Thread by @ShantMM

My most problematic belief is that woke theory is a way for non-intellectual people to be intellectual.

To put it in less personalized terms: A way for a precarious cultural class to secure and increase its only source of status and potential mobility.

Not that I think it should be a problematic idea. There is nothing inherently good about being intellectual. It's not the same thing as intelligence.

But I suspect that much of its appeal and power is that it is a plug and play system of complex beliefs about the world. People like to feel and sound smart. And for a certain class of people, that is a necessity.

There's a ton of pressure to *be* smart within the cohort of people who partake in woke culture. It's a class of largely young, well-educated, but financially precarious people. Most don't have any true capital (ie, wealth), all they have is *cultural* capital.

This cultural capital is the sole source of their status, and their chief vehicle for any shot at mobility and increasing that status. Being smart is the primary driver of success and worth in this cohort.

So you can easily see how adoption of this belief system would eventually become a baseline prerequisite to stay competitive in this world.

And you can also see how even those who are secure and successful in this class would eventually come to feel pressured from below to adopt this belief system, just to maintain their position and status. Which might explain its takeover of elite professions, especially media.

The execs and top-level talent don't need to be the wokest, that's reserved for the lower-rung strivers. But they do need to maintain a baseline level. Otherwise they expose themselves to lower-rung competition and sabotage.

The high profile media industry cancellations you've seen of late have captured this dynamic perfectly.

And this would all be a #whocare if it wasn't happening in the elite sectors that hold the levers of power in society, shaping policy, politics, and everything really.