Why The Great Awokening Emerged In The 2010s

New technology conveyed a radical message to the masses

Why did everything seem to get so “woke” in the 2010s? There is no clear answer given by the self-declared experts or the media. There’s a general awareness of the “Great Awokening” emerging and trendlines showing when terms like “white privilege” and “nonbinary” hit the mainstream. But why this all happened in the 2010s isn’t spelled out. 

The best explanation for why the Great Awokening emerged in the 2010s is due to the proliferation of social media. Before the 2010s, most people weren’t on social media. The iPhone wasn’t around until 2007. Thanks to smartphones, people could stay logged on 24/7, receiving a constant barrage of news and information. Social media allowed millions of people access to claims and events never heard of before. While the Right was able to utilize this technology as well, the Left gained a far greater advantage from this new dynamic. 

There was also a very willing audience for a woke message. Millennials, disenchanted with Barack Obama’s presidency and their own economic prospects, were open to radical ideas about America and white people. Some of these young leftists took jobs in the burgeoning online media market (which was bolstered by social media) and spread the woke message far and wide. As millions of Americans began to sign up for Facebook and Twitter, the algorithm delivered woke indoctrination right to their feed. 

The emergence of social media’s ability to radicalize emerged in the early 2010s. Two movements–the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street–were able to organize and spread their ideas thanks to social media, a fact the press couldn’t gush over enough. 

Three specific events showed the power of social media to brainwash the population and enforce woke standards. 

The first example was rather harmless, but it illustrates what a few activists could do with the new technology. With just one video and a hashtag, Kony 2012 was able to make millions of Americans care deeply about an African warlord. It was a strongly moralistic message that resonated with millennials and made them feel they could change the world. Soon, college students and high schoolers were sharing the message of Kony 2012. It was a phenomenon that could’ve only happened with social media. Of course, the trend fizzled out and is remembered as a joke. But it showed how people could get organized and obsessed with a topic that they would’ve otherwise ignored.

One such event is the Travyon Martin shooting. The black teen’s justifiable homicide occurred in the Spring of 2012. I remember distinctly how people at my college all of a sudden stopped caring about Kony and started tweeting about Trayvon. Before social media, this would’ve likely remained a local news story. There was a much better chance that the truth would’ve been established early on and George Zimmerman, the man later charged with Trayvon’s murder, would’ve never been prosecuted. But social media had other plans. A false narrative spread rapidly about the case. According to this misinformation, Trayvon was shot in the back by a white supremacist. Pictures of the dead youth showed him as a harmless child (they were in fact old pictures). This narrative solidified in the public consciousness thanks to social media. It also served as a precursor to future hate hoaxes and police shootings that dominated the news of the 2010s. Without Trayvon, there would have been no Michael Brown, no George Floyd, and no race riots over those “gentle giants.”

The third event was the outrage mob against Justine Sacco. In late 2013, Sacco, a random PR professional, tweeted as she was about to board a long flight to South Africa: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” This tweet, sent from a private citizen, became international news. As she was flying and blissfully unaware of what was going on Twitter, she became the target of an internet hate mob. Media outlets, which should’ve ignored the story, made it viral. Once she landed, her life was ruined. She lost her job and was known as a racist throughout the world. Sacco’s story demonstrated how the internet could be weaponized to enforce politically correct standards against both public and private figures. No one was safe from cancellation, and people began self-censoring to avoid Sacco’s fate.

Social media boosted the large number of new media companies. Outlets such as HuffPost, Buzzfeed, Upworthy, Vice, and Mic gamed the algorithm to spread left-wing clickbait. Social media platforms incentivized political content, especially from liberal sources. Facebook was once a place to see what your friends were up to. It soon became an echo chamber of lib talking points. 

Millennials were chiefly responsible for the Great Awokening. Many adopted these ideas over the perceived failure of Obama to deliver the naive platitudes he promised in his campaign (millennials were an earnest, idealistic bunch). Millennials were also aggrieved over increasing student loan debt and their dismal economic prospects following the Great Recession. This generation was also more diverse than any previous generation and more inclined to despise whiteness. A few turned to the Alt Right and libertarianism, but most millennials who became political embraced the Left. This was a ready market to hear all the crazy ideas woke journos and influencers were producing. They were also ready foot soldiers to join internet lynch mobs against Sacco-like figures who violated the codes of PC.

Further events made the masses more hyper-political and thus more susceptible to wokeness. Both online and traditional media whipped America into hysteria over Donald Trump. The violent backlash against his candidacy and presidency created more space for woke ideas. This was fermented by Big Tech’s algorithms that distributed hyperbolic articles and memes about Trump.

Many of the ideas associated with “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” were already around before 2010. They were secluded in academia and didn’t reach the public. New ways of communication helped spread these insidious ideas like never before. 

Woke’s moderation in recent years in large part due to the changes in social media. Many platforms, such as Facebook, changed the algorithm to deprioritize political content. Twitter was taken over by Elon Musk and turned into a right-wing playpen. Ordinary Americans started moving toward relatively apolitical platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. Meanwhile, many of the new media outlets have crumbled or significantly downsized.There’s not as many as journos to lead witch hunts, demand censorship, and talk about the six ways your racist uncle needs to check his white privilege.

The primary audience for this content has aged and got burnt out by politics. Millennials are no longer the youth; zoomers are. Gen Z is a completely different generation. It doesn’t have the earnest drive to change the world (which led millennials to utterly stupid causes). They’re far more jaded and cynical. While many of them embrace left-wing causes, there’s not the same level of passion that inspired millennials to unironically care about Joseph Kony. Zoomers don’t have the social media campaigns and opportunities in journalism to spread crazy ideas. The world has changed since the 2010s. Much of wokeness is still baked-in. But it’s different than before. 

Out of all the explanations for why the Great Awokening blew up in the last decade, my humble opinion is to blame social media and the smartphone.