Woke, Inc. summary

In 2021, the state of Georgia implemented new voting rules. Many left-leaning groups and individuals were unhappy with these, and, apparently, so were some companies. In fact, the CEO of Delta Airlines declared that the voting bill was “unacceptable and does not match Delta’s values.”

There was something bizarre about the statement. Why should anyone care whether a voting law aligns with the values of an airline company?

In September 2015, Hilary Clinton famously tweeted, “Price gouging like this in the specialty drug market is outrageous. Tomorrow I’ll lay out a plan to take it on.” Soon after, then-candidate Donald Trump echoed her concerns. For pharma companies, the writing was on the wall: no matter which candidate won, the new president's administration would focus on the issue of drug pricing.

But the pharma industry didn’t just wait for the other shoe to drop. First, the CEO of the drug company Allergan, Brent Saunders, pledged to “only” increase prices a maximum of once per year, and “only” by single digits. Other companies followed suit, establishing a new norm of companies increasing their prices by –⁠ no surprise –⁠ 9.9 percent each year.

Emmanuel Cafferty was fired from his truck driving job. What was his transgression, you ask?

Well, while Cafferty was at a traffic stop, another driver flipped him the middle finger, then made the OK sign with his fingers. He yelled at Cafferty to imitate him. Cafferty obeyed, confused and hoping to end the encounter. The other driver took a picture of Cafferty making the OK sign and put it on the internet. When his employer caught wind of the photo, Cafferty was promptly fired.

Midway through 2019, the company Airbnb hired a former deputy director of the FBI, Sean Joyce, as its chief trust officer. His job was to protect user safety on the platform. Yet before the year was up, Joyce had resigned. Why?

Well, it turns out that Airbnb regularly shares data about American users with China’s ruling political party, the CCP. The data it hands over includes phone numbers, email addresses, and messages between users and the company. When Joyce raised concerns about that practice with senior Airbnb executives, he was told “We’re not here to promote American values.”

Not long before the 2020 presidential election, the New York Post ran an article featuring what it claimed was some unflattering information about then-candidate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. It alleged that Hunter had used his father’s name as leverage in his business dealings in Ukraine.

Was the story true? At the time, the information was neither fully debunked nor verifiably true, but Twitter decided to step in regardless. It promptly banned any users who shared the article, prevented individuals from sending it in private messages, and then, finally, suspended the personal accounts of certain New York Post editors and journalists.

As a teenager, the author was almost certain he was going to get into a good college. He had the highest GPA at his school and was involved in plenty of extracurricular activities. But his guidance counselor pointed out there was one area where he was lacking: community service.

So he, along with many of his peers, began spending Saturday mornings volunteering at a local hospital. Except the “volunteering” was in name only. The author mostly used the time to study, while other students competed to see who could do the least amount of work. Everyone knew they were only there to list some community service hours on their college applications.