity and inclusion" on anyone and were interesting.

Woke is essentially a manifestation of the "Social Justice" religion heavily based on and sharing similarities with Puritan movements. It has the concept of Original sin, Christian Ressentiment, it has rituals, Mass and all the trappings one could attribute to the Puritan denomination of Christanity. Just with a different name and manifestation.
So, yeah, like I said. In more, and more defensive, words, but basically exactly what I said.
Consider taking a step back from your outrage about things being the wrong races to ask yourself "Why do I even care, when lots of other people apparently don't?"


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 29 August 2024 at 5:35 pm UTC
What is woke?
Depends who you ask. Originally it came from a comment made by some black guy and had to do with waking up and smelling the coffee about racist shit. Antiracist liberals adopted it. Some of them got finicky about it.

Because of this, American alt-right Republicans and those influenced by them, who have a serious hate on for the mere idea of admitting that racism exists and has real impacts because, like, they're the beneficiaries, have begun using the term to mean "Absolutely anything I don't personally like, all of which shall now be considered evil and communist".

In the context of a game, it probably means something like, some of the characters are different races, genders, orientations or whatnot, which is terrible and woke because nature intended that all game characters be manly, muscular white males. Or it could just be any random thing, which got designated "woke" just because an anti-woke type didn't like it.

Not quite. Woke is putting in LGBT, different races and random "representation" and "diversity and inclusion" for absolutely no reason where they have no place.

Take Amazons "Wheel of Time" TV adaptation. They randomly put black and Indian characters into Two Rivers that was stated in the books to be a village isolated from the outside world for 2000 years with the occassional peddler coming by to share news of the outside world. They were described as essentially "white Englishmen" in the books. However, there were many other nations in the books - with Turians being similar to Indians/Arabs, the Sharans being essentially Nubia (and black), the Seanchan being Asians/Japanese, etc. Instead of staying true to the source material they start putting in "diversity and inclusion" into things in a forced manner when there was already alot of it in the books just in different ways. And this is not the only example.

If we take Veilguard, it is based in DA:O that didnt have this and in fact seems to be forcing this entire narrative into places it makes no sense. If they made a new IP where that made sense and it wasnt done in a forced way nobody would have a rpoblem with it.

Take Concord for example, nobody wants to play the game because the "diversity snd inclusion" feels forced and in your face.

In addition, the forced "diversity and inclusion" is only applicable to white people but not other races. All black movies and shows (yes those exist) for example are not forced to put random white people or asians or whatever into their product where they have no place. For some reason white people are.

It has nothing to do with "right wing" or "white people benefitting from it" and everything to do with it 1) being in your face 2) forced 3) forcing it into places where it doesnt make sense. If it was about the "right wing" ooga booga that people claim, Wukong and Stellar Blade would never have been successful as its made by the Koreans/Chinese. They were just a good games, didnt force "diversity and inclusion" on anyone and were interesting.

Woke is essentially a manifestation of the "Social Justice" religion heavily based on and sharing similarities with Puritan movements. It has the concept of Original sin, Christian Ressentiment, it has rituals, Mass and all the trappings one could attribute to the Puritan denomination of Christanity. Just with a different name and manifestation.
So, yeah, like I said. In more, and more defensive, words, but basically exactly what I said.
Consider taking a step back from your outrage about things being the wrong races to ask yourself "Why do I even care, when lots of other people apparently don't?"

Nothing at all what you said.

You talked about racism, whereas I did not. You talked about stuff "not benefitting white people", whereas I did not. In fact I countered both of those arguments. You tried to make fun of "nature intended all characters be white" and didnt address my point regarding that npbpdy has problems with "diversity and representation" when it has a place in the world and story. Instead you try to make it about "white people being insecure"

Thats the level of argumentation of a feminist, "men dont like successful women because they are intimidated", which is simply dumb and nonsensical 🤦‍♂️

I care because, narratives arent just harmless little stories but are attempts at social engineering (yes its a thing and yes "democratic" governments engage in it), it also degrades the quality of art. It also has further downstream knockon social effects that dont end up benefitting you.

Just because you "dont care", doesnt mean it doesnt have an effect on your life.

As a wise Greek once said, "you can avoid Politics, but Politics will not avoid you".


Last edited by Cato-the-younger on 29 August 2024 at 8:23 pm UTC
Eike Aug 30
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It also has further downstream knockon social effects that dont end up benefitting you.

Which ones?
slaapliedje Aug 30
So then, how about Fortnite on Linux / Steam Deck? Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said when it hits "tens of millions of users" that it "would actually make sense to support it". We must be pretty close by now right? Why ignore a platform that's sold multiple millions, and is clearly just continuing to fly off the shelves?

I've seen more consistency in /dev/random's output than Tim Sweeney's statements.
It also has further downstream knockon social effects that dont end up benefitting you.

Which ones?
The current ones that seem to be popping up is where certain people can't get promotions or hired because of their ethnicity isn't 'diverse' enough. There are lawsuits, for example, against IBM for not promoting someone who has been at the company for decades, but was told more or less that he would not be promoted because he wasn't diverse enough... then you have Gina Carano suing Disney for wrongful termination, etc. If you go looking through various codes of conduct (Gnome for example) and they're clearly racist against people who are white.

'Woke' is basically an ideology that says the minorities should be the majority and that the majority should bend the knee for being awful.
What is woke?
Depends who you ask. Originally it came from a comment made by some black guy and had to do with waking up and smelling the coffee about racist shit. Antiracist liberals adopted it. Some of them got finicky about it.

Because of this, American alt-right Republicans and those influenced by them, who have a serious hate on for the mere idea of admitting that racism exists and has real impacts because, like, they're the beneficiaries, have begun using the term to mean "Absolutely anything I don't personally like, all of which shall now be considered evil and communist".

In the context of a game, it probably means something like, some of the characters are different races, genders, orientations or whatnot, which is terrible and woke because nature intended that all game characters be manly, muscular white males. Or it could just be any random thing, which got designated "woke" just because an anti-woke type didn't like it.

"Woke" the term in fact comes from a Leadbelly song, a black American folk singer. He's quite awesome, many artists have covered his songs though he died a long time ago (1888–1949). "There's a Man Going Round Taking Name" is a good one, Johnny Cash among others covered it. Nirvana covered "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" on their Unplugged album.

"Woke" has real meanings beyond the pejoratives you alluded to:

"In brief, “woke” means having awakened to having a particular type of “critical consciousness,” as these are understood within Critical Social Justice. To first approximation, being woke means viewing society through various critical lenses, as defined by various critical theories bent in service of an ideology most people currently call “Social Justice.” That is, being woke means having taken on the worldview of Critical Social Justice, which sees the world only in terms of unjust power dynamics and the need to dismantle problematic systems. That is, it means having adopted [critical postmodern] Theory and the worldview it conceptualizes.

Under “wokeness,” this awakened consciousness is set particularly with regard to issues of identity, like race, sex, gender, sexuality, and others. The terminology derives from the idea of having been awakened (or, “woke up”) to an awareness of the allegedly systemic nature of racism, sexism, and other oppressive power dynamics and the true nature of privilege, domination, and marginalization in society and understanding the role in dominant discourses in producing and maintaining these structural forces. Furthermore, being woke carries the imperative to become a social activist with regard to these issues and problems, again, on the terms set by Critical Social Justice. This—especially for white people—is to include a lifelong commitment to an ongoing process of self-reflection, self-criticism, and (progressive) social activism in the name of Theory and Social Justice (see also, antiracism).

Historically, the term “woke” has been used somewhat extensively in slang throughout the twentieth century to refer to a state of awareness of the discrimination, disenfranchisement, and mistreatment of blacks, especially in America, and it is in that sense always had some connection to the critical mode of thought in the New Left. (See also, black liberation, liberation theology, false consciousness, and consciousness raising.) The term is alleged to have gained its first contemporary connotation in 2008 with the Erykah Badu song “Master Teacher,” in which Badu envisions and dreams of a world of racial equality and then advises genuine activism with the admonishment that listeners should “stay woke.” The term developed from there, particularly via black activism on Twitter.

The term then gained particular significance and tied itself to the contemporary Social Justice movement in the mid 2010s as it became an activist watchword of the Black Lives Matter movement. There, say following the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the phrase “stay woke” took on the very specific meaning of being aware of the reality (according to critical race Theory) of systemic racism in American society that activists blamed for being at the root of the incident. This has, in turn, led to the term being nearly synonymous with having a critical consciousness as provided through critical race Theory, although it has been appropriated through intersectional thought to apply to other issues of identity relevant to postcolonial Theory, queer Theory, feminism, and so on. It has since expanded and memefied further and is now seen from the outside as being wholly synonymous with having been converted to a Social Justice critical consciousness. As such, “wokeness” often refers to both critical Social Justice doctrine and the state of having accepted it.

In that “wokeness” has become a term directly associated with the critical consciousness provided by applied postmodern theories, especially critical race theory (see also, postmodern, Marxian, Neo-Marxism, Post-Marxism, and Cultural Marxism). As such, it is centrally concerned with being aware of the intersecting systems of racism, sexism, and other forms of alleged societal oppression and analyzing these in terms of privilege. This is most often done, under woke consciousness, by engaging in discourse analysis, especially using close reading, which enables racism (or other systemic bigotries) that are assumed to be present in all situations to then be read into them. This is then treated as proof of the systemic problem that was assumed to exist in the first place (see also, mask). Being “woke” would entail being able to “see” the intersecting web of dominance and oppression that arises from the function of privilege in society and taking up efforts to challenge, disrupt, subvert, deconstruct, or overthrow the existing system in the attempt to bring those unjust intersecting power dynamics to an end (see also, Matrix of Domination)."
Marlock Aug 31
dude's sour he can't get no more Conan-style white male dom RPGs so he says there's "forced" (you don't HAVE to play that game, you know?) LGBT, race and etc variations... which is totally "not how the world REALLY looks like"... on a freaking fictional world where an undead ancient dragon commands magical hordes

noice!

ps:
you can totally still get your Conan fix... go play God of War

Dragon Age: Anything is a horribly poor and buggy execution of a great story moto... "woke" is not even in the top 100 things that make it a bad game series... i mean, who remembers a dragon in DA:O spawning halfway into the floor?!!


Last edited by Marlock on 31 August 2024 at 12:48 am UTC
Marlock Aug 31
As for Valve, the only thing i'm sad about regarding the steam deck is that they STILL haven't even started direct sales of the steam deck in my country...
This item is not available for purchase in your region
...while bad resellers are a plague here
So then, how about Fortnite on Linux / Steam Deck? Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said when it hits "tens of millions of users" that it "would actually make sense to support it". We must be pretty close by now right? Why ignore a platform that's sold multiple millions, and is clearly just continuing to fly off the shelves?

I've seen more consistency in /dev/random's output than Tim Sweeney's statements.
It also has further downstream knockon social effects that dont end up benefitting you.

Which ones?
The current ones that seem to be popping up is where certain people can't get promotions or hired because of their ethnicity isn't 'diverse' enough. There are lawsuits, for example, against IBM for not promoting someone who has been at the company for decades, but was told more or less that he would not be promoted because he wasn't diverse enough... then you have Gina Carano suing Disney for wrongful termination, etc. If you go looking through various codes of conduct (Gnome for example) and they're clearly racist against people who are white.

'Woke' is basically an ideology that says the minorities should be the majority and that the majority should bend the knee for being awful.
When you can show me a place where white males make less money on average than minorities, or have less wealth on average than minorities, I'll start to care. If you look at the stats, you will notice that there are NO signs of this coming close to happening. And despite all the anecdotal whining, they've done experiments in the US: They do sets of loan applications and job applications in pairs that are identical except one has a typically "white-sounding" name attached to it and the other has a typically "black-sounding" name attached to it. The ones assumed to be white get hired more often, get the loans more often, and if both get the loans the "black-sounding" name on average gets charged a higher interest rate. So for now all the bitching and moaning from white males about how terribly they're treated because of wokeness and reverse discrimination is going to get from me a sad song on the world's smallest violin.

God, I just get so ashamed of what fucking wimps many of my fellow white males are.
What is woke?
Depends who you ask. Originally it came from a comment made by some black guy and had to do with waking up and smelling the coffee about racist shit. Antiracist liberals adopted it. Some of them got finicky about it.

Because of this, American alt-right Republicans and those influenced by them, who have a serious hate on for the mere idea of admitting that racism exists and has real impacts because, like, they're the beneficiaries, have begun using the term to mean "Absolutely anything I don't personally like, all of which shall now be considered evil and communist".

In the context of a game, it probably means something like, some of the characters are different races, genders, orientations or whatnot, which is terrible and woke because nature intended that all game characters be manly, muscular white males. Or it could just be any random thing, which got designated "woke" just because an anti-woke type didn't like it.

"Woke" the term in fact comes from a Leadbelly song, a black American folk singer. He's quite awesome, many artists have covered his songs though he died a long time ago (1888–1949). "There's a Man Going Round Taking Name" is a good one, Johnny Cash among others covered it. Nirvana covered "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" on their Unplugged album.

"Woke" has real meanings beyond the pejoratives you alluded to:

"In brief, “woke” means having awakened to having a particular type of “critical consciousness,” as these are understood within Critical Social Justice. To first approximation, being woke means viewing society through various critical lenses, as defined by various critical theories bent in service of an ideology most people currently call “Social Justice.” That is, being woke means having taken on the worldview of Critical Social Justice, which sees the world only in terms of unjust power dynamics and the need to dismantle problematic systems. That is, it means having adopted [critical postmodern] Theory and the worldview it conceptualizes.

Under “wokeness,” this awakened consciousness is set particularly with regard to issues of identity, like race, sex, gender, sexuality, and others. The terminology derives from the idea of having been awakened (or, “woke up”) to an awareness of the allegedly systemic nature of racism, sexism, and other oppressive power dynamics and the true nature of privilege, domination, and marginalization in society and understanding the role in dominant discourses in producing and maintaining these structural forces. Furthermore, being woke carries the imperative to become a social activist with regard to these issues and problems, again, on the terms set by Critical Social Justice. This—especially for white people—is to include a lifelong commitment to an ongoing process of self-reflection, self-criticism, and (progressive) social activism in the name of Theory and Social Justice (see also, antiracism).

Historically, the term “woke” has been used somewhat extensively in slang throughout the twentieth century to refer to a state of awareness of the discrimination, disenfranchisement, and mistreatment of blacks, especially in America, and it is in that sense always had some connection to the critical mode of thought in the New Left. (See also, black liberation, liberation theology, false consciousness, and consciousness raising.) The term is alleged to have gained its first contemporary connotation in 2008 with the Erykah Badu song “Master Teacher,” in which Badu envisions and dreams of a world of racial equality and then advises genuine activism with the admonishment that listeners should “stay woke.” The term developed from there, particularly via black activism on Twitter.

The term then gained particular significance and tied itself to the contemporary Social Justice movement in the mid 2010s as it became an activist watchword of the Black Lives Matter movement. There, say following the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the phrase “stay woke” took on the very specific meaning of being aware of the reality (according to critical race Theory) of systemic racism in American society that activists blamed for being at the root of the incident. This has, in turn, led to the term being nearly synonymous with having a critical consciousness as provided through critical race Theory, although it has been appropriated through intersectional thought to apply to other issues of identity relevant to postcolonial Theory, queer Theory, feminism, and so on. It has since expanded and memefied further and is now seen from the outside as being wholly synonymous with having been converted to a Social Justice critical consciousness. As such, “wokeness” often refers to both critical Social Justice doctrine and the state of having accepted it.

In that “wokeness” has become a term directly associated with the critical consciousness provided by applied postmodern theories, especially critical race theory (see also, postmodern, Marxian, Neo-Marxism, Post-Marxism, and Cultural Marxism). As such, it is centrally concerned with being aware of the intersecting systems of racism, sexism, and other forms of alleged societal oppression and analyzing these in terms of privilege. This is most often done, under woke consciousness, by engaging in discourse analysis, especially using close reading, which enables racism (or other systemic bigotries) that are assumed to be present in all situations to then be read into them. This is then treated as proof of the systemic problem that was assumed to exist in the first place (see also, mask). Being “woke” would entail being able to “see” the intersecting web of dominance and oppression that arises from the function of privilege in society and taking up efforts to challenge, disrupt, subvert, deconstruct, or overthrow the existing system in the attempt to bring those unjust intersecting power dynamics to an end (see also, Matrix of Domination)."
I put the wall of text in spoiler tags.
Spoiler, click me
Your comment sounds erudite but has a lot of conspiracy theory stuff in it. I'm kind of disappointed. It makes it sound as if the sort of social-justice-progressive people were all in a tightly-knit organization with a firm ideology and like entrance exams or something. This is utterly not the case. Like the right wing social movements, progressive liberals and the few actual leftists around communicate and organize largely through social media. However, for the antiracist liberals and the left, that's about it--they're decentralized and lack cohesion, either organizational or ideological. There is no hegemony of any maximalist interpretation, or any particular interpretation at all. Indeed, while there is plenty of university-based scholarship around race, people influenced or even very aware of that stuff are in the minority in the movement. Rather, it is driven largely by patterns of events that people got pissed off about, and in the case of the young white portion of the movement, by a cultural shift towards exploring minutiae of one's sexuality as part of the process of creating an identity, which has gone together with a tolerance and indeed embrace of difference in general.

As to that university scholarship, most of the specific theories you mention have little relevance to "wokeness" and are not related to each other in the ways you seem to think they are. The associations you draw are, frankly, typical of right wing conspiracy theories about what and who their ideological opponents are and what drives them, and bear little resemblance to either actual liberal and left movements or actual liberal and left scholarship. I feel the right really like associating liberal and left movements with abstruse academic ideas (some of which don't actually exist) because it means they don't have to perceive these movements as primarily reacting to real world events and conditions, which would give them more legitimacy.

So for instance, hardly anybody in the woke crowd gives a damn about postmodernism, nor are their intepretations of events driven by it. Hardly any of them are any kind of Marxist or know anything about any kind of Marxism--if they were, they'd be talking about class and economics far more than any of them ever do. Marxists interpret racism largely as an attempt by the bourgeoisie to divide the working class, so they fight each other rather than ganging up on the rulers; W.E.B. Du Bois talked about the "social wage of whiteness" as basically a sop to lower class whites to trick them into backing their own economic disadvantage along with that of blacks. Nobody in the Woke crowd ever talks about that stuff because they are not Marxists.

And critical race theory has very little to do with postmodernism except in the sense that almost everything in universities outside the hard sciences has been somewhat influenced by postmodernism since the 80s or so--but at this point that influence has mostly faded to a general acknowledgement that interpretation of events or texts is hard to set in concrete. Critical race theory also has virtually nothing to do with Marxism. All it is, really, is study of American history while looking at what happened to blacks.

And "Cultural Marxism" isn't a thing. There is nobody in the world who identifies as a "Cultural Marxist" and never has been. There were a few Marxist scholars in what got called the "Frankfurt School" who talked about culture some, and there are still a few people in the world who pay attention to their ideas, but they didn't found an ideology and they were not influential in the academy much less anywhere else. The only people who ever mention "Cultural Marxism" are right wing conspiracy theorists (public service note to everyone else--if you are ever talking to someone and they mention "Cultural Marxism", it is a tell that they are into far right conspiracy theories). Also as far as I can tell, while there may be academics who talk about things that could be described as Neo- or Post- Marxism, nobody actually interested in real world left wing politics ever does.

(Incidentally, the decentralization of antiracist liberalism and of the left are not genuinely mirrored on the right. The right can appear equally decentralized because their ideologies are also worked out in a bunch of social media locales but in fact are not, because they are driven and shaped by lots and lots of money; a lot of the discourse on those decentralized social media environments is created by a rather less decentralized group of PR companies and "think tanks" funded by a small number of very wealthy men, particularly in the fields of oil and tech, along with agriculture and mining. If neoliberal "free market" "free trade" globalization was an ideology built particularly by the finance sector, the modern alt-right has been and is being built by fossil fuel industries, which is why it is so strongly marked by denial of climate change and various related features; tech monopolists have only recently gotten involved in funding the far right, so it's not too clear what imprint they will leave on it. Both the "woke" sensibility and actual left wing ideology are genuinely disorganized because nobody with money has any use for them.)
So in summary: Your description of the early origins of the term "woke" is fine. But your description of the current "woke" movement, its relationship to scholarship, and the nature of the scholarship it's supposed to be related to, are completely bogus. The "woke" movement does not have a cohesive ideology, it's more of a sensibility. But virtually none of it is either postmodern or Marxist and most of it isn't influenced strongly by academic theories at all.
dvd Sep 1
I'm sorry for trolling. Living under a fascistoid authoritarian regime I cannot help but be annoyed each time i read 'woke' or 'liberal', and quite a few other catchphrases. It is usually unrelated to the original meaning to the word itself, or to the original movements intentions, and more to do with right wing sycophants, who turn these words inside out then spread idiocy faster than light.

Further red-flag words for me are random phrases taken out from philosophy or the social sciences, like 'postmodern marxism', 'critical race theory'. If enough of your countrymen go down this road, it will surely lead to the ruin of your country. The people spreading this kind of shit can lead a country to ruin.

It also absurd how often this comes up under videogames. I mean i understand that we gamers as a whole are not the most mature crowd, but come on, how is this crap taking over the more technical or informational points you want to see? Is the game idea fun? Are the controls well tuned? Does it have the amount of content that was advertised?

For this game in particular i see it as unfortunate that the devs made an idiotic comment about 'wokeness' too instead of just communicating, 'look, we made a sick-looking, fun game'.


Last edited by dvd on 1 September 2024 at 8:54 am UTC
melkemind Sep 1
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Why ignore a platform that's sold multiple millions, and is clearly just continuing to fly off the shelves?

Cause Sweeney hates us.

Maybe he does, but I bet he loves money more than he hates us. Eventually, even he will come around.
So then, how about Fortnite on Linux / Steam Deck? Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said when it hits "tens of millions of users" that it "would actually make sense to support it". We must be pretty close by now right? Why ignore a platform that's sold multiple millions, and is clearly just continuing to fly off the shelves?

I've seen more consistency in /dev/random's output than Tim Sweeney's statements.
It also has further downstream knockon social effects that dont end up benefitting you.

Which ones?
The current ones that seem to be popping up is where certain people can't get promotions or hired because of their ethnicity isn't 'diverse' enough. There are lawsuits, for example, against IBM for not promoting someone who has been at the company for decades, but was told more or less that he would not be promoted because he wasn't diverse enough... then you have Gina Carano suing Disney for wrongful termination, etc. If you go looking through various codes of conduct (Gnome for example) and they're clearly racist against people who are white.

'Woke' is basically an ideology that says the minorities should be the majority and that the majority should bend the knee for being awful.
When you can show me a place where white males make less money on average than minorities, or have less wealth on average than minorities, I'll start to care. If you look at the stats, you will notice that there are NO signs of this coming close to happening. And despite all the anecdotal whining, they've done experiments in the US: They do sets of loan applications and job applications in pairs that are identical except one has a typically "white-sounding" name attached to it and the other has a typically "black-sounding" name attached to it. The ones assumed to be white get hired more often, get the loans more often, and if both get the loans the "black-sounding" name on average gets charged a higher interest rate. So for now all the bitching and moaning from white males about how terribly they're treated because of wokeness and reverse discrimination is going to get from me a sad song on the world's smallest violin.

God, I just get so ashamed of what fucking wimps many of my fellow white males are.
Ah, so what you're saying is the cure for racism is more racism? I believe that the answer to it is fairness across the board. There's a culture issue going on, it has less to do about what color your skin is and what culture you're from. There are a lot of individuals who escape that culture, and others do not.

If people are getting screwed over based on what color their skin is, than it is wrong, period. That's the whole purpose of discrimination laws.

Ironic with the names, considering I see more people these days who have parents who weren't imaginative enough to name their children something new, instead they just spell it weird. One of the people I used to hang out with was named Mycal, for example... But he was a white dude. You should probably read some Thomas Sowell. Very enlightening.
dude's sour he can't get no more Conan-style white male dom RPGs so he says there's "forced" (you don't HAVE to play that game, you know?) LGBT, race and etc variations... which is totally "not how the world REALLY looks like"... on a freaking fictional world where an undead ancient dragon commands magical hordes

noice!

ps:
you can totally still get your Conan fix... go play God of War

Dragon Age: Anything is a horribly poor and buggy execution of a great story moto... "woke" is not even in the top 100 things that make it a bad game series... i mean, who remembers a dragon in DA:O spawning halfway into the floor?!!
Ha, I play Conan Exiles to get my Conan fix.
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