Get Woke Go Broke

Get Woke Go Broke is an expression typically used to describe the financial consequences that companies who embrace political correctness or cave to the demands of social justice activists will suffer as a result. 

First coined by sci-fi author John Ringo, the phrase was later popularised by online content creators such as The Quartering and Sargon Of Akkad through their analyses of video games like Battlefield V, a World War II shooter which included a female fighter with a prosthetic arm on its cover. 

When fans questioned the creative decisions behind the woke changes to the much-beloved Battlefield franchise, its publisher and many of its developers lashed out. Fans were labelled as ‘racists’ and ‘misogynists’, with EA chief creative officer Patrick Soderlund even going as far as encouraging them not to buy the product.

Unsurprisingly, Battlefield V ended up being a massive flop. 

When corporations and businesses go ‘woke’, it does not just enable a parasitic ideology to forcefully find its way into places where it doesn’t belong, but it also encourages a certain arrogance. While ‘the customer is always right’ may be a controversial statement at the level of the consumer, the new corporate mantra of ‘the customer is always a bigot’ is not controversial at all: it is guaranteed to encourage already disaffected customers to seek business with more deserving companies.

It is indeed easier to notice the results of the ‘Get Woke Go Broke’ phenomenon in the entertainment world—Battlefield V is now one of the hundreds of its victims. But this risky corporate mentality is by no way constrained to the entertainment sector. It is now rooted even in the realm of finance, where it promises unwarranted influence over the life savings of many normal people and may even have dramatic repercussions down the line for a nation’s economy.

A good example is Halifax. One of the biggest banks in the United Kingdom, a very aggressive message on the bank’s Twitter declared that ‘pronouns matter’. The proclamation was then followed up by a message urging customers to seek an alternative provider if they disapproved. 

To no one’s surprise, many customers did in fact listen to Halifax’s proclamation, and vast sums of money were moved elsewhere.

With so much capital on the line, such failures should make anyone question how the PR bodies behind a company’s woke transformation can end up maintaining such high positions of power and influence. This is of course due to the highly toxic corporate culture that has systematically permeated the woke mentality. Corporations now operate in an anti-meritocratic culture: a culture where everyone is expected to think the same, or face ostracisation.

It is true that companies are now more than ready to fire their most skilled employees for the most basic of slights against the woke religion. These staff members are often then replaced with mediocre devotees to the ideology, with CEOs and PR teams believing that the quality of the product will remain the same.

The recent controversy regarding the game BattleTech provides an open window into this worrying trend.One of the game’s leading writers, Blaine Pardoe, was cancelled by his publisher following a series of false claims made by an online stalker, who accused the award-winning writer of hiding “secret confederate messages” in his writings. On another occasion, Pardoe was reportedly told that his mainstream conservative views were “alienating half of the company's customers.” When Blaine pointed out that sales numbers were the same, the publisher told him that “sales did not matter.” 

What makes the story even more jarring is that after Pardoe was cancelled, the woke activist in question—who had pretended for years to be a black lesbian nurse, despite being a man still living with his parents—was offered a writing slot. In what world does this make sense? Imagine being an established and treasured employee of a company only to be unfairly persecuted over baseless accusations and once mainstream moderate political views. 

The irreplaceable talents purged in the name of woke policies are often the silent victims of the ‘Go Woke Go Broke’ phenomenon. Most ironic is the irreparable harm caused by the lapses in quality following such woke purges: a development likely alienating more customers than if the company had remained politically neutral in the first place.

To offer a white pill, however, the companies continuing to employ mediocre nobodies on ideological grounds will likely not be able to survive the coming economic downturn (that is if ESG-inclined banks don’t bail them out). The “sales don’t matter” mentality will be the first to be replaced, and companies will be inclined to think twice about telling their customers to “take their business elsewhere.” Those that refuse to change will indeed ‘go broke’; the talented and hard-working people they once fired will be able to fill the void. 

A Romanian persecuted for trying to put smiles on people's faces. Took over This Week in Stupid (TWIS) video series.

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