Somewhere along the way, empathy got rebranded. What used to be seen as a strength. Our ability to consider others, to care, to be aware, Got lumped under a single word: woke.

And woke didn’t start as a bad thing. The term originally meant “awake” to injustice. Racial, economic, social, systemic. It was about noticing when someone was being treated unfairly and refusing to look away. In other words, it was empathy in action.

But language has a way of being twisted. Over time, “woke” was reframed, mocked, and politicized. Instead of compassion, people started hearing “performative.” Instead of awareness, they heard “hypersensitive.” What once meant “pay attention to the humanity of others” got turned into a punchline.

I know why, and I know who is mainly responsible. But you can think about that on your own fucking time. Right now, you will read the rest of this. Tysm

And that’s where we are now: in a culture where being considerate somehow gets painted as weakness. Where empathy is seen as softness. Where accountability gets dismissed as overreaction.

But the truth isss. It’s much easier to be dismissive than it is to be empathetic. It takes courage AND brain power to stop, to listen, to imagine the world through someone else’s lens and then to act accordingly.

So maybe the question isn’t when did empathy become woke? Maybe the better question is: who benefits from making empathy look like a bad thing?

Because empathy isn’t the problem. A lack of it is.