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Posted on 08/31/2026 10:13:42 AM PDT by Morgana
All the shopper wanted was to buy a laptop.
Instead, a routine trip to a Best Buy turned into a bizarre confrontation over gender, pronouns and whether a customer should be compelled to address a biological male employee as “ma’am.”
Video of the encounter shows the Best Buy employee, who presented with a distinctly masculine appearance, objecting after the customer referred to the employee as “sir.”
The employee insisted on being addressed as “ma’am.”
The customer wasn't having it.
His position was straightforward: the person standing in front of him appeared to be a man, and he wasn't going to be forced to say something he didn't believe simply because an employee demanded it.
You can argue that mistakes happen and that most decent people aren't deliberately looking to insult a stranger.
But that's not what made this encounter different.
The confrontation represented something much bigger: a “woke” ideology that reached its cultural peak several years ago and somehow transformed ordinary human interactions into ideological minefields.
Today, even progressives have a name for that era: Woke 1.
And apparently Woke 1 “was crazy.”
During a recent ABC News interview, progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez repeated a phrase connected to New York City Councilman Chi Ossé: “Woke 1 was crazy.” The phrase has since exploded.
Woke 1 basically describes the cultural and political environment surrounding the pandemic and the upheaval following George Floyd's death, an era when ideas previously considered fringe suddenly became fashionable.
Defund the police, abolish the police, cancel culture, you name it. Identity politics seemingly injected into everything. And increasingly complicated rules governing what ordinary Americans were permitted to say about race, gender and sexuality.
But now some liberal politicians who embraced that environment are distancing themselves from their old rhetoric.
For example, Wisconsin progressive Francesca Hong declared in 2020, “I support defunding the police as a first step towards abolishing the police.” She later moved away from those positions. Ocasio-Cortez has likewise said rhetoric from the lockdown era isn't rhetoric progressives would necessarily use today.
The political winds changed.
Perhaps politicians discovered what millions of Americans already knew: telling people that police departments should disappear, prisons should be abolished or that ordinary language must constantly be reconstructed around someone's personal identity was never going to work in the real world.
Which brings us back to Best Buy. The employee in that viral confrontation appears to be living in a cultural moment that much of the country — and increasingly even parts of the political left — has already begun leaving behind.
Yet somehow even that became a cultural confrontation.
That apparent retreat from Woke 1 hasn't escaped the attention of Joe Rogan, who recently challenged politicians who once embraced the “defund the police” movement to explain exactly what changed.
“How far out did you track the consequences of defunding the police?” Rogan asked. “Because I immediately went to… you're gonna have more crime because no one's gonna be able to stop the crime.”
Then he posed perhaps the most important question:
“What did you think defund the police meant? Everyone's gonna, like, eat mushrooms and we're all gonna, like, be flower children? What did you think? Because there's no police around, no one's gonna do crimes?”
Behind Rogan's sarcasm was a legitimate criticism of the Woke 1 era: what was the actual endgame?
His criticism went further. He questioned whether politicians genuinely reconsidered those policies after examining their consequences or simply abandoned them once public opinion turned against them.
“Or have you changed your opinion?” Rogan asked. “And if you did change your opinion, what were you thinking back then?”
That's the question politicians who embraced Woke 1 should have to answer.
Changing your mind isn't necessarily a bad thing. But when the policy involves policing, crime and public safety, Americans deserve more than a catchy phrase acknowledging that things went too far. They deserve an explanation of why those ideas were embraced in the first place.
For several years, Americans who questioned some of these ideas were routinely told they were the unreasonable ones. Now many of the same political circles that entertained those ideas are acknowledging that maybe things went too far.
Woke 1 is dead, but not everyone is up to speed, like the Best Buy employee. But what comes next?
If politicians themselves now acknowledge that Woke 1 went off the rails, what exactly will “Woke 2” look like?
We'll find out soon enough, but hopefully it won’t include defunding police!
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5 o’clock shadow + prostate = DUDE
His name tag said “Shane”. How many females are named that?
Last I heard on this story, Best Buy has not apologized to that customer, not have they even admitted the customer had received poor service. The Branch Manager should be getting this straightened out. They are probably hoping it will just fade away, with that same snarky Trans demanding to be addressed as though he were female.
I would deal with this by saying, “I identify as religious royalty so please address me as “Your Holiness” during the rest of our conversation.....
As a general rule I avoid unnecessary conflict. The first time the clerk(ess) told me I was wrong, I would apologize for the sake of politeness, leave, and never return.
There are hundreds of millions of laptops, and I can live without the one I would have bought there.
The day will come when one either uses the pronouns or dies. At my age, I would rather die. If I were younger, the other person would die; that’s usually what happens in war.
I don’t have Instagram so I can’t quite
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https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dcg7nfnh5Cs/
It’s taking off on YouTube so before too long people will figure out what store and they will feel the heat.
Two ways to look at this.
“I don’t need to be involved in his fantasy.”
- Texas Rep. Keith Self, talking about a tranny.
“You should never argue with a crazy mind.
You oughta know by now.”
- Billy Joel, Movin’ Out
It depends on the situation. But for many people, the second option might be the better one. Trannies can get violent, fast. And it’s not like a conflict will change anything, anyway.
I don’t think the one pictured is the one who originally demanded to be called ‘ma’am’.
We should be holding a mass protest outside of that Best Buy.
Too many of our guys just have apathy and are entirely uninvolved. Too many love their couches.
“It’s Ma’am”
OK Man. I hear ya Man.
Best Buy Goes Bed, Bath & Beyond?
SUBMIT to the LGBTQ+ Delusion or
you CANNOT Best ... BUY or SELL
Very few I am sure. However in HS my youngest son dated a marching band-mate gal a few times named ‘Shayne’. No mistaking her gender - total fox and she knew it which soon led my son to looking elsewhere.
The wokies haven’t changed. They’re just hiding ther real beliefs.
First They came for the Biologically-Correct Pronouns...
But I didn’t care about Pronouns ...
Then They came for My Free Speech 💬💬💬 ...
But I had to submit to the World Economic Forum and Blackrock ...
Then They came for the Bible-Believing Christians...
But I was not a Bible-Believing Christian...
Finally, they came for Me and My Family...
AND there was No One left to defend us...
“...Best Buy has not apologized to that customer...”
This particular entry happened in a best buy in Biscayne Bay, FL. If I am guessing right Gov De Santos and AG James Uthmeier probably have been informed of the incident and will work on it if they continue their normal work. Notice it didn’t say in the article where this happened and I had to dig to find it. There are over 60 stores in Florida and I’m willing to bet they don’t want publicity like this. They’ll settle and it may only cost them a free laptop.
wy69
Stock to plummet in 3..2..1
“””I don’t think the one pictured is the one who originally demanded to be called ‘ma’am’.”””
True. He is the 12 year old manager that is programmed to believe a dude can be a chick.
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