In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins break down the evolution of the culture wars — from Woke 1.0 (SJW/Tumblr era) to Woke 2.0 (post-George Floyd radicalism) and the rapid emergence of Woke 3.0: the anti-AI movement.

They argue Woke 2 is already over. The new front is a performative, high-anger rejection of AI that is more central in left online spaces than race, trans issues, or immigration. Key topics include:

* The edginess pipelines on left vs. right and how the “terrorist left” evolved

* Why anti-AI posting now dwarfs traditional woke content

* Hank Green’s very public apology for using ChatGPT and the forced productivity collapse that followed

* Extreme backlash against AI tools (Leaflet’s VTuber generator, etc.)

* The core arguments the anti-AI side uses (stealing, environment, critical thinking, mental health, creativity, bias, surveillance)

* How this creates a self-selected permanent underclass that deliberately opts out of productivity tools

* Intentional ugliness in media, media fracturing, and the Brave New World “savage reservation” parallel

* Strategy for the pro-AI side and why anti-AI Luddites (left and right) are a liability

This is the real culture war happening right now in the meme minds — the one most offline commentators still haven’t noticed.

Show Notes

The new culture war is between those who are pro-AI and anti-AI, except this is worse than Woke 1.0 and 2.0 because those on one side of the battle are intentionally opting into a permanent underclass.

Headlines:

Vulture: Hank Green Can’t Apologize Enough for Using AI

Mashable: Hank Green apologizes for relying too heavily on ChatGPT

TechCrunch: YouTuber Hank Green says his AI usage is ‘not healthy’

Business Insider: YouTube star Hank Green says he’s relied ‘too heavily’ on AI in an apology to fans.

“Hank Green, one of the internet’s most steadfast and reliable content creators, said he’s slowing down production after fans criticized him for using AI.

“Expect less hankschannel. It may need to pause for a while,” Green wrote. “It may be that Hankschannel comes back with writing and research support. It may be that it comes back with just way fewer videos.” Green said SMUSH and 4x3, two online daily word games he produces, will be paused.

The fresh discourse surrounding Green’s use of AI was sparked earlier that day on X, where he told users he had used OpenAI’s ChatGPT to research a script. The revelation shocked some X users, who suggested that Green undermined his credibility by using AI without disclosing it to viewers.

As tensions grew on X, Green deleted that post and pivoted to Reddit to address the situation. He told Redditors he’s “mortified” that he’s “let so many people down.”

“I have been relying too heavily on AI as a research aid. It can be very useful for this task, giving me access to a lot of papers I didn’t know existed really fast, but I think that has been to the detriment of my work because it has not given me the freedom to find all of my own ways into and around a topic,” Green said.

…

Green told fans that he’s not anti-AI but understands some of their concerns, such as how the tech is trained, its environmental implications, and the consolidation of economic power by tech companies. He ultimately apologized.“It is very likely that you (the reader) and I disagree on how or even whether AI should be used,” Green said. “I think it makes sense for that disagreement to exist. But I have also always believed that my audience is more likely to be right than I am. You know what this feels like in a way I can’t. And I am so sorry for diluting myself in this way and harming the thing that we have all built together.”

In the post, Green said he feels pressure when creating content and will strive to manage himself more effectively. He’ll also address his interactions with AI, which he described as unhealthy.

“But mostly I need to come to terms with the fact that the level of dopamine I’ve been getting from interacting with LLMs...with doing more and more and more and more...is not healthy for me or good for the world,” Green said. “It is careless, and has disconnected me from where people are on this.””

Woke 1.0 and 2.0

According to Shoe0nHead, She frames “woke 1.0” as the 2010s SJW/Tumblr/early BuzzFeed culture-war era, and “woke 2.0” as a potential new, post‑2020 wave that would repeat the same patterns in a more intense environment shaped by bigger structural crises and surveillance/war politics.

I think Woke 2.0 happened as it’s already beginning to fall, becoming subsumed to the next culture war.

* Woke 1.0:

* SJW era

* Anita Sarkeesian discourse

* Tumblr culture

* Oppression olympics

* Early “manspreading” wage gap discourse

* Gamergate

* Destructive rot that paved the way for reactionary Trump-style populism

* Woke 2.0

* Per Shoe0nHead:

* George Floyd protests

* Abolish the police

* I’d add:

* Capitalism is evil

* “Globalize the intifada”

The New Culture War: AI Hate

We realized this was a growing war when Leaflit released her AI Vtubing tool.

Then, Katherine Dee released a short substack post titled “Woke 2” in which she writes:

“One of my running under-theorized theories (that, naturally, I still psychotically want “credit” for calling, whatever credit means, I think in my head it’s being invited to conferences or invited to expand on whatever idea in publications more articulately than I’m doing here) is that we’ll eventually have a “Woke 1.0”-style culture war about technology. I mean, it’s just been in the water for a long time. Just like we’ve always had backlashes against feminism, we’ve also always had techlashes— but I mean, a techlash that has the features of peak woke. Moral panics, opportunists selling “workshops” about how to stay human. I’ve historically been too hard on Jon Haidt—a guy I don’t want to make an enemy of, for whatever it’s worth, please chill with the age-gating stuff man—but in a way, he’s like the Robin DiAngelo of anti-tech sentiment. I just mean that in a market position way—This has been coming in the mail since before the gen AI stuff—see: what’s happening to Hank Green (he accidentally said “I appreciate the pushback” in a YouTube video and now his fans are freaking out, but really, this is becoming about what’s socially sanctioned, I think Ruby Justice Thelot on “Americans love chat and hate AI” is also important here). Like Woke 1, I think Woke 2 is predicated on perfectly legitimate complaints—I’m speaking here about the conversation—not saying “people concerned about AI or tech are somehow ridiculous”. I don’t think tech companies should get free rein to do whatever. I started noticing the whole tech-as-culture-war thing back when I started paying attention to events like NatCon, there was this weird tension between the right wanting to bring Big Tech to new cities in an attempt to revitalize the economy—see: Miami, and then talking about “transhumanism” derisively in the keynotes. It was obvious to me that the next “cutlure war-y” topic would be tech — that’s an unsustainable tension — the right would go luddite, the left would go luddite, then there’d be right and left coded techno-optimists.”

This is what AI racism looks like: A YouTuber openly saying that if he learned a supposedly great video essay used AI for parts of its script, his interest would vanish, because he’d feel he was consuming productivity software rather than a person’s genuine thoughts.

What the permanent underclass says about AI:

* It will reduce critical thinking

* Also from the Business insider article: “In 2025, a survey published by Workday found that nearly half of respondents worried the tech would cause a decline in critical thinking.”

* It will undermine mental health

* Causing AI psychosis

* Encouraging self harm

* It erodes “genuine creativity” and “authentic human expression”

* They view AI as part of a marketing narrative (“frictionless creativity”) that treats the hard, painful parts of creation as a problem to be eliminated, rather than as the very thing that makes creativity meaningful and produces good work.

* AI hallucination is possible

* It will create dependence and deskill people

* It can reproduce or amplify bias in training data

* It will trigger job loss and inequality

* A lot of training data is ultimately repurposed mass surveillance and AI exposes people to new levels of surveillance

* AI is trained on “stolen information” (i.e. copyrighted stuff, human work, etc.

* AI can fuel misinformation and power bad actors (fraud, slop, etc.)

What this culture war will look like

* Death threats

* Apology tours

* Cancellations

* Performative ugliness

* Increasingly fractured media environments

* The p...