To me, it's groupthink, but all these people and companies doing it (and companies are run by people) are doing it it for the simple reason.
They are total losers. Not so much about trying to be elite because even the dumbest person knows being a crackpot doesn't make you elite. It just seems so since many of these kinds of people work at liberal kinds of jobs like media. Or their life has become Twitter focused. So they get the benefit of airing out articles and opinion pieces on an hourly basis, while the other 99% of people have a non-media job and dont/cant do this to the same effect.
Low self esteem, emotional, the thinnest skin that even a grade two knock knock joke somehow goes over their head, and deep down they know it. So best way to feel good is to band together with other losers with weird hair, nose studs, and whose family members all think they are odd when the gang gets together for holiday dinners. No doubt, other family members (esp. mom and dad) scold them for being weirdos.
That's why when you see, hear or check out some loud Twitter profile, it's always skewed to a sketchy profile where it looks like the person is an outcast or probably on drugs to boot. You hardly ever see this stuff coming from people who are straight laced or business professionals from a Linkedin kind of person.
That's why so many of them seem to skew to social media where they can be free to say or tweet what they want. Do this in home life or at a normal job and they'll be kicked to the curb, which is what they probably already get but none of us see it.
People should take media less serious. Just because some freelancer got paid $60 to write a half page article on something means nothing. That's like calling my buddy who ran a game site after dinner for probably 10 years (after slogging away at a day job), and calling him a gaming journalist. I wouldnt even call him a blogger.
But some people have a view that: "Some dude has info posted publicly = he must be some bonafide writer". When in reality, it was just a bunch of random gaming shit he'd upload whenever he had time and felt like it.
While I agree entirely with your sentiment, I hate to admit it but the reason why this stupidity has gained so much traction is because what we'd consider "winners" in a social sense are going along with it. Its how its managed to infiltrate and capture so many institutions.
The scary part is that as this has taken hold, "wokism" has become a pathway to success in the same way as adopting a certain accent, manner of dress ("old school tie"), past membership of clubs or social institutions etc. Creates a kind of inside track. Meaning that observing its customs becomes beneficial whether you as an individual actually
believe in it or not.
In the end its all about "showing you belong", a need reinforced by the aggressive way the group will turn upon and expel anyone within its own ranks should they fall out of lockstep. An outcome that's a real source of anxiety for most people, because to undergo that entails a catastrophic loss of status within their peer group.
In my view "Wokism" works like this:
First of all it presents an unambiguous moral "good" to hook people into thinking that an adherence to their cause is equally morally good. This is of course a fallacy, because people have been doing bad things for purportedly "good" reasons since time immemorial, but its still appealing in a superficial way especially if the inductee has a pre-existing sympathy for the cause being championed.
Part of the trick of course is that in a lot of instances this pre-attachment comes from a (likely subconscious) place of guilt or anxiety. Wanting to be "good" is pleasing to the ego, failing to be "good" is destructive to that self-image. No one is perfect, everyone has done or said things at one time or other that they regretted, so by harping on that they are working on an emotional need for acceptance as a morally upright individual - already reinforced by past experience.
This why you often see the most outspoken and fervent adherents having the most skeletons in their closet, they've already learned the "sting" of doing the wrong thing.
The next step is the most insidious part; the weaponization of guilt, individually and collectively. The same feelings described above are turned outwards and the ego is left unchecked. Hence, you are either "on the right side of history" (an incredibly egotistical presumption) or a "deplorable". An entirely emotional judgement based in past experience where they received peer-group praise for reciting the dogma, and censure for doing/saying the wrong thing in the past.
Status up versus status down in simple terms, and "doing the work" involves inflicting this mindset on everyone else.
This is why none of it actually makes sense. They prate about empathy but seek to destroy witches and heretics. They preach tolerance and compassion but are utterly intolerant of dissent and offer no redemptive path for the fallen. Scratch the surface and at all levels of application Its just about status and ego.
Basically as a mechanism its powerful because it preys upon all our worst instincts as humans. Tribalism, anxiety about social status, and an almost superstitious fear of the "other". The last thing because they need an implacable enemy to overcome, they need a great Satan that can never be truly defeated only suppressed through piety and vigilance. That's how the train keeps rolling.
