Call-out culture

Call-out culture (also known as outrage culture) is the social phenomenon of publicly denouncing perceived racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, national interest, and other forms of bigotry. Denunciation ("call-outs") can happen in person or online.

Kitty Stryker defines call-out culture as the "practice of using social media to hold individuals and groups accountable for their words and behavior". Asam Ahmad defines call-out culture as the "tendency among progressives, radicals, activists, and community organizers to publicly name instances or patterns of oppressive behaviour and language use by others."

Reception

Pamela Paresky says callout culture is a pernicious influence in both the academic and business worlds, citing the controversy at Google over a memorandum concerning the respective vocational interests of men and women, authored by former Google engineer James Damore. Other commentators have argued that callout culture can harm progressive politics by attacking people perceived to have exhibited prejudiced behaviour, rather than using dialogue with such people to change such behaviour. A 2013 essay, "Exiting the Vampire Castle", by Mark Fisher, is often cited as an early critique of call-out culture. Fisher argued that "call-out culture" created a space "where solidarity is impossible, but guilt and fear are omnipresent". Fisher also argues that call-out culture reduces every political issue to criticizing the behaviour of individuals, instead of dealing with such political issues through collective action.

Call-out culture found a vehicle in social media. Both as consumers and as political activists, individuals found a means to communicate to a larger crowd in an expedient and pervasive manner. While call-out culture often publicly denounces perceived acts of bigotry, as stated above, it also refers to the act of publicly calling out a larger entity (such as an organization, business, or vendor) usually by means of social media. In an effort to hold these businesses or organizations accountable, individuals will take to the online forums to "call them out". Whether the individual is addressed by a representative from within the organization or not, some of these posts or tweets (depending on the medium) can go viral and cause a public relations issue for the business.

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt describes call-out culture as a "prestige economy", where "you get credit based on what someone else said if you 'call it out'", and that it has some positive benefits, such as increasing tolerance, but that it can become vindictive when people go too far to misconstrue what others say as insensitive.

The effects of call-out culture are also noted as more prevalent today on college campuses, where most students are aware of the social justice culture that exists and is expressed online. This has included the rise of safe spaces. In 2016, British actor and writer Stephen Fry criticized safe spaces and trigger warnings as infantilizing students and possibly eroding free speech. There are some that are careful to avoid missteps (e.g. cultural appropriation by way of a Halloween costume) in order to avoid public online call-outs and others that are exploring ways to deal with past aggressors by way of calling-out online.

Some feminists argue in defense of call-out culture and contend that it is a form of social activism. The individual calling someone out is ultimately trying to either stop behavior they deem to be negative or prevent it from happening again. Others argue that the call-out culture today tends to be too aggressive and can often have life-altering affects on the individual being called out.

In Kitty Stryker's article "The Problem With Callout Culture", while she defends the principle of calling out injustice, she states that call-out culture may be "encouraging marginalized people to fight each other". She encourages "teach[ing] rather than punish[ing]", and considering that people are all "wounded animals" who make mistakes in life. She suggests that during a call-out episode, that people who are observing the exchange consider the "power dynamic[s]" among the people involved, the response of the person being called out (e.g., whether they are "apologizing, offering to educate themselves" or trying to "save face" and be deemed correct), and the behavior of the person calling out the person.

David Brooks states that the negative aspect of call-out culture is its naivete and its use of "binary [and tribal] thinking in which people are categorized as good or evil". When a person is called out, they can be "rendered into a nonperson" through a "vigilante justice" of denunciation that can "destroy lives without any process", mercy, "awareness of human frailty" and without offering a "path to redemption."

Asam Ahmad says callout culture becomes "toxic" because when it is done on social media, it becomes a "public performance where people can demonstrate their wit or how pure their politics are." . As well, he says that in a call-out, critics tend to forget that the subject of their denunciation is a human being. He expresses concern that the goal of callout culture seems to be "to banish and dispose of individuals rather than to engage with them as people" and he says that there is a "mild totalitarian undercurrent" in progressive callout culture's policing of which people are "in" and "out", due to people's language use.

See also

• Cancel culture
• Concern troll
• Hashtag activism
• Milkshake Duck
• Outrage porn
• Political correctness
• Social criticism
• Social justice warrior
• Victim playing