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White leftist politicians and hipsters have already killed wokeness in American culture. They just don’t know it yet.

There’s been this repeating cultural joke occurring throughout my lifetime that, for some reason, never seems to be recognized by those who are ridiculed by its many iterations. That is, when liberal white hipsters adopt any cultural fad, they manage to end the fad by making it spectacularly unpopular in no time flat.

A terrific modern example of this might be liberal white hipsters co-opting fashion and social trends that were prominent in gay culture in the early aughts. Shows like “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” and “Sex and the City” created what was then known as the “metrosexual” fad that swept America. Up to that point, the cultural aesthetic of the urbane, somewhat androgynous fashion trends that were highlighted on the show had largely existed among men only in the gay subculture, making it a unique expression of that specific identity. But once it was adopted by white hipsters, it became part of the cultural status quo, and the trend died almost overnight.

Which brings us to being “woke,” and how it went from being somewhat culturally subversive to being a prerequisite of participating in today’s cultural status quo.

Before 2014, “stay woke” was in common use in the black community, writes Aja Romano at Vox, but it didn’t carry all the weight it’s dragging along today. It simply meant that one should remain “alert to the deceptions of other people” as a “basic survival tactic.”

Most would agree, that’s generally just pretty good advice. It wasn’t until the Michael Brown shooting in that year that it took on a more explicit meaning as it relates to racism in American policing. Despite the fact that Officer Darren Wilson was entirely innocent of any wrongdoing, and was exonerated in the court of law and by several investigations, including an investigation by Barack Obama’s DOJ, the “Hands up, don’t shoot!” lie was so culturally pervasive that the term “woke” began to mean, specifically, keeping “watch for police brutality and unjust police tactics.”

Even still, the term remained pretty limited in its use. It wasn’t until liberal white hipsters and left-wing politicians later coopted the term, however, that it became a catchall phrase signifying the noble opposition to anything radical progressive ideologues don’t like.

All of a sudden, being “woke” began meaning everything that a rich white kid from Menlo Park who attended U.C. Berkeley wanted it to mean, from demanding free college, healthcare, and housing at taxpayer expense to the abolition of law enforcement in the United States.

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