Elon Musk has uncovered a “woke” goldmine at Twitter’s headquarters, in a more literal sense than you might think.
The company’s new owner shared a video of a storage closet filled with #StayWoke t-shirts on Tuesday night.
“Found in closet at Twitter HQ fr,” Musk tweeted.
Found in closet at Twitter HQ fr 🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/3xSI3KvvHk
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 23, 2022
“Here we are, at the merch,” Musk explained in his own video.
“And there’s an entire closet full of hashtag ‘Woke’ t-shirts.”
An individual off-screen in the video described the woke merch closet as a “secret closet,” suggesting the stash was found in a secluded area of Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters.
In a follow-up tweet, Musk shared a Justice Department report explaining the circumstances of the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
Would you throw all the shirts away?
Yes: 93% (2423 Votes)
No: 7% (193 Votes)
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 23, 2022
The shooting — ultimately deemed a justifiable act of self-defense by prosecutors — spurred Black Lives Matter protests in which the term “woke” was first popularized.
The word “woke” has been since reinvented as a term to describe politically correct, race-obsessed liberals. It’s broadly considered an epithet today.
But that wasn’t always the case.
The term originally had a positive connotation, at least in the eyes of the liberals that used it.
The phrase can trace its origins to the early days of the Black Lives Matter movement, according to Fox News.
Its original definition referred to being awake to the knowledge of supposed wide-scale racism in American society.
The phrase was refitted as a criticism of sanctimonious liberals around 2020. It’s very rare to see the word “woke” used in its original context as of 2022, with liberals having acquiesced to the word’s retooling as a criticism of their worst excesses.
Musk has fired the majority of Twitter’s employees since assuming ownership of the company, expressing his intent to change the business practices of the platform and bring additional free speech protections to the service.
He’s restored the Twitter account of former President Donald Trump, although Trump is yet to return to his old digital stomping grounds as of Wednesday.
