Almost any change at all from traditional norms is enough to irritate or enrage true conservatives, or dare I say "trigger" them, even if the change is the natural consequence of living out certain ideas they claim to already adhere to, like liberty and equality. Conservatives have become more and more directly open about dismissing almost anything in the realm of entertainment that does not solely focus on white characters or male characters, ignoring true racism against whites and sexism against men in favor of objecting to something that is neither discriminatory not problematic in other ways: simply having more characters that are not just white or male in prominent roles. A typical statement from conservatives even says that entertainment that does not forgo diversity is destined for financial failure.
"Go woke, go broke" is how the statement goes. I doubt that any conservative has thought very hard about this statement or the ideas behind it because if they did, they could easily see that they are almost always affirming two mutually exclusive things. For starters, they think that many companies, and perhaps especially those in the entertainment industry, care about making profits at the expense of the traditional Western values that conservatives are so emotionalistically enamored with. Moreover, they also think that social pressures are manipulating many companies into being, whether sincerely or not, more vocal about opposing sexism and racism, and that these changes will forfeit the companies money. At the same time, they call almost any attempt to oppose asinine stereotypes about gender and race "woke," hence the phrase "Go woke, go broke."
If companies care about little to nothing besides making money (which conservatives and liberals tend to believe) and "woke" entertainment loses money, then why would conservatives believe both things at once? Together, these are contradictory ideas, and thus only one or neither of them is true! Multiple corporations that only or primarily care about money would not continually invest resources into failing projects for the sake of an ideology they already do not care about as much as profits. Either not all corporations only care about money (someone can realize this is logically possible without real or hypothetical examples) or entertainment projects that genuinely or insincerely oppose things like racism do not always lose money.
Both cannot be true at the same time, and even if all existing companies did care only about money, it would still be true that there is nothing about a company existing that means its members will universally, automatically care only about financial gains. It would also be true that even if all entertainment that condemns irrational discrimination or just is made to superficially appear to, there is nothing about entertainment having this quality that means it will or must be a financial disaster. Moreover, conservatives who believe that any attempt to provide diversity in entertainment casts is a case of "go woke, go broke" contradict themselves if they also believe that some entertainment is only successful because it pandered to diverse audiences.
Of course, not only are these things possible, but there are actual examples of them that go beyond hypotheticals. Even then, recognition by others and popularity or lack of popularity does not prove anything about the nature of a company's or entertainment project's quality; it only reveals something about the reactions to them. Conservatives themselves like to acknowledge in other contexts that money does not determine ideological validity or moral success, and yet when it comes to something like diversity in entertainment, suddenly they talk as if they care about money--and as if companies they think are slaves to money are repeatedly sacrificing major earnings to satisfy a social trend. Of course, realizing the stupidity of sexism and racism (and yes, both genders and all races have been or could be discriminated against) is more than an arbitrary social trend.
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