Viral ‘Is It Woke or Not’ Site Claims to Score How Progressive Every Movie and Show Is
Entertainment fans have never had more ways to decide what to watch. Critic scores, audience ratings and streaming charts all compete for attention, and now a new kind of rating is spreading across social media.
It is a website that does not judge whether a film is good, but how “woke” it is. The idea has struck a nerve, and screenshots of its scores have been circulating on X for weeks.
The site is called Is It Woke or Not, and it has quickly become one of the most debated corners of the internet. Its creator says traffic surged after users began sharing results en masse, and the numbers it hands out have turned into instant material for jokes, arguments and outrage.
The concept is easy to grasp. A user types in the name of a movie or TV series, and the site returns a percentage, with a higher number meaning more “woke.” The site also covers celebrities, so you can search for an actor as well.
Behind each result, the site assigns a percentage across 7 different categories and combines them into an overall rating. The categories include things like representation and casting, character or canon changes from source material, and the amount of anti-woke backlash a title drew online.
The site describes its scores as editorial, and says they let viewers know how much ideological messaging a title carries before they press play. Its homepage lists “Top Recommended Picks” alongside a section of “Worst Woke Picks,” and it can be searched by genre, rating and score.
The extremes have driven much of the buzz. The Tab reported that Netflix’s ‘Heartstopper’ landed at 96 percent, while ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ scored 28 percent. The site’s homepage now lists the Marvel film at a much lower figure, a sign that its scores can change.
Emmy-nominated series also became a favorite for comparison. ‘Widow’s Bay’ had the lowest score among the nominated shows at 14 percent, ‘The Pitt’ had the highest at 78 percent, and ‘Abbott Elementary’ and ‘The Bear’ sat in the low 40s.
The reaction has been sharply divided largely because of who is behind it. The Tab reports the site was created by a person who opposes “woke” content, and the homepage encourages visitors to avoid titles that score high.
That makes it a very different tool from a neutral database. Titles at the top of the scale are effectively marked as ones to skip, while more mainstream picks are recommended.
Reaction online has been mixed. Some users have embraced the site as a handy guide, while many others said they first assumed it was satire. Others noted that their favorite shows were being labeled as ones to avoid, and some joked about comparing scores for their own favorite actors and films.
Part of the criticism is that “woke” has no fixed definition, which makes any number attached to it subjective. The same film can land in very different places depending on who is doing the scoring.
Other rating sites have given ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ scores ranging from 1 out of 5 to 48 out of 100, and one site rated it at 58. Is It Woke or Not has also been reported to rely on artificial intelligence that weighs factors such as casting, political dialogue, identity themes, the creator’s past work and cultural criticism, so the output depends heavily on how those factors are weighted.
The site is not alone either. Others, including a separate platform called WokeOrNot that sorts titles into tiers, have followed with their own systems.
Whether it is a useful tool or a curiosity, Is It Woke or Not shows how quickly culture-war arguments can be packaged into a searchable, shareable number. A single percentage is easy to screenshot, and that is part of why it spreads.
For now, the site looks set to keep generating headlines, and arguments, as new releases are scored.
Do you think sites like Is It Woke or Not are useful for choosing what to watch?
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