janalsncm 2 days ago

Maybe in 2025 being “woke” means coming to the realization that brick and mortar video game stores have about as much future as Blockbuster, and “DEI” actually means “Amazon and Steam”.

  • reaperducer 2 days ago

    In 2025, "woke" means "anything I don't like."

    • pacomerh 2 days ago

      This is exactly what I've been saying. I've gotten comments from people saying something is woke basically because it's something a democrat would say. But it's not even woke at all. And btw, being compassionate is bad now apparently

    • scarab92 2 days ago

      Woke means reducing individuals down to classes (race, gender etc).

      And then reducing those classes down to either oppressed / oppressor.

      It’s a highly reductive and juvenile way of looking at the world.

      • janalsncm 2 days ago

        That might be one definition but I think the “anything I don’t like” definition is more congruent with the article. In other words, it functions more like a generic slur than a coherent criticism of a thing.

        • scarab92 2 days ago

          [flagged]

          • hex2 a day ago

            Not calling Trump a nazi, but if there were a nazi in the presidential seat, he would disregard the fundamental checks and balances of the US government. He would call anybody different than him "vermin". He would install a bunch of billionaires to his cabinet.

        • charliebitme 2 days ago

          Exactly. A lot of people use it as a dog whistle too. "I'm okay with diversity and representation, when it's not forced down my throat!" Then fails to elaborate on how you accomplish diversity/representation without forcing it down their throat.

          • scarab92 2 days ago

            [flagged]

            • raxxorraxor 11 hours ago

              Whenever you force solidarity, the backlash will consume the rest of it.

              You also have no legitimacy to do that, so people might be inclined to take action against you and it would even be justified.

          • maximus40483 a day ago

            It's easy, you look past silly shit like race and gender and treat people like you want to be treated. We were starting to make progress before the picked fences elitists that were the most isolated from actual diversity decided it would be a good idea to ram wokness down everyone's throats. So far all it's done is make everyone hate each other for no good reason...oh and we all seem to be a lot poorer to.

            • raxxorraxor 11 hours ago

              Pretty much what happened. HR department or government described solidarity.

      • jcranmer 2 days ago

        A couple of months ago, there was a curated list of "woke" games circulating around. One of the games was considered woke solely because an avatar you could pick was of a creature in a wheelchair, something that has literally 0 gameplay impact, but that much of acknowledging that people with disabilities exist was too much for someone to bear.

        GP is right, most of the people complaining about "woke" are complaining about things they don't like, rather than having a particular, coherent theory as to why they don't like them.

      • locopati a day ago

        Alternatively, woke means being alert to a variety of systems that have developed to keep one group in power/control over another (where the groups vary with context).

        It's not so much reductive and juvenile as Wizard of Oz exposing the man-behind-the-curtain. Without being able to see clearly, it's not possible to change things to benefit more people.

      • charliebitme 2 days ago

        The irony of saying "It’s a highly reductive and juvenile way of looking at the world." You can say the same thing about people who scream "woke" about any and everything.

        And that's your definition of the word. Going by other people who use it unironically, you can't come to a consensus on what it means. Literally anytime there's any sort of representation, people scream woke. Person who use American Sign Language in a video game? That's so woke!

        But let's go with your definition of the word. If you're treating everyone equally, while acknowledging and celebrating our differences, what's the issue?

        People, who are obsessed with seeing woke in everything, apparently want to view everyone as amorphous blobs.

        • maximus40483 a day ago

          Why do you need American sign language in a game? Can the def person not read? It wouldn't be to help the disabled as much as it would be to show how inclusive the team making the game is. And it's more of a purity test then a representation of real life.

xyst 2 days ago

I’m still surprised Ryan Cohen still holds a CEO position at GameStop. Besides the brief run up in GME during 2021 (unrelated to performance) leading to short positions getting obliterated, performance of that company has been pretty awful since then.

He’s been trying to so hard to be an Elon of GME by being cryptic on Twitter, but ultimately all of his initiatives have fell flat — trading cards, selling hardware, crypto/NFT marketplace, trying to reposition itself as a platform.

Now he is trying to curry favors by riding the political wave. Almost seems like he is just trying so hard to keep it together by selling off assets.

  • red-iron-pine a day ago

    per our guy Milton, publicly traded companies have no purpose other than generating value for their shareholders, i.e. "stock price go up"

    the CEO's job is to generate that value. in-person game stores may not have much else, so he's getting that stock up however he can as long as he can.

    GME is doomed, but I'll give him props for trying

xnx 2 days ago

We must certainly be nearing the peak of the "fuck around" bubble.

  • charliebitme 2 days ago

    What's the "fuck around" bubble? You mean being an out of touch CEO who didn't keep up with the trends to stay relevant, so he's now using trendy words (conveniently right after the election) to excuse his company's awful performance? I agree.

    • xnx 2 days ago

      It's the phase of a society where leaders, organizations, and individuals make the dumbest possible decisions because they have no sense of why things were done the way they were. It ends when the consequences of external events take effect.

0dayz 2 days ago

It's so interesting that all these companies are all "coming out" to express the "truth" about dei, conveniently right now when a new administration comes along that is radically opposed to it.

Which is not at all just because it's now artificially "trendy" just like how dei/woke was.

  • maximus40483 a day ago

    They aren't expressing "the truth" they are trying to make sales. When woke was popular they were woke when it's not they aren't. Had the last admin not incentivized dei the corpos would of probably of stayed out of it.

_djo_ 2 days ago

Exiting international operations without a clear reason used to spook the markets, so I suppose the new playbook is to blame 'wokeness and DEI' and ride the culture war wave instead. After all, the official market announcement contains no detail other than stating it's a result of 'an evaluation of its international assets.'

The kind of wording he used is so unbecoming of a CEO, too. With any normal company, in any normal time, you'd see the market pummelling the stock. But these aren't normal times and GameStop is a weird meme stock.

freitasm 2 days ago

There's a big move to online game marketplaces because of health restrictions enacted five years ago, but let's blame wokeness, DEI and liberal policies for our failings to identify market shifts in time to prevent negative impact in our operations.

legitster 2 days ago

>“Email M&A@gamestop.com if you’re interested in buying GameStop Canada or Micromania France. High taxes, Liberalism, Socialism, Progressivism, Wokeness and DEI included at no additional cost if you buy today,”

Is there a "wokeness and DEI" movement in France? That has meaningful social or compliance costs? This is a country where the public response to the #MeToo movement was an open letter accusing Americans of being overreacting prudes.

  • orwin 2 days ago

    'Wokiste' recently replaced 'droit de l'hommiste' recently, but practically they mean the same thing.

    We still authored the human rights declaration, so I guess we are woke since 1789 (with a lot of up and downs. Mostly downs).

    We don't have DEI, though you aren't supposed to put a picture on your resume, and if someone can convince a judge a company is discriminatory, it get fined (in practice, only two egregious convictions in the past 10 years). Also you have a quota for people with disabilities if you have more than 49 employees, but it's really flexible (depends on the activity, and it's a tax incentive rather than a real quota like in the US). I guess that last point would be DEI.

talldayo 2 days ago

Admittedly, it will be really funny watching businesses attempt "mask off" schizo marketing maneuvers over the next 4 years. Gamestop is really showing everyone the optimism and long-term hope the games industry is feeling right now...

throwaway4736 2 days ago

[flagged]

  • Pommo88 2 days ago

    [flagged]

    • int_19h 2 days ago

      Weren't you supposed to fix it rather than adding your own to the pile?

    • EA-3167 2 days ago

      If you really understood what that meant, you wouldn't be gloating, you'd be humbly treating other people with respect and hoping that they'd do the same. After all, what goes around, comes around.

      • throwaway4736 2 days ago

        [flagged]

        • philipkglass 2 days ago

          When you see accounts like that:

          1) Downvote their comments (if you have the karma to do it).

          2) Click on the comment timestamps and flag them.

          3) Email hn@ycombinator.com to report the account. Dang is good about killing neo-nazi accounts when notified, but he can't read all the comments here.