Examining The Flaws In The "Go Woke, Go Broke" Narrative

[00:00:00]How many times have you heard this phrase before? Go woke, go broke. It's become the internet's favorite catchphrase. Every movie, every television show, every video game, every commercial, every corporation, every time something happens that someone on social media doesn't like, here comes the same recycled slogan, go woke, go broke. And there's a few problems with that.

[00:00:23]One of them is reality doesn't seem to care about that slogan because if go woke, go broke were actually a law of economics, there are a lot of companies that should have been bankrupt years ago. [music] Instead, many of them are making billions. So, today we're going to dismantle one of the internet's most repeated political slogans and ask one simple question. Does go woke, go broke actually predict financial success or failure? Or is it simply a convenient narrative people repeat because it makes them feel like they're winning a culture war?

[00:00:54]The first thing people need to understand is a slogan isn't data, it isn't research, it isn't economics, it isn't business and analysis. It's marketing. That's what go broke, go broke essentially is. It's a political slogan. I mean, think about it. Nobody actually defines what woke means consistently, at least not the usual suspects. Now, those of us who are black Americans, we know at at its core what woke actually means.

[00:01:18]If you ask 10 different people, you'll probably get 10 different answers.

[00:01:22]Sometimes it means diversity, sometimes it means women, sometimes it means black characters, sometimes it means LGBT representation, sometimes it means environmental policies, and even sometimes it simply means I don't like this, point blank, period.

[00:01:37]That's not a measurable business category, it's a moving target. If you can't consistently define the thing you're measuring, how can you confidently claim it caused a company success or failure? That's backwards thinking. [music] People start with the conclusion, then redefine woke to fit it. One of the biggest mistakes people make online is confusing coincidence with causation. A movie flops, it's woke. A game sells poorly, it's woke. A TV show gets canceled, go woke go broke.

[00:02:06]Or maybe, maybe the movie just wasn't very good. Maybe the marketing failed.

[00:02:12]Maybe audiences had franchise fatigue.

[00:02:15]Maybe another blockbuster came out the same weekend. Maybe the economy changed.

[00:02:19]Maybe streaming changed viewing habits.

[00:02:21]Maybe ticket prices went up. Maybe there were dozens of factors. Businesses fail for thousands of reasons. Successful businesses also make bad products. Great products sometimes fail. Average products sometimes become massive hits.

[00:02:35]The world is a very lopsided place right now.

[00:02:38]And internet slogans pretend everything is simple. Here's where this narrative completely falls apart. Notice when Or notice what happens when something labeled woke succeeds. [music] Suddenly, it's quiet. Or the goalpost starts to move. Think about the countless movies, television series, and games that critics often online describe as woke before release, yet still attracted huge audiences or generated substantial revenue. When that happens, people suddenly invent exceptions. They'll start saying, "Well, or this one didn't count. It wasn't really woke after all. It would have made more money. Are you noticing a pattern?

[00:03:16]Failure always proves the theory.

[00:03:18]Success never disproves it. That's not analysis, that's confirmation bias. Real theories can be tested. Political slogan slogans simply move the goalpost. One thing social media has convinced people of is that places like Twitter, YouTube, [music] Facebook, TikTok, and so many others represent the entire population when they really don't. Not even close.

[00:03:38]The loudest voices online often represent a tiny fraction of consumers.

[00:03:43]Millions of people never participate in culture war debates. They simply watch movies, play games, buy products, go to work, raise families. They don't spend 12 hours arguing about DEI.

[00:03:54]They don't even know what half these online arguments are about. Businesses understand this, internet activists don't. Companies aren't trying to sell products only to people posting hashtags all day. They're trying to sell products to everyone. Here's another uncomfortable truth. Corporations are not moral institutions, they're profit institutions. If diversity campaigns, inclusive advertising, or broader marketing make them money, they'll do it. If something stops making money, they'll change course. Corporations have no permanent loyalty. They don't love activists, they don't love conservatives, they don't love liberals, they love quarterly earnings. That's it.

[00:04:33]If say tomorrow the market completely shifted, most Fortune 500 companies would shift along with it because that's what corporations do. They follow consumers, not internet slogans. Here's another thing that really gets discussed. Some failures become political, others don't. If an action movie starring white men fails, people usually blame the script, the directing, the marketing, the competition. If a movie with women, black actors, or LGBT characters was a fail, suddenly the identity of the cast becomes the headline.

[00:05:06]Interesting how all of that works. I mean, I'm sure y'all picked up the double standard immediately. Identity becomes the explanation only when certain groups are involved, and that should raise questions. Success almost never comes from one factor. Businesses succeed because of brand loyalty, price, distribution, quality, marketing, timing, competition, consumer confidence, innovation, >> [music] >> leadership, economic condition, and customer satisfaction. Trying to reduce all of that to one political buzzword is intellectually lazy. No serious economist analyzes billion-dollar corporations that way.

[00:05:43]No serious business school teaches that, and the reason for that is because real markets are complicated. And here's something many people often overlook.

[00:05:51]Culture war outrage itself has become an industry. Entire YouTube channels, podcasts, websites, and influencers, quote and quote, earn money every time they declare something woke. Outrage generates clicks. Clicks generate advertising revenue. The incentive isn't necessarily to be accurate. The incentive is to keep audiences emotionally engaged. Every week there has to be a new outrage, a new villain, a new boycott, a new cultural apocalypse, because outrage pays. And that's worth remembering.

[00:06:25]People online often mistake a loud boycott for an effective boycott. Those aren't always the same thing. A hashtag can trend for a day. Videos can rack up millions of views criticizing a company.

[00:06:36]Meanwhile, millions of customers continue buying the product. The internet often mistakes visibility for impact. Companies don't judge success by trending topics. They judge it by revenue, market share, customer retention, and profit. Those numbers, not hashtags, determine whether executives think a strategy worked. If reality is so much more complicated, why has, quote unquote, go woke, go broke survived? Because it's emotionally satisfying. People enjoy believing their political opponents are being punished.

[00:07:06]The slogan offers a simple story. My side understands the market. The other side is failing. [music] It seems neat.

[00:07:13]It comes off clean and is very repetitive.

[00:07:15]But easy slogans rarely explain complex realities. The market doesn't care about internet catchphrases. Consumers make purchasing decisions for thousands of different reasons. Businesses rise and fall for countless different causes.

[00:07:30]Reducing all of that to one phrase may be emotionally appealing, but it isn't serious analysis.

[00:07:38]So, is every project labeled woke successful? No. Is every project weight label woke doomed to fail? No. That's precisely the point. Commercial success and failure are shaped by a web of factors such as product quality, pricing, marketing, competition, consumer demand, timing, brand strength, and execution. Political labels alone don't reliably predict outcomes. So, the next time someone says go woke go broke, ask them one question. Can they define woke consistently? Nine times out of 10, most likely not. They'll look at you like a deer caught in the headlights.

[00:08:13]Then ask another. Can they show evidence that the slogan predicts success and failures better than the ordinary business factors that affect every company? If they can't, then their repeating isn't an economic principle.

[00:08:27]It's a political catchphrase. And slogans, no matter how catchy, are not a substitute for evidence.