Wake up
| Le mot juste |
| Words have (no?) power |
"WAKE UP" (almost always in all-caps) is a common emotional appeal and ad hominem phrase used by hardcore anti-vaxxers, anti-GMO proponents, white supremacists, and other whack-jobs, although the phrase is almost universally associated with conspiracy theorists. Its usage is usually an indicator that you've wandered into the nuttier tin-foil hat section of the Internet. An idea should be able to stand on its own merits instead of being packed with condescension and emotional appeals.
Typically, the phrase will be at the beginning or end of a rant, and will be followed by whoever the rant is being directed at. Here are three examples:
"WAKE UP, AMERICA!!!!!"
"WAKE UP, SHEEPLE!!!!!!!!!"[1]
"CHEMTRAILS, GMOS, and a MILLION other ways the JEWminatti are trying to KILL us, but nevermind stay ignorant you've already chosen your fate WAKE UP!!!!!"
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[edit] Where to expect this phrase
Any comments section with conflicting views concerning stories that deal with conspiracy theories or woo will have at least one example of this. YouTube and Yahoo! News are gold mines for this; in fact, it's basically a mathematical certainty you'll see this.
Typically, the sentences themselves in which "WAKE UP" will be featured will be guilt-tripping, painful, rambling, paragraph-long run-on sentences with zero commas, LOTS OF CAPS LOCK FOR EMPHASIS, and will contain logic that can best be described as not even wrong. The law of exclamation seems to coincide nicely with the phrase, as there is almost always a gratuitous amount of exclamation marks at the end of the sentence!!!!! These rants often stem from the horror that the majority of people don't subscribe to paranoid, divorced-from-reality theories about society and need to be told to awaken from their slumbers.
In tinfoil hat personal ads (yes, there are such things) and the like, the writers will sometimes say how long they've been "awake." Although it is amusing to do so, it probably isn't terribly productive to suggest that they have been literally awake that long, no matter how stained their coffee mug is in their YouTube ramblings. Besides all that, it's actually a pretty apt term. Consider, notwithstanding the effects on mortality, what the reasoning capacity for an individual remaining conscious for that long would actually resemble, and compare that to their arguments.
Not only can this phrase or variants be found in the sewers of the Internet but also among political pundits (both left and right) whose style of argumentation relies more on demonizing the opposition as "sheeple"/blind/ignorant masses/insert-your-variation-here than making a coherent argument.
[edit] Examples
- "Wake Up Black America" blog (the title is written in all caps), in which the author writes in his bio box: "I'm a staunch free thinking,[2] analytical conservative. I don't subscribe to political correctness. Only sheep do that."
- "...an inability to see things for what they are, a refusal to acknowledge reality...Stupidity, such stupidity among liberals."[3]
- DrinkingWithBob, whose anti-Obama/libertarian rants often end with "WAKE UP!" For example, in his video "You've been Punk'd" Bob ends, "Would you people WAKE UP! Would you WAKE UP!! If you voted for Barack Obama. You've been punked stupid! You've been punked!!"
- Alex Jones
[edit] What to do if you encounter someone using this phrase
Offer them tinfoil This phrase almost always indicates the user is too far off the deep end to even attempt to bring back to reality, as such it's best if you simply walk away from the conversation. Continuing to engage in a conversation will result in a million ad hominem attacks, or 'logic' so brain-meltingly horrifying it will make you lose faith in humanity. In the mind of the "WAKE UP" messenger, any attempts to reason merely confirm the existence of brain-dead, conforming sheeple.