Granted, the actual definition of “woke” is a far cry from what the media, especially you tubers and the Twitter mob make it

Well, that's the whole problem with the term. Its pure double-speak.

The same guys bitching and moaning about "Woke Cancel Culture" in 2023 were screaming "Wake Up Sheeple!!!" in 2013. There's a billboard on my way to work sponsored by Houston's Second Baptist Church that reads "Become Awake, Not Woke". Pure gibberish. Its all meaningless pablum.

People on both sides but especially the right call it the “woke virus”, when wokeism is basically just being aware of the societal pressures put on people of different races, genders etc.

More broadly, it means to be aware of any culture war issue. Anti-abortion folks were as happy to co-opt the word in their messaging as talk radio jockeys were to sneer at it when discussing civil rights for minorities and immigrants. Tax protesters have made generous use of the term since at least the Reagan Era. Go back far enough and you'll even see variations of it used in the Red Scare media campaigns of the 60s and 70s.

It goes back to the presumption that agreement equals enlightenment. And the anti-Woke sentiment is functionally just a reworking of the old Know-Nothing politics of prior centuries.