FOR – DAIN HOUTS

What is “call-out culture”? “Call-out culture” is a social phenomenon which is when someone calls you out publicly.

It is typically on social media, and it involves things that you’ve done in the past or are currently doing.

What “call-out culture” provides is justice to people who have been denied traditional justice, and many people would believe that it’s a political advantage, but it’s simply not.

It is used when someone has done wrong, whether that be a racist tweet, homophobic rant, or even a sexist article, it helps show the person who wrote the tweet that what they did was insensitive or disrespectful.

Now, I can admit there are bad aspects to “call-out culture,” but as with everything there are bad aspects.

For those people who misuse the platform with malice intent, the original intent for “call-out culture” is to bring light to information.

I am writing about the positive aspects of “call-out culture” because it gets a bad rap, people don’t understand the damage that these Tweets, Facebook posts, and Rants do.

They actually contribute actual laws being made against them.

A friend once told me, “I will not listen to a straight white male because they do not understand the experience that people have gone through.”

I’m not trying to make it an act of oppression, it simply is.

People who call out a racist tweet should bring light to the character of the person, not just simply to show a mistake of a person.

To the people who say “that was the old me”, it’s still a part of you, and I hope you kept an open mind about this article.

It is not intended to change your mind, it’s to bring light to the positive effects of “call-out culture.”

AGAINST – JACKSON WILLIAMS

The past few years, the exponential growth of the importance of the cell phone in culture has seen the creation of numerous social and technological phenomenon. Waterfalls of memes and trends pulverize public conversation continually, and the end cannot be imagined much less seen.

A particularly prickly addition to this new league of culture is called ‘Callout Culture’. ‘Callout Culture’ is a Twitter-borne movement perpetuated by those who take political correctness to an incredibly crooked and selfish extent, pardon my being curt.

The major tenets of callout culture basically consist of the subversion of journalistic protocol, the belief that emotion-based and amateur whistleblowing is a viable means of spreading information, and oftentimes blatant victim playing.

Some may come to the defense of callout culture because it functions as some kind of social liberation of disenfranchised or people that are oftentimes discriminated against (Members of the LGBTQ community and POCs are often the agents of callout culture). While those who feel this way aren’t entirely witless, callout culture fails to adequately deliver social justice, which, may I add, is very important to a free and just society.

Let’s say that, hypothetically, George Clooney calls a camera grip a homophobic slur. Do you honestly think that the problem would be solved by that grip taking an unnecessary 280-word martyrdom on twitter over it? That grip could have lied about the whole thing, and an army of icons would rush to their side in blind defense, which is what the grip may have wanted the whole time. Now the grip is famous and nobody knows if any of the tweets were true. Now there are hashtags and nobody knows if the tweet was true.

The better way to handle such a scenario would be to submit a lead to a publication. This would facilitate an actual, real, palpable investigation of the claim. This would lead to a story that would be much more significant and that would have considerably more reach, should the claim be true. Conversely, should the claim be false, the person who would have made the claim via callout culture wouldn’t get the opportunity to ruin it for the rest of us.

If we embrace social media as a force to replace the journalistic process you’re going to see social and cultural anarchy, and the line between influencer and truth-hunter blurred even more than it already is. It’s not empowerment, it’s ego.

Callout culture is a crutch for thin-skinned people who lack the patience for actual journalistic coverage to be carried out.