This isn’t difficult to understand… | NOT Woke vs. Anti-Woke Creation

There is a distinction that a lot of people either genuinely do not understand or are pretending not to understand and I think it is mostly the latter. When we launched Isom number one and it became a massive success, the immediate narrative from outlets and commentators was that the Rippaverse was an anti-woke comic book company. But Gabe and I went on Fox News after that launch and Gabe said it explicitly. This is non-woke. Not anti-woke. That distinction matters and it is not semantics.

In this video I break down what wokeness actually means in the context of media. It is the hyper-fixation on social and political identity to the point where it overrides everything else. Story, character, and entertainment value all take a back seat to making sure the audience receives a specific ideological message. It is not that these stories include diverse characters or touch on social themes. Stories have always done that. It is that the messaging becomes the product and the entertainment is secondary if it is even a consideration at all.

Non-woke simply means the absence of that obsession. It means prioritizing entertainment and letting characters serve the story instead of checking boxes or delivering lectures. Anti-woke is something entirely different. Anti-woke is a direct and spiteful reaction to wokeness. It is the mirror image of the same problem where the messaging is still the product but just pointed in the other direction.

I explain why it benefits certain people to collapse this distinction. If you can lump everyone who is tired of heavy-handed messaging into the same category as people who are just spiteful and reactionary then you never have to engage with the actual criticism. You never have to reckon with the fact that people are not rejecting diversity or representation. They are rejecting bad storytelling that uses diversity and representation as a shield against criticism.
The vast majority of people who complain about wokeness in media just want good stories. They want characters that feel real. They want to be entertained without being talked down to. That is what non-woke means. It is not a political position. It is a creative priority. Entertainment first.