Exposing someone who has committed a perceived wrong does not make you a good person and joining the bandwagon does not make you any better.
It destroys lives.
Whether you are a content creator who makes videos to call out social faux pas or a fan who joins the public berating, you are not making society any more pleasant.
It requires zero courage to join a hate brigade. It is not a badge of honor to flaunt.
If someone is being dragged online, you are adding to that only perpetuates the same negativity you dare stand in opposition, from your brave tweets, comments and links.
Dragging a person’s name, getting them fired, making them feel ostracized, directing harassment and bullying all become permissible once someone makes a mistake.
Natasha Tynes on May 10, 2019, posted a tweet critiquing a Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority employee for eating on the train.
Tynes’s mistake was her attempt to leverage social media to handle a situation because she did not like someone breaking the rules. She was immediately branded as racist and harassed online.
According to BuzzFeed News, messages sent to Tynes were very aggressive and demeaning.
“You ugly ass racist bitch, and ur husband is a pussy, I’ll smack the shit out of him,”
“We all know where you work. Stupid, racist, cousin lover, Trump-supporting bitch”
“Terrorist,” “a plane bomber” and “a radical Muslim,” and calls for her deportation.
Can we read these comments and conclude that people are trying to help her understand her mistake? After being ‘canceled’, Tynes told Good Morning America that she landed in the emergency room suffering from a “nervous breakdown.” Callout culture in practice is to penalize someone, not to better our culture. However, these are just comments, random people and maybe the content creators are more empathetic.
Kent Kwan and Vicky Kwan were “called out” on July 2, for harassing Latino workers.
Get it Kent Kwan? Shame on you and your wife.” (Andres Munoz)
A content creator with over 1.7 million followers commented on this video about what he saw as an injustice. He felt no content by saying these individuals just did a bad thing.
Kwan then proceeded to point out their names from their Facebook and Instagram accounts. Then, he showed their LinkedIn. This is trying to draw attention to their employers and make it easier to harass these people on social media.
The world is no better by knowing their employer, which then got review bombed to 1 star. This firm did nothing and is being harassed because they had an employee who was now being targeted.
These comments reek of the self-aggrandizement of knowing they are good people because they are better than the Kwan family.
This content creator’s whole gimmick is to call out people. His bio reads.
“Need someone identified?🔍
Tap below to help👇🏽”
There is no doubt about the creator’s intention: he is exposing bad people and it’s ok because they are racist.
Perhaps you can call out people and ask your audience to not harass them?
In 2022, a famous YouTuber Ethan Klein commented on the controversy surrounding Twitch and OnlyFans star Amouranth. In his commentary, he exposes who he thought was her partner who was accused of beating her. He asked his audience not to harass this individual, and yet this person immediately got harassed. To top it off it was the wrong person. The callout in itself is the problem.
These are only individual cases of the problem of “callout culture.” However, it is emblematic of the broader issue of this practice. We need to get off our high horse and accept people making mistakes. Attacking is only making society worse.
We only perpetuate the same hate we criticize with cancel culture.
Society will forever be in the cycle of hate if we cannot be the bigger person in our critiques. Like an Ouroboros, a snake eating its tail – we will forever be trapped.
