Callout culture is bullying culture, mobbing culture, SJW pile-on culture. It's wrong, and it's evil.
Bullies cannot be allowed to win. Callout culture must be countered by anti-callout culture.
Mr. Brooks, please try to be relevant again. This peace says nothing about today's society. It may say something about human nature in general; but that's it. People aren't any meaner than they used to be. They just have different outlets for it that allow them to be safely anonymous. I happen to watch the new CNN anthology about style through the decades in America. In the 40's white men (mostly soldiers) beat up black and Hispanics for the audacity to wear non-conforming zoot suits instead of the accepted gray flannel uniform of the day and people were black balled for not conforming politically. Not exactly a more civil time.
14
So.... basically the call-out culture is the equivalent of a digital lynch mob. No one stops to even ask the person being lynched their side of the story, or cares to look at context and scope. Or care what happens to them.
An anonymous mob of angry, frustrated people has always been one of the most dangerous things on the planet. Their anger often has little or nothing to do with the subject of the lynching -- it's just a catharsis.
I've been there. When some of the marchers from Charlotte got identified and lost jobs, I cheered. I still can't feel bad about that. When Roseanne Barr lost her job, I was glad -- the things she posted had disgusted me. I have mixed feelings about that now.
I'm not sure what the answer is to this -- how to reign in the worst of mob mentality on a platform that empowers it (and where the power of a good mob can do amazing things).
36
Interesting timing. Read this just after seeing that Kirsten Gillibrand declared her candidacy for President. What qualifications does she really have that stack up to other Democratic contenders? That she was the first to opportunistically call out Al Franken? Impressive portfolio. Timely, but a bit pathetic.
43
This is the current punk scene? This is not the anarchy-loving nihilists that come to mind.
12
Those who are part of the call-out culture sound stooooopid. Maybe that's all it is: stupidity.
17
You thought of Mao and Stalin. I thought of someone from the good ole USA: Joe McCarthy. I guess that's no surprise.
22
What in the world is the graphic accompanying this article supposed to say other than that the photo editor is prejudiced against skateboarders and people with metal, studded belts?
14
@Steve Fankuchen, I too thought that this was an odd photo selection to use.
9
As a college aged person, I’m certainly skeptical of the limits of a “call out culture”. The lack of space for a personal connection that breeds empathy, forgiveness, and true learning is troubling.
That said, I think the premise of this article is a little silly. As a person who’s done a decent amount of internet commenting, I assure you I never drew any sort of pleasure akin to orgasm from it. Oftentimes, I left the encounter frustrated by the lack of real dialogue, my only recompense a vague sense of moral superiority. I’d be more interested in a study that looked at how frequent these sorts of extreme, real life outcomes of a call out culture are. Otherwise, we’re only relying on anecdotal evidence that plays more into our fears and biases than the realities of said culture.
I mean if we’re really getting into it, I think the issue is really with the nature of social media, not the nature of man or any single generation of people.
25
Religion is the paragon of 'call out culture.'
21
Good "he said, she said" article. I would expect more from the NYT.
4
"once you give random people the power to destroy lives without any process, you have taken a step toward the Rwandan genocide."
Oh, give me a break, Brooks.
7
I remember reading about this exact story from another writer. ??? What's up David Brooks? Is it ok to use someone else's work to make your own point? Am I doing a call-out?
3
In my opinion David you and your beloved conservative brotherhood are the last people to tell us how to do social change. Were to start? Your sunny champion Ronald Reagan started his career closing Cal. State mental hospitals sending the inmates to the streets and in many cases from there to the prison system. He called out students for being snotty and the mentally ill for being sick. Or tearing the solar panels off the White House roof. Calling out Jimmy Carter for not being manly with his sweaters and sun power. Calling out the Welfare Queens for being under educated and poor. HW's Willie Horton because Michael Dukakis was soft on crime. Or your boy Newt Gingrich Calling out Nancy Palosi for her San Francisco family values, or all the rest of your pals in the Republican Party. You just wrote a piece on how your guy really only want to to some good for the country. Frankly from my vantage point on the West Coast I just don't see it. Pundit heal thy self.
22
Live by the Instagooglefacechat, die by the.. well, you know.
7
I would classify the use of social media as a violent crime, causing at least as much damage as conventional weapons.
9
It only stops if we all stop it - by questioning the call-out, by refusing to participate in the mob, by pointing out the inhumanity of destroying someone for something they did wrong, rather than guiding - pushing - them towards the right thing.
We can't turn into a world where screwing up at one point in your life means that you can never redeem yourself. When we find out that someone has done something evil, we have to find out what they have done since - has their behavior changed? Have they atoned? Have they demonstrated a sincere change? Have they apologized? If so, then in all but the rarest of cases, the past should not be brought forward. If not, if they continue to endorse or believe in the rightness of what they have done or if they refuse to take responsibility, or they lie, then they continue to be worthy of criticism. Otherwise, there will be nearly no one on the face of the earth deemed worthy of humanity.
Mob justice has never been a great way to run the world.
18
Dear Mr. Brooks,
A timely and timeless essay reminding us that once a society goes down this virulently infantile road righting all wrongs by making all wrongs equal, it won't take long until the disgruntled all across the ideological spectrum follow Al-Qaeda's lead (Remember them? They took AK-47s to ancient sculptures of Buddha carved into the mountains of Afghanistan because they were an affront to Islam) and start smashing sacred cows all over the place.
And you're exactly right about how thin the crust of civilization truly is. Just watch the evening news.
Cordially,
S.A. Traina
12
One of Brooks’s rare good columns, though the language is a bit hysterical. As terrible as losing your job is, it’s not the same as being murdered by a tyrannical government.
2
After the Election of Trump, I decided to do a deep dive into the darkness that is the internet. After all, I thought, if the internet can make a monster like Trump the president than it was my civic duty to fully understand what the internet had become.
Being a liberal Democrat, I fully expected to side with the so-called "Social Justice Warriors". To my horror, I discovered that these SJWs were often far more vicous and filled with hate than any member of the alt-right. Is this what liberals want to be? Is this what Americans want this country to become? Do we really want to continue to grant hate mobs the power to destroy a person's life over a momentary lapse of judgment?
I've come to the conclusion that it is the responsibility of rational liberals to wrestle back control of the national conversation from the SJWs. For if a SJW becomes president one day... we are all in deep deep trouble.
26
Ms. Smug here. Never used Facebook, never will.
And, told you so.
12
Ironically, David Brooks' latest column is itself an example of the "moral one-upsmanship" that he deplores in the "call-out culture."
3
What does the graphic accompanying Brooks' column illustrate other than that the photo editor is prejudiced against people who use skateboards or wear studded belts?
2
Hmm.
Is this a disguised plea from David Brooks for a lot of us to stop calling him out for sins he committed as a card carrying derp spewing Republican of the highest magnitude for all those years.
As when, for one of many examples, while Paul Krugman was showing, in real time, with the actual numbers and magic asterisks, that Paul Ryan was a flim flam man when it came to the budget in 2011, Brooks was praising Rand Ryan as if he were the second coming economically and politically.
David, we don't necessarily hate you. But we surely don't love you. So stop trying to get a pass on at least saying you are sorry for all the false equivalence nonsense you have been peddling all these years.
Admit forthrightly that you were Oh so wrong about the emptiness of the Republican party over the last two or three decades, since the saintly Ronnie in fact.
And swear to never write another political column -- ever -- in the NYT.
Stick to the sociology book reviews, which you do have some talent for.
7
Live by 'outing"; die by 'outing'.
6
If you want to write a column about Steve King, and try to explain to me how a racist deserves to sit in Congress defending white supremacism, and any curbs on him are just "cruelty," have the guts to write that column. Don't tell me a story about a little boy in Kansas who wanted a choo choo, or a dog on Mars who had no friends because he was green, and hope the Steve King fans recognize their hero, and the ones who are outraged by Steve King have been softened by your homily.
3
How is it possible for David Brooks to be so consistently useless? He is like a precision-guided missile, relentlessly homing in on the most-obtuse analysis of current events.
While democratic institutions erode in the face of a radical rightwing movement that leverages racism and hate to enact an enormous and merciless transfer of wealth to billionaires, Brooks jizzes out a column that does not even cast a glance at power relations or identify who benefits from the GOP's program of racist hyper-capitalism.
The sensibility that views Brooks as worth publishing is the same one that publishes Judith Miller and is unable to defend itself against Trump's attack on truth and reason.
Dear David Brooks - please shut up!
8
Another example: republicans from Nixon to Reagan to Cheney to t rump calling those who disagree with them UnAmerican, traitors, the enemy of the people, bums or dirty hippies.
David Brooks writing about the punk rock scene, anywhere U.S.A., borders not on the absurd but on the insane.
I really wish I could keep that New Years resolution to stop reading his drivel.
6
“Do we really think cycles of cruelty do more to advance civilization than cycles of wisdom and empathy?”
If it were true, Hitler’s Germany would have been the apex of civilization.
3
Great points here, but I'm not sure how a few isolated instances of disproportionate reaction to nasty but legal behavior really shed light on broader social phenomena we are witnessing right now. There has been plenty of "but what about the reputation, emotional well-being and dignity of serious abusers?" coming from people who should know better - even some who were even complicit in covering up abuse scandals, and should be repentant, not brazenly defensive. Also, another possible hypothesis: maybe Donald Trump's coarse language and willingness to use public humiliation as a political tool is more influential in encouraging public humiliation than the behavior of a few misguided young people?
7
"Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect" - Jonathan Swift
6
I think that Donald Trump needs to read your column, David.
4
"The crust of civilization is thinner than you think."
David, it couldn't possibly be.
2
Touché. David Brooks. Thank you.
2
I listened to the podcast. Herbert is clearly sick and damaged and using Emily as a way of working out his own issues.
Our culture is sick and getting sicker.
And good God, if that kid could stop using the word "like" every other word in a sentence.
2
People have forgotten that other people having feelings and that it is really immoral to hurt other people.
Tell men what on earth can justify the vile terrible hurt and pain that goes into these punishments.
Finally two wrongs do not make a right.
Make this a better by being a better person and bring love into this world.
3
Economy.
The word is not used by Brooks in this essay.
Hmm. How about that.
1
Agree totally.
People today can't tell the difference between a snarky comment and slavery. Anything is now Everything.
3
There appears to be an element of sadism towards anyone who does not conforms to a group's set of norms. When I was a university student picking tobacco in a gang of 4-5 'primers' we were all tough and inured to the long hours of back-breaking work under a hot sun. Whenever someone left and a new primer arrived, we made a concerted effort to quite literally drive him into the ground -- wear him out, force him to quit, and it often did. It was a trait of most tobacco gangs and and we laughed it off as a rite of passage that earned our respect. Only in retrospect did I realize that the rough, masculine group-think was a mask for individual shame.
3
The solution would be to teach high school and junior high school students about consent and about sexual harassment in sex ed.
But we live in a country where most schools teach abstinence and parents don't want their kids to learn about condoms and other birth control methods, or about the biology of sex. So revenge it is.
1
Beautifully expressed. We are spiritually and intellectually adrift without any anchors, and this is one of the consequences. Thank you for the article.
2
Well Mr Brooks, your fellow conservatives have spent decades demonizing libs, feminists, gays, blacks, latinos, you name it, as un-American, un-human, etc. But millenials call each other out too much and NOW we're watching civilization crumble? Right.
15
"Society enforces norms by murdering the bullies who break them."
What in the world are you talking about? There's a difference between being socially ostracized, and being, y'know, murdered.
"Suddenly there’s no distinction between R. Kelly and a high school girl sending a mean emoji."
What in the world are you talking about? R. Kelly should be in jail. No one is saying "throw this school girl in jail."
"Really? Do we really think cycles of cruelty do more to advance civilization than cycles of wisdom and empathy? I’d say civilization moves forward when we embrace rule of law, not when we abandon it. I’d say we no longer gather in coliseums to watch people get eaten by lions..." [because moral people taught us]
Really depends on what you mean by "embrace rule of law," Mr. Brooks. If you mean "don't murder people for posting emojis 10 years ago," then okay... sure. But that's not happening.
Bringing up the Coliseum here is strange, I think. You should listen to "Painfotainment" by Dan Carlin. He lays forth the idea that one reason we don't have Coliseums any longer is because religious people started to handle these kinds of executions as a cleansing act of sorts. IE: I may have been a bad person, but through my suffering in this moment, before God, I am forgiven. And the onlookers, equally religious, would have sympathy for the person. And that's the exact opposite purpose of public mutilation--which is to instill fear, a hatred of n'erdowells.
"You also see how once you adopt a binary tribal mentality — us/them, punk/non-punk, victim/abuser — you’ve immediately depersonalized everything." You are a thoughtful guy, David; I appreciated this piece. It is indeed an ugly part of our culture. I see it in our politics, too. I read everyday with dismay stories that are in effect call-out episodes rather than news. There is the same viciousness, pettiness, group-think hysteria, and the same glee. I see this directed at actors who don't tow the line, comics who stray from the PC line, the wives of politicians who don't dress the part. We are in a nasty time, which reminds me of something engineered by the Chinese communists, a PC Cultural Revolution with the dunce caps, public trials, the tears, and then the best part of all, the executions. We are relying on sensible people like you to call this out. It is a disgrace.
2
I am suggesting to my children's school to take this editorial as a discussion topic for the student council.
1
People are as cruel behind your aback without social media, in my opinion. It just gets there faster maybe and more can witness the destruction and cruelty. Back in the day and still now, people used telephones on the wall to spread malicious gossip, back-stab their friends, stir up trouble and be mean. Then little cliques and gangs were formed to attack one person or a couple maybe. It's young mean girls and bully boys who learn it from their old mean mums and old bully dads, and it's also revenge seekers who think spreading poison doesn't infect them. Which it does. I never participated in it, because it doesn't feel good on the other end. Ever feel it? maybe one day you will and you'll stop. Grown women and men ought to cut it out and stop leading by example to the younger ones. As someone once told me, "They don't lick it off the ground!"
1
Maybe we shouldn't be too quick, to advise them from putting that Tide pod in their mouth.
Is mental illness more prevalent in American society than in others? Mental illness plus hate plus guns all wrapped up in the Internet make our country dysfunctional and incapable of governing ourselves and prospering in the democratic manner in which we have become accustomed.
It saddens me that as we move forward to honour and respect the complexities and nuances of gender, race, and all the details of personal identity, that we are abandoning the complexities and nuances of thought, actions, and judgment.
8
The political left, more so than the political right, has adopted the internal morality of puritanism. Look at how Al Franken was denounced and defenestrated with no thought to due process or proportionality. Those who led the movement to get him to resign did so because they thought it would help them politically, and they are being rewarded as leading contenders for the 2020 presidential nomination. Denouncing and sacrificing those who deviate from orthodoxy is a brittle and unstable political system, one that will eventually split and devour itself, just as happened to the Maoist Cultural Revolution and the Stalinist purges.
.
Political strength in the long run comes from leaders who embrace mercy and forgiveness. We rightly accuse the GOP of being the party of hate, and they are to outsiders, but they often forgive their own members to protect and nurture them. Republicans show love to Republicans, if not to anybody else. Internally, the Democrats are the party of hate, litmus tests, and nights of the long knives. When seeking the answer to why Democrats so often fail to win politically despite better ideas, look at how we treat fellow Democrats, and look at the lack of unity that results.
.
The Republicans united around Trump despite half the party detesting him; the Democrats split around Bernie/Hilary; that's how we got where we are.
10
So because we're all fallible - reject social media? Seems like the answer to me.
3
We are in a society where people no longer think for themselves. It's the crowd rule syndrome now. If you can easily destroy; you can also be easily destroyed. This is something to think about.
4
The piece ends: "The crust of civilization is thinner than you think." Alas, it is not even a crust. It is a veneer.
5
I wish I saw a remedy to this cultural phenomenon, but my gut tells me that it will get worse before it gets better. One misconception these vigilantes seem to hold is that people are free to behave differently than they do, but that they're choosing to be racist or bigoted or whatever. The error here is that people have the freedom to be bigoted or not, that such undesirable behavior is a choice of individual free will. However, that's just not how human nature works. The idea of "free will" does not stand up to even the tiniest degree of scrutiny. Bigots beget bigots, just as abusers beget abusers. And when you grow up being taught to be bigoted, the chances are very high that you will remain bigoted throughout your life. This doesn't mean that change isn't possible. But even if you're lucky enough to change, it doesn't mean that you woke up one day and decided to be a better person, it only means that your circumstances somehow caused you to see the error of your bigotry.
2
@Slumpy the Younger I'm not sure I understand - are you saying it is not all right to call out bigotry because it is hard for bigots to change? I can't agree with that. I do, however, agree with the notion that you have to understand where people came from and that they can evolve, and you can't judge someone today to be evil on the basis of something they did 20 years ago - if they have understood the error of their ways, changed their ways, and repaired the damage that they have done.
There is an atavistic, primitive dopamine rush that comes from punching another person and watching him or her fall to the ground, and facing not sanction but praise for throwing the punch. Until this sick pleasure is rejected on moral grounds, call-out culture will persist. At the moment, the pleasure is venerated in the online world, not rejected. Plus, anyone you try to rebuke for snarky calling out will reject you for tone policing. It's a lost cause. Better to pick up one's marbles and go home.
7
So in the instances/examples mentioned, there is no denial by the "called out" that they had indeed done what they were accused of? Is Brooks further maintaining that those who come forward should be quiet because it is not nice and they must just move on? If so, I find myself agreeing with Wrangham. Maybe the numbers of those who send unwanted genitalia pictures and pile on cyberbullying campaigns will decrease once it becomes known that there are real consequences for those actions.
I honestly don't see his point here except that Brooks is the truest of conservatives: he always wants to maintain the status quo because he is a beneficiary of the hierarchy as it stands. And he obviously still has Kavanaugh on his mind.
1
@DD do I take it that you have never done anything of which you are ashamed? Should that define you for the rest of your life?
For my own part, if Kavanaugh had admitted what he did, made it clear he knew it was wrong, and had sought to make restitution long before he was nominated, I might not have thought his earlier actions necessarily disqualified him. (Not sure, because we never heard all the facts, so there may have been something truly unforgivable - but under the circumstances of what we did hear, if his accusers had been satisfied as to his later reformation, I would not have questioned their judgment.) What appalled me was that, as a mature adult, he could STILL see nothing wrong in what he did, and he STILL could not be brought to apologize or make restitution.
1
What was political has become social. In order to stay in good stead with friends and associates one confirms or at least does not object to the prevailing ideology within that group. Which makes the call-out culture even more effective. With a rotating chair the social committee doles out judgement and everyone else stays silent because, after all, who’s in a position to cast that first stone?
2
Mr. Brooks, I find one of your sentences ironic: "Even the quest for justice can turn into barbarism if it is not infused with a quality of mercy, an awareness of human frailty and a path to redemption."
That's a perfect description of our prison industrial complex. While the situations you describe in this article are certainly concerning, they pale in comparison to the barbarism of our 'criminal justice' system. And your fellow conservatives promote this system because they are bedfellows of the private companies that are contracted to run the prisons.
Could you dedicate one of your next articles to the barbarism of the prison industrial complex?
8
This is a surprisingly good essay of Robert Brooks.
But I want to apply it in a way that is not likely to be popular.
I learned from another news source that the Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory revoked all the honors it had bestowed on the famous biologist James Watson because he had made remarks considered to be racist.
This seemed to be another example of "calling out," but one that is approved by the media because of the sensitivity of society to racism.
James Watson is 90 years old. He is probably not as careful with his speech as he would have been when he was working on the DNA double helix, or writing a landmark book, the Molecular Biology of the Gene, that transformed the way we look at genetics.
Understanding biochemistry gives him no special insight into the nature of the various races or what constitutes intelligence. I wish that he had remained silent on such topics.
But I also wonder why we have such sensitivity to the least indication that a person's views on race differ ever so slightly from a rigidly conformist viewpoint.
We learned from listening to Archie Bunker's racist views, but we are more rigid now. Roseanne Barr was fired, essentially censoring her attempts to explain to us through comedy how people in a certain social class think about race, even if their view are demonstrably wrong.
We shouldn't expect perfection. A genius in biochemistry should be allowed to make a few mistakes in his old age.
8
@Jake Wagner I was kind of with you until you defended Barr. Accusing George Soros, a terrified teenager in the midst of the Holocaust, of secretly working to engineer it is unconscionable, particularly since it’s not just a mean girl prank. It’s consistent, anti-Semitic demonization of one person, who is even being used as a boogeyman in far-right campaigns in Europe.
This wasn’t a dumb post from ten years ago, this was current, voluntary vitriol, backed up by many other horrible comments, some comparing black people to animals. It’s simply not defensible.
3
Several commenters have quoted Jesus' "let he who is without sin cast the first stone." The dangers described in this article are a significant reason why I still follow Jesus in spite of all the harm that so-called Christians have done to other people. Jesus' teachings manages to integrate a high standard of justice with a redemptive way forward for people who can't live up to that standard. It recognizes the humanity of both the victim and the perpetrator, the accuser and the accused, how both roles can coexist in the same person, and the possibility for personal choice and change.
Christians (like most humans) rarely live up to that ideal. But having that picture of how personal change, forgiveness, and reconciliation could just possibly happen gives me much more hope and motivation to become a better person than cycles of shame and punishment.
6
This might be the most terrifying piece I have read in years. What have we become when people gleefully denounce friends, when decades-old grudges find light and rather than a quiet conversation and an apology, the offended party is ambivalent as to whether the perpetrator (regardless of age at the time of the offense) lives or dies? It is impossible to speak freely, to make a mistake, to live and learn in this scenario. When did Americans become so insanely intolerant, so vengeful, so filled with hate? My heart breaks for us all.
10
Call out behavior. Only when necessary identify the person misbehaving.
But naming harmful actions is crucial for us to see what we do.
That guy who said "forgive them for they know not what they do" was calling what they did out.
2
David: I'm not sure where you've been living, but the crust of civilization is, and will always be, very, very thin. The only thing that keeps people (and I use that word loosely) in line is FEAR. We, as a species have never experienced enlightenment. We still lurk on the dark side. That is how our current non-leader came to power. And it should come as no surprise that all of his followers and the people who follow the herd mentality on social media go for the jugular whenever they can. It helps that the horror of it never has to be served up personally, face to face, so cowards are rewarded and lauded for their ferocity and no holds barred hatred. I have no idea what can be done about this. No solution, except non participation. Humans have a short life span and an even shorter memory. History will repeat itself, because no one can believe that the worst things can happen here, and they already are.
4
What happened to forbearance? When I was a child it was alive and well. It certainly is gone now and we will pay dearly for its loss.
5
Thank you… that binary mentality is so easily tapped and not just on social media but unfortunately by the formerly respected “unbiased” media, especially on the evening news as it has devolved in to the “tabloid journalism” that Hearst used so effectively to sell papers by whipping up the public’s emotions during the Spanish American War. When Marshall McLuhan’s “the medium is the message” warns of the extreme danger to society when anyone w/a cell phone can take down not only individuals, but governments themselves. Free speech absolutely, but that free speech cuts both ways… to illuminate and to blind and the only defense is public discourse and debate, not unthinking acceptance of whatever anyone, including the established media, dish out.
2
A friend was, unfairly called out as being a racist based on a mixed up conversation that was all cross wires and whatever. Someone called him out as a racist on fb and it was picked up by someone on twitter. They went so far as to advise people to boycott his business. Without questioning, or knowing the facts, or the person concerned, or even thinking of the consequences of their actions, they went ahead to do their vigilante best. His business is now dead. Hate travels faster than love.
330
@pealass That's horrible. But I do think this sort of "political correctness has gone totally extreme and crazy" thinking sometimes leads people to throw overboard or question the forms of political correctness that most of us would recognize as a basic component of good manners, tact, and anti-racism - which most of us should still feel are good things. The two thought processes get conflated and they're not at all the same argument.
23
Mr. Brooks writes; "I’d say we no longer gather in coliseums to watch people get eaten by lions....." Perhaps not eaten by lions, but we certainly gather for the Sunday football games where we watch and cheer as grown men debilitate themselves for gold and place at risk the chances of attaining a comfortable and healthy old age.
8
@Jim Spahr I agree with the analogy, and I find football to provide an appalling parallel to the coliseum (and therefore do not watch or support it) - but that isn't really germane to the article, is it?
1
Does truth have ant relevance here.
Emily’s musician friend. Was he indeed an abuser as accused?
Somehow it hardly matters as either way due process is ignored.
It also reminds me of our president as a call out in one of past incarnations. No wait, he’s still doing it.
2
This call-out culture is the result of post modernism and post modernism is based on Marxism. This ideology has taken over our Universities, Hollywood and the Democratic Party. It is a counter enlightenment movement and it will - if it keeps running its course - destroy the rule of law and Democracy. That is why - in light of all the short comings - Donald Trump is still the better joice than a party that subscribes to this totalitarian ideology.
1
@Frank He is the "better joice" only when calling names is our goal. We are past modernism because time moves on, not because of some ideology. Trump engages in shouting out invectives. That's pre-adolescentism.
2
@Frank If free speech is your concern, the President is far, far more dangerous than Hollywood. You need to get your priorities straightened out.
@Frank This is ridiculous. It's as though you think Trump does not engage in this behavior too. He does. As do the Republicans and the Christian Right in general. And he epitomizes the us-them dichotomy that fuels this. And he has trampled the rule of law and Democracy in an unending series of ways. Sheesh. Talk about stretching a point.
1
So it's ok to allow horrendous moral crimes, just don't decry it for what it is, it might seem impolite? Sounds like what we here in Iowa call "Iowa Nice."
2
There's a version of this behavior--which is, at its core, meant to help people be accountable for the harm of their actions--that's "call-in" culture. Its purpose is to identify harm...and leave a road back into the friendship / relationship / community. And that's what I see people (especially the under-25s in my workplace and communities) more frequently engaging in.
It's messy and tough sometimes, but it isn't a chance to shame & forget someone. It's a chance to ask a community to take seriously that someone's been hurt and move on from there. It doesn't happen on the internet--or at least, it doesn't end there.
Now, an op-ed column doesn't need to engage fully and deeply with the full intents of a practice--the interactions Brooks describes are pretty awful--but it's also just part of a story.
I'm concerned that the effect of this column (based on the comments I'm seeing) is that we're selling the young people of our punk scenes--and political movements and science labs, etc--short here: It is reasonable to try to make a more fair world. It is reasonable to build tools to address grievances. This is the story of a method gone wrong, not wrong-headed / overly sensitive youth.
5
@Alice excellent point! Calling-in is important and often utilized by activist communities. But sadly, as you are in the New York Times comment section and making a point that isn't based on fear of younger generations and panic about the dangers of the internet, I doubt it will get the critical attention it deserves.
2
Someone mentioned this already, but I'll ask anyone, how many people "fall" in this call out "society", how many come out of it, how many call out for no reason other than self pleasure, how many accept culpability and find forgiveness, etc.
Many seem to fall into this trap of "current society", like those who believe there's more violence today than in the past when statistics show otherwise.
Instead of calling out the call out culture, why not think it through and not create another perceived issue where there's none?
This too is part of "social media", its reflected in the comment sections of YouTube, Facebook & others. The mob mentality that has always been part of our psychology is on steroids when filtered through the internet. Look at the damage done on a personal and societal scale in third world countries where social media is the primary news source. Its not just the abuse of and injustice of call out culture, its the internet exaggerated consequences that follow both the innocent and the guilty long after whatever offense occurred. We are all mistaken sometimes; sometimes we do wrong things, things that have bad consequences. But it does not mean we are evil, or that we cannot be trusted ever afterward. Our sense of perspective & humanity is lost when aggressive anonymity is king.
4
i so rarely agree with most of what you say. But...you've got this one right on the money! Those of us who are older gaze in something like horror at what we (yes, it was us) have unleashed.
That's not what we meant, we say! No....but this is what is happening. Is there anything we (yes, we, the older ones) to explain that?
I see folks are planning a 50th anniversary celebration concert at Woodstock. Don't please. It was, for all its warts, perfect just as it was. I wandered around there last summer and couldn't stop smiling.....don't ruin it.
I promise these two paragraphs are connected. i see it - i so hope some of you do......
2
Brilliant op-ed. This needs to be said and surfaced. Call-out culture is totally out of control, and I don't think Brooks oversteps when he compares this to the first steps towards a Cultural Revolution. The dopamine rush that the guy gets from calling her out is sickening. This has got to stop.
4
Did you hear Mitt Romney refer to "polite society"? Isn't that a quaint concept? But the examples cited by Mr. Brooks explain why some things should remain private. There should be some middle ground between the social media culture where nothing goes unsaid and the Leave It To Beaver culture when nothing was said. It would help if more people remembered the old adage: think before you speak or put yourself in their shoes.
3
@Gadfly A lot was said on Leave it to Beaver! Ward and June discussed their issues frequently. Ward had plenty of soulful sit-downs with his sons. The fallibility and forgiveness on this show were palpable.
2
Mr Brooks, just a word of thanks for consistently meaningful and well written commentary. I am a very old progressive, left over from the civil right struggle. I am ashamed that Fox News and it's ilk can exist profitably in my America. Mr. Trump is not my favorite president. But I do enjoy discourse with those who hold views opposed to mine who can speak or write in complete sentences. I never miss your column, have found much to give me pause, and have even, on rare occasions, changed a position. Please keep it up and thank you.
5
The American and French Revolutions were far more similar than most of us realize.
1
I understand the need of some people to get some redress after all that has happened - all the oppression over all the decades. I'm not surprised that some people have taken advantage of the moment to fulfill sadistic impulses toward revenge. Old scores and bad blood bubble to the surface at times like these, and as justice is done, some nastiness and anger accompanies it.
So I'm not prepared to denounce the movement toward redress for injustices suffered by people who have been disadvantaged, harassed, or worse, even those who are angry and self-righteous. But I would like to see less emphasis on demonizing perpetrators, and more on making the victims whole. Less tar and feathers, more of a determination to change the system and put in safeguards that protect people from exploitation and harassment. It's not as much fun as running a pervert out of town on a rail; designing workable solutions is hard work. But in the long run, it will do more for people, and society, than all the "call outs" in the world.
5
I have been thinking about this issue today and trying to put it in context. I'd agree that "call-out culture," as you coin it, can be cruel, unfair, unjust. But I keep coming back to this today: My sense is that the alarm, like the similar and yet overwrought alarm over "shout-down" culture, is coming mostly from the right. Ideally, a healthy tension between right and left would give rise to this sort of check on the impulsive instincts of the left. And yet, what "seems" to separate the two sides is their motivation. Conservatism "seems" (I emphasize it) motivated not by concern for the loss of due process, not to stand up for the unfairly accused, not to inject caution. It "seems" (again, emphasis) that the right instinctively prefers to sweep such things under the rug and return to business-as-usual. It is only a matter of impressions and only my impressions. But it is an example of the costly effect of what has emerged in this country: an unhealthy right. You need better ambassadors.
1
"I’d say we no longer gather in coliseums to watch people get eaten by lions because clergy members, philosophers and artists have made us less tolerant of cruelty, not more tolerant."
And yet the most popular movie genre in late capitalism and horror and gore movies. Give me a break.
1
There is nothing new about human behavior. So-called call out culture has always existed in the form of poison pen letters, blackballing, whispers/rumors, Salem Witch trials, etc. The only difference now is the ability to reach larger numbers of people through social media.
It is interesting that in the midst of her own takedown, Emily never once reflected on her behavior in denouncing her friend on the basis of an unproven accusation. She doesn't seem to have learned anything.
6
"Society enforces norms by murdering the bullies who break them." What a world! Especially a world where the bully-murdering enforcers are even bigger bullies then the ones they murder.
6
Whatsoever man soweth, that shall he also reap.
3
Sometimes Brooks can be so frustrating. It is the easiest thing in the work pointing out problems and issues. I cannot stand todays "We should have a conversation about that."
No. We need ideas, answers as to what to do about it. That is the hard part.
The devil is always in the details.
These kids should be ashamed of themselves, and not for the named transgressions. A breakdown in basic civilization. Today though, in the name of righteousness the authoritarian left is codifying similar behavior in academia and journalism, complete with nasty online shaming. Also let's remember McCarthy and blackballing as legacies of earlier American "call-out" culture.
5
I was certainly not surprised when David highlighted the clergy as those who teach us to be less tolerant of cruelty. Really, David? "Clergy" are, by definition of their position, our teachers?
Priests taught tolerance during the Inquisition, or the Ministers in Salem? Do Ayatollah Khamenei or Pat Robertson teach it now?
I appreciate that David may have personal experience with churches that do teach tolerance, but he is irresponsible when he continually conflates "Church" with "Good".
1
"I’d say civilization moves forward when we embrace rule of law, not when we abandon it."
What say you about DJT, Mr. Brooks?
3
@ M Leon rewatch his shields and Brooks segments through PBS. I'm not left feeling like David Brooks appreciates DJT a whole lot (who could blame him), but that's his to say, really, not mine.
You may find him frustrating, or enlightening, in his time and in differing regards on differing topics, but's never struck me as a partisan, and that's cause to rejoice as far as I'm concerned.
So what is the cure?
Can the young be barred from social media?
1
Everyone seems to be quoting the bible so I thought I'd bring up other biblical principles "judge not lest ye be judged" and most relevantly "live by the emoji die by the emoji" . . .
3
This story would have been more interesting if it was the best friend who called her out. Equal justice for all.
1
“...social change...” a word, a term, a process, a value, a goal, an ethic, an outcome, a valenced stakeholder mantra, needs to be both contextualized and delineated. Consider: for whom? Created by whom? Given what necessary enabling conditions? At what temporary as well as more permanent human and non-human costs? Societal changes are an ongoing, dynamic, multidimensional social reality framed by uncertainties. Randomness. Unpredictabilities. Lack of total control no matter the actions taken; timely or not. Consider: For whom is social change permitted? Forbidden? An obligation? A choice? A burden? More than just words are needed in response to any of these wordy questions!
I grew up in the 50s and late 60s, a time when, if a girl was even suspected of not being a virgin, that was it for her. No other girl would dare to be friends with her; boys could say whatever they wanted about her, and she would be isolated. I don't know where Mr. Brooks was in that era, but I don't see that vigilantism has changed much, except that the internet lets it move farther and faster.
4
A bit of maturity and wisdom is needed. How far do we go back in order to prove one's moral character? Studies have found that the human brain, especially in males, is not mature til they are well into their 20's. Let's be humane. Social media outing is vengefulness at its most immature. Of course, one needs to respect others, but if one's life or career has not been damaged, it would be best to treat each case of bad behavior in a personal, not public manner. People are fallible! What a novel concept.
2
"Even the quest for justice can turn into barbarism if it is not infused with a quality of mercy, an awareness of human frailty and a path to redemption. The crust of civilization is thinner than you think." Very well said Mr. Brooks!
And persons do perform acts with good and evil intents as well as out of ignorance. Perhaps, some should be termed devilish rather than devils. Given in one case its human mercy and redemption at play and in the other a Final Justice has been Preordained. That young missionary that was recently murdered by an island tribe comes to mind. Our social complexities forever testing our personal sensitivities resolves. Being careful how one steps and where seems sage advise.
1
The call-out-culture has thrived, for the decades that I’ve been around. Different, today, is that the individual calling out someone merely has to create a 140-character call-out, point to a social media ‘send-button’, click on it and the call-out reach billions of inquiring minds. Before this, one needed to subscribe to the NYT, NewYorker, Enquirer, etc. to get a call-out-fix.
Whether done with impunity, as has been the case with the US media, all call-outs are, indeed, cruel; a cruelty nearly always administered without context and one devoid of human feeling.
2
If this is the first point in life when you've looked around and noticed/been offended by humans being judged offhandedly, without generosity and tolerance / the benefit of the doubt, and denied access and opportunities and platforms based on draconian ideological norms, then all I can say is welcome to the world as it has been for women and all othered people, literally for your whole life until now, with even higher stakes than a reduction in income.
We're glad you've noticed that it's awful. But selective sympathy isn't a principled stand, it's the entire problem.
2
Ah, the rule of law. That is exactly what is under attack by the Progressives of the Democratic party. "We're so right, we're so sure of how your life should be conducted, that we can't be bothered with rule of law, representative government,liberal democracy, or any of those other stodgy, slow moving old ideas", that's what we're hearing from the new shiny new youth in the Democratic Party. And the media, on the whole, is just repeating their statements worshipfully, instead of actually seeing if any of them make economic or social sense.
2
This poisoning of our culture has been inspired and promoted by poor presidential and national leadership. Our ground zero is traceable to the behavior of Ronald Reagan - shaming "welfare queens", and his party's continual shaming of anyone who doesn't take "personal responsibility' for their lives.
It is now "weaponized and perfected" by Trump.
Too many people have learned well from the examples of our leaders. The only difference now is that we all have the means to reach a large audience. The ongoing tragedy of our culture's trajectory is tied to the worst behaviors of our leading politicians and pundits.
Bring back respect, integrity, decency, and manners.
3
Well said.
People often recommend the 'cast the first stone' story. Which is okay, but: The reason the woman got a reprieve wasn't because of Jesus being clever and tricky, boxing the guys with rocks into a logic corner, but because the people with the rocks were the same Jews that he was. He, and they, had heard the same scrolls read, heard the same tales of calamity brought about by a community's tolerance of impure behavior. These scrolls demand a community response to sexual sins. Couldn't be more clear, more obligatory. But Jews are also urged to be generous and merciful. To open the door to whoever knocks, and leave drifters and migrants be, and take extra care of widows and orphans. To not harvest the whole field, but let the poor in to glean it. Not only don't bear false witness, don't even point an accusatory finger, however right you may be.
Those guys in the story were in conflict already, because Judaism teaches both things: to think of the community, and pick up the rock, or to think of the human before you, and drop it.
My question is: Can those cyber moral avengers and purifiers be reminded of the other part of the scroll?
Agreed. This sort of tribal thinking is dangerous to society. And, ironically, it serves as motivation for those on the far right.
1
Culture has been provided a means of striking out and causing harm without any consequences for the one causing the harm. Those calling out can do so from afar while eating a pbj and then going to bed without having expereinced the intamacy that provides a filter in a face to face confrontations. A filter that provides real time feedback of the consequences of the impact on their target. The sad part is that recourse for the target is also limited to on line responses and too often, targets who are the most vulnerable end up crushed and their lives are torn assunder. All because of society and its willingess to accept this practice as normal.
Young people need to rethink what they are willing to do and what they tolerate as normal. Entitlement is run amok.
News flash. Online "communities" are not real. They are artificial constructs devoid of the intimacy of real human contact and the social rules that have until now been the cornerstone of civility. Go to the movies with your friends. Look each other in the eye when you talk. Be with each other. You cant hug a computer or touch them on the arm as a kind gesture. I know that you will think twice about saying something that would cause harm as well. You would have to see the results and feel the feelings that both of you experience.
2
Here is a thought: get off twitter and/or tune out the mob. If employers, "scenes", and universities are surrendering to what mostly baby boomers like to refer to as "social media mob" it should be shame on them, not the "mob".
Many of the "shamed" are individuals whose success and ambitions depend on publicity on platforms like twitter. As such, they must accept both parts of the bargain--rewarded with clicks for the good, punished with shame for the bad. No one is requiring anyone to listen to the "mob". At the same time, no one is entitled to endless love and praise from it either. Absolutely no one is making you post or read twitter.
2
"Truth without grace breeds self-righteousness and crushing legalism. Grace without truth breeds deception and moral compromise." --- Randy Alcorn
5
Maybe the difference between calling out and bullying is in the eye of the beholder.
Before the Internet, people would move to big cities to get away from the narrow-minded and unforgiving social censure of long memories; nowadays, the rest of the country has fewer hang-ups.
2
Brooks writes: "When systems are broken, vigilante justice may be rough justice, but it gets the job done. Prominent anthropologist Richard Wrangham says this is the only way civilization advances that he’s witnessed. Really? Do we really think cycles of cruelty do more to advance civilization than cycles of wisdom and empathy? I’d say civilization moves forward when we embrace rule of law, not when we abandon it."
Brooks is conflating the argument: 1) When systems of justice are broken 2) Then, justice finds another/vigilante form.
Let's say you have a leaky roof. To stay dry you wear a raincoat and carry an umbrella inside your house. Brooks' entire argument is along the lines of: "It's silly to wear a raincoat and carry an umbrella inside!"
Of course, it is. But so is blind adherence to a broken system. Fix the system so it works. There's no need to pursue alternate paths of justice when there is a system that is fair, honest, impartial, and consistent.
I agree we should support the rule of law. Perhaps, Republicans should start with their President and the leadership of their Party. That seems to me to be a much bigger threat to a functional justice system.
Today's big political news is the confirmation hearing of a potential AG who has asserted the President is, essentially, above the law. He seems to have the full support of the Republican Party and Brooks is focused on punk rockers.
1
Every human being has encountered some form of criticism regarding to a time in which one was committing an act of harm towards a victim. The only time in which a call out can be deemed as acceptable is if the individual is not aware that his/her actions are hurtful. We can only learn of our mistakes if our community acknowledges it.
3
This reminds me of a Democratic Party meeting in New York City several years ago.
Someone had gotten up to the microphone to speak. A politic approached me, and the people sitting in my immediate vicinity, and asked, "Are we supposed to like this person or hate this person."
2
Firstly, nothing epitomizes the cruelty of call-out culture than the rape and death threats, doxing, swatting, revenge porn, etc. that men but a disproportionate number of women endure every day in our internet age. Naturally, Brooks doesn't address these kind of examples. Same old double-standard. Secondly, since Brooks expressly cites his age as motivation for for his worry, he should remember that several factors contributed to the rise of call-out culture that have nothing to do with the Chinese cultural revolution. Historically women have been let down by a legal system that assumes all women lie, not to mention right-wing politicians who make policy premised on a faith that women are inherently deceptive (recall, "legitimate rape"). I don't condone vigilantism, but I can empathize with the desire for agency, self-determination, and action when the police and the courts refuse to help.
4
I agree with David's sentiment. First time ever.
2
Well said. One misuse, or misunderstood use of a single incident or rebuke, or something said at the age of eleven years old and goes viral can erase the value and reality of each of us. Well, perhaps not the President.
In short, while we all cut ourselves plenty of slack, we are easily trapped into cult like hate by a mere glance at the man or woman we've been set up to hate.
2
Mr. Brooks once again does a deep dive into social commentary at a time when the country is in a political crisis created by Republicanism without a moral center ... embodied as much by Mitch McConnell as by the amoral President they have nominated, elected, and continue to back, jeopardizing the public safety and causing great harm to millions of Americans. Ah the extraordinary high cost of political cover in the age of Trump.
Instead of bemoaning teenage bullying (which has been part of society forever) and using it to caution us against important social change agents like BLM and MeToo ... he would make himself so much more relevant by calling out Mitchie and the Republican bums in Congress for their outrageous dereliction of duty to the Constitution and American people.
1
Assuming actual facts bear out the accuser, it’s all about proportionate sentencing, something a lynch mob does not possess. Victims deserve to confront their abusers, and society should facilitate that process regardless of whether forgiveness follows or not. However, it’s cowardice for strangers to “pile on” to the latest calling out. People shouldn’t become complete social outcasts merely for posting a cruel online comment or emoji. The more people that sadistically pile on to the latest calling out, the more disproportionate the consequences become relative the original harm.
1
Shared moral outrage is more powerful than a shared preference in creating social bonds. Perhaps the need to belong is as strong a motivator as bloodlust. The young zealots who relish their power to do rough justice may eventually come to regret being so rash and cruel. Revolutions tend to eat their own.
'The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks'. I too push back against bullying in the form of political correctness. However, I find your protest a little much. As I read the article, you are using an extreme example as a way to undermine the legitimacy of exposing and challenging abuse. Disregarded people ( women, minorities...) are finding a voice and the courage to call out their abusers. Their "call outs" are based on uncomfortable facts that disturb the status quo. I believe that movements like BLM and MeToo are bringing real wrongs to light. Your article strike me as a not too subtle effort to push the "uncomfortable" back into the dark by attacking a method used by these movements.
1
Well done on an important subject!
This social vigilantism has been going on for at least a decade now and is only getting worse, and I hate to say it, but the vast majority of the stuff which is consequential (gets people fired and ostracized), is coming from the left. It's more than just actions that cause it too, even making an unpopular statement will get you erased these days. We don't need thought-crime laws to live in 1984: gun-shy corporations are already enforcing the will of these vigilantes. It's time we just started to tell these Social Justice Terrorists: "no". No I will not fire an employee because they said or did something you don't like. Even if what they did was illegal, that is a matter that will be dealt with by the courts, not you, and not me.
4
This was bound to happen: many old timers predicted it but not with so much venom!
We ought to follow the French,(far more sensible then most of us settlers know), in banning these electronic poison pens"- from school and , perhaps, we need to regulate what individuals may say about others in broadly commercial parts of the Web. Sending vicious letters to your associates may be your own business, but publishing them like so many letter bombs,or placing them on broadsides publicly, where everyone may see them, is a form of abuse and brutality. Just as we do not allow people to harass others over the phone-similarly we ought to control the use and abuse of electronic communication devices-not end them- for venting personal anger and alleging all kinds of possibly false, or twisted, accusations which become unretractable and their factual nature of becomes impossible to ever know.Sort of a private version of the urban myth about alligators in NYC sewers.(At least invisible alligators bite no one)
If we do not control this one way; we may end up like too many nations, with iron fisted libel laws limiting even the ability of the press to explore public issues important to the nature of all American society, and news gathering.
It has become like a game of "chicken"-someone always takes it too close to the edge and somebody gets killed by going over a cliff. All for no good reason other then public admiration or a sense of
minor personal grievance. . .
1
Stop living through social media would be a start towards better relationships.
1
Social media is a weapon for anyone with a grudge or a personal problem to take revenge, alleviate boredom and get some momentary satisfaction. It's a plague, just like guns in America, and ought to be treated as such.
1
Mr. Brooks' article is an excellent defense of nude emperors.
Opposing racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, etc. is a necessary part of being a decent human being. A necessary condition but not a sufficient condition. One needs to draw intelligent distinctions. One needs some understanding for human weakness. One should not dismiss the possibility of redemption. Other such items go into being a decent human being.
Emily and Herbert are morally right to be opposing what they are seeing. However, their morality could use a little bit of humanity.
Social media is the problem.
And, appropriate also to quote Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It isn’t even past.”
1
Not caring how the other person feels, or how actions taken affect others: hmm, sounds like the GOP playbook, David.
Brooks is big on conservatism’s embrace of tradition as a glue to hold society together. But look at the world through the conservative lens and you will see nothing but the divisive binaries Brooks decries in today’s column.
A significant element of the conservative tradition is religion – specifically, the Judeo-Christian tradition Brooks often speaks of. In 1630, John Winthrop, one of the founders of American Protestantism, opened his now-famous “Model of Christian Charity” (“City on a Hill” speech) with these binary-establishing words:
“GOD ALMIGHTY in his most holy and wise providence, hath so disposed of the condition of’ mankind, as in all times some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity; others mean and in submission.” There it is: the enduring template for the conservative lens, a lens defined by Providence, and thus one that is indisputable.
That lens has defined conservatism ever since. It produced the binaries of saints and sinners, believers and non-believers, rich and poor, whites and people of color, slaves and masters, hegemonic empire vs. respect for the rights of others, owners vs workers, tradition vs. progress, tribal vs. inclusive, National Anthem patriots vs. kneelers, freedom to own a gun vs. freedom from gun violence, nationalism vs. globalism, and free market vs. regulated market - our way or the highway.
Brooks needs to look in his own back yard before he starts assigning blame for “our brutal cultural moment.”
2
To call out is to virtue signal. It gets you prestige points from people who ascribe to your brand of call out culture. It makes you cool. Even cooler if you destroy someone's life/career in the process. You get to show that you stand up to "the man" on behalf of victims. You're even cooler if you're a victim yourself. So, people who call out tend to define themselves as victims of one sort of another, and they wear their victimhood as a badge of honor. In fact, they believe that their moral authority comes from their victimhood. In this way, they grant themselves the moral authority to judge right from wrong, to censure, to label others as bigots, racists, sexists (list goes on and on). Their rulings are absolute and eternal. Their targets (dare I say victims?), have no mechanism to defend or themselves and no shot at redemption because they've been stripped of their worth and labelled as irreconcilably immoral human beings.
Wow. What a perverse culture.
4
Empathy and wisdom often come with age. You can bet Emily is wiser, and probably more empathetic now. Young people in particular can be more judgmental and zealous (remember Mao's Red Guard?). It's just part of maturing. Unfortunately, the Facebook age makes it harder to put your foolish past behind you. It's there for all to see and judge. There has to be a better way forward. I'm hoping this generation can figure it out.
1
Like many of Brooks's pieces, there's a small kernel of truth here: it's not a positive development that, in some cases, we've apparently lost the ability to distinguish between degrees of wrongdoing. There are many anecdotal instances of someone speaking inarticulatley, or simply being misunderstood -- or, God forbid, actually express an ignorant sentiment -- and the social media vigilantes descending like jackals to rend the flesh from the offender's miserable carcass, as it were. And no apology seems to suffice. And no amount of contrition, however genuine, will do.
But Brooks's anecdote here feels rather clumsily sensationalized, and frankly defensive. Invoking Maoist and Stalinist policies intended to disrupt social solidarity seems paranoid *at best.* And even these groups don't consider the emoji girl to be the same as R. Kelly, for heaven's sake.
Brooks almost admits as much, but the tone here is one of an old man scowling at the kids on the sidewalk from his porch swing, lamenting the demise of civility. Things weren't so civil in your day either, David. The issues might be different, but these apples haven't fallen as far from the tree as you seem to imagine.
1
It is sad to see young people so close minded and intolerant. Frankly,
I can't stand them. They are hypocrites, who have checked out their critical thinking at the door, and like sheep follow the lead from celebrities and the media.
We live in scary times, where you can lose your job even by the minutest little unsubstantiated allegation.
It brings to mind totalitarian societies, where you walk the (strict) line, or you are toast.
That's were the left with their "progressive" thinking is leading us. Back to the dark ages.
2
Wait! Wait one moment, please. It appears that the comment by “Andre … Nebraska” got dropped in the wrong file since it has little relevance to what David Brooks wrote in “The Cruelty of Call-Out Culture.”
It seems clear, to me at least, that Brooks writes to defend and to advocate the rule by law and to oppose vigilante “justice,” to oppose rule by mob.
Vigilante “justice,” rule by mob gave us the horrific specter of thousands of black men hanging from trees and related atrocities across our land. I can’t believe “Andre” stands for that, for a new-vigilantism, for that is what calling-out sometimes amounts to. When justice is unfair, it is not justice. Justice without the leavening of mercy is not justice.
Sure, our justice system, our rule by law is not perfect; it never will be perfect; we need to keep working on that. But it’s far better than mob rule.
And by the way, David Brooks has been an outspoken critic of the Fake President and all he represents. He is not a fan of “Make America Great Again” or “AGAIN.” Check out earlier columns.
1
Part of the cruelty is that this mechanism is easily co-opted by criminals. Call it blackmail, kompromat or whatever you like, left to run rampant the idea of banishing someone who is "called out" would mean everyone is living under constant and arbitrary threat.
People who use these tactics are at heart bullies and cowards, and, in my humble opinion, the only reasonable response to such abuse is to stay and fight it.
Mr. Brooks is a conservative whose political party benefits greatly from the Evangelical and right wing pundits who have this view of us versus them and we are good and you are evil.
Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Billy Graham Jr. Jerry Falwell Jr. are definitely immersed in this Call-Out Culture.
Funny that Mr. Brooks laments that the Call-Out Culture is either Black or White and no grey areas. But isn't this the same culture by which the modern Conservative politicians (tea party, freedom caucus, Donald Trump) operate?
Unfortunately this has been the modus operandi of the Republicans for the last 25 years.
1
What you are really describing is a cult and those are as old as society. They have weird norms and will crack down on those accused (rightfully or not) of breaking the norms. What I don’t like here is your attempt to “wink, wink, hint, hint” try to connect this story to what is going on with “me too”. That movement has done a huge amount of good with very few mistakes. It also has been pretty good at “redemption” for those who deserved it
1
In the 1960s and 1970s in Cuba, all employment required a weekly meeting where people were encouraged to “call out” fellow employees who were not communist enough, had made a negative comment, or were gay/lesbian/different.
A brilliant lesbian writer friend of mine got called out as “tortillera”, Cuban slang for lesbian. The person who called her out got a toaster as a reward. My friend, afraid of being sent to prison (lgbtq were arrested, as per statute) was forced to deny she was a lesbian. But, during the Mariel boatlift, government employees grabbed her on her way home from work and put her on a boat to Miami. She was not able to say goodbye to her family. She didn’t have a change of clothes. She wound up in an Arkansas detention center, which was full of violent prisoners from the emptied Cuban prisons. We didn’t know her, but my mother’s relative called from Cuba to see if we could help her. Mom filed affidavits of support, forms, and sent her a ticket. She arrived at our home traumatized. (We were blessed to see her eventually thrive, writing for Spanish language newspapers, and publishing books).
This is what a “call out” culture can lead to: selling out your colleague for a toaster.
2
The great piwer and threat of the internet and especially all web sites like Facebook, is that the only effective pre-restraint on bad behavior is self-restraint stimulated by social ethics and the power of pyblic shame for misbehavior.
Freud’s metaphor regarding the Ego forever buffetted by ID and Super Ego is only that. It is useful in understanding Mr. Brooks point. The internet generation dominated by immature adolescent personalities has been granted license to unchain their desire to destroy what offends them without the restraining force of guilt and shame on their destructive anti social behavior.
Or perhaps, he is saying that this generation believes that any behavior motivated by their righteous rage is, by definition, righteous and there is no other effective tool to enforce public shame or the cleansing power of personal guilt.
Either way, these destructive and often anonymous assaults on those who offend the self appointed judge, jury and executioner truly are the internet’s vigilantes who have created in their own minds a world where they alone represent justice.
1
Next time you have an opportunity to anonymously "call out" someone on social media, call your mother instead and tell her you love her.
1
As a faithful liberal, I say “Amen” to Mr. Brooks. The absolute anonymity of the Internet needs to be rethought.
1
My freshman year of college, an entire group of people who had once been my friends stopped talking to me after they caught me listening to the soundtrack of the musical The Book of Mormon, an act they deemed proved I was a racist bigot (although some words that the Times can't print were used instead.) This Richmond punk scene example is just that, an example, but it rings true. Another commenter here has said that this is bullying under the guise of social justice callout culture, and I couldn't agree more.
3
Once again David Brooks speaks up against the Small Fry but says nothing about the Call Out culture of the Powerful; Fox News, Bill O'Reilly, Hannity and of course, the president. What is Fox news, after all, except a nonstop parade of bullies, day after day, hour after hour, smearing good Americans - and when useful, immigrants - with ceaseless innuendo, lies and abuse? But of course, Fox news can strike back, so timid Mr. Peepers doesn't bring them into it in how cybersmearing described in podcasts reminds him of Rwanda (black people), Mao's cultural revolution (Asian people) and Stalin (Commies!).
2
Well said. Thank you David.
Focus on this stuff. Not on what Conservatism is doing to our country, including punishing the poor, punishing women, punishing people of color.
1
Nastiness breeds nastiness; kind, caring, and respect breed that. Simple. You choose.
1
a "Lord of the Flies" nation and world.
205
You read my mind.
9
Perhaps the worst part of this aspect of our culture is the absen ce of due process. The accusation is made, embraced without question, and the punishment meted out immediately, with no possibility of appeal.
1
The crux of this piece is, "Do we really think cycles of cruelty do more to advance civilization than cycles of wisdom and empathy? I’d say civilization moves forward when we embrace rule of law, not when we abandon it." I believe civilization tends to start from a place of wisdom and empathy - attempting to achieve change through the rule of law - and attempts it until it becomes evident that only cruelty (to the oppressors) will create change.
The sad part about this too is that almost anyone can simultaneously claim the role of both victim and perpetrator. I can think of multiple instances in my high school years where I was harassed and/or bullied. And I can also think of instances where I bullied other people. Most people who are honest can probably say the same. And as we've seen with R. Kelly, the truly bad people never really seem to 'get it', they don't apologize, they don't change, even when they get caught and called out. I think getting rid of anonymity on the internet would be a first step toward fixing this over-reactive culture.
3
"Even the quest for justice can turn into barbarism if it is not infused with a quality of mercy, an awareness of human frailty and a path to redemption."
Very true, and very well put also. True justice is always in danger of being overwhelmed by desire for revenge.
Reading stories like this makes me glad I have so little interest in social media, but it also makes me realize that there is probably no solution to this "calling out" that would involve replacing social media with actual face-to-face communication. Most people are simply too inter-connected by it now.
So, how can we stop instant "rushes to judgment" in a world where literally everyone's beefs with everyone else are instantly broadcast so far and wide?
1
This is one of the most trenchant, humane, and--dare I say--Christian responses that I have read to the call-out culture that has taken over our campuses, workplaces, and politics. Dr. King sought to build a Beloved Community based on forgiveness and reconciliation. Today, instead, self-righteous zeal has taken over the tribalist zealots in every corner. Understanding, humility, and mercy are belittled. Being in the preferred victim group--whether of the far Right or far Left--and destroying the "enemy" are celebrated. There can be no national peace without justice, and no justice without forgiveness. Thank you, Mr, Brooks.
3
The next stage in the evolution of the internet has got to be the management of user anonymity. It sounds impossible, but it's got to happen. So much of this goes away when the perpetrators have to show their names and faces.
2
As if anyone needs further reason to avoid social media. The thoughtlessness of all this is not surprising, but it should be. Social media render it so easy to be casually cruel.
I disagree with Brooks that the thinking is binary. The thinking is minimal. Each of us may have some after-the-fact ability to craft just the right zinger in the privacy of our little reality bubbles, but they are seldom the things that we say when we are actually face to face.
I don't know if the crust of civilization is thinner than we think, but social media has certainly done wonders to erode it.
3
Excellent article. I completely agree with you that the call-out culture is brutal and dangerous.
2
Sometimes the social punishment far exceeds the crime or is out of touch with the culture at the time of the crime. Complete ostracism is too much. Further it doesn’t allow for redemption. Al Franken is a good example. Then there are Spacey and Weinstein and Cosby who deserved indictment. Same is true of R Kelly and maybe even Trump. These men are cruel and immoral. For them, the proper forum is the criminal justice system.
1
Anybody who writes or teaches or otherwise has ideas that are remembered or recorded, is subject to the "call-out culture" and always has been. Aristophanes essentially called out Socrates and later, not coincidentally, Socrates is sentenced to death. Professionals know to be very careful and are only vulnerable for changing moral attitudes which usually are slow but not so slow that older people aren't caught. What's new is that teenagers are writing things down where they are achieved.
Alright, one more for this thought-provoking column:
Imagine Joe. Joe did a bad thing when he was 18. Let's say he committed armed robbery. Now he languishes in prison, his youth robbed from him. He's sincerely changed as a person, maybe even tried to make amends, and it's a sad thing that he's in jail.
Should we talk about our punishment culture in general? One way to punish people is to ostracize them. One way to do that is to kick them out of a community. Another is to lock them in a room with bars for a long time. I think it's completely fair to talk about our punishment culture. We overpunish. There are countless people like Joe, who admittedly did things that deserve to be punished, but who are excessively punished for them, and it's sad. There are also countless people like Emily, or Emily's friend, who are overpunished socially for infractions, including infractions they did long ago when they were teenagers. That's also sad.
Punishment is cruel, and so is being socially sanctioned by one's peers. But it's still a good thing that we have a punishment culture, since some things should be punished to some degree. And, I'd wager, it's a good thing that we have a call-out culture, because some things should be called out at least to some degree. It would be a mistake to infer from the fact that we excessively call people out sometimes that we shouldn't do so sometimes, just like it would be a mistake to conclude from overpunishment that no punishment is ever justified.
2
@Pierce Randall If Joe had been locked up by a mob with no trial or guidelines on proper punishment, the comparison would be more apt.
1
Steve King lost his committee assignments for asking why we think white supremacy is offensive. Isn't that an example of a good result from call-out culture?
5
How is this not exceptionally civilized behavior? To have a civilization, you have to have norms and pro-social punishment, which is all that's going on here: people accept a norm against body-shaming or sharing nude photos, they're willing to punish in the name of harms done to third parties, and they're highly keen to signal their support of this norm and the norm to punish others for perceived infractions of it. This seems to me to be what civilization is largely built upon. Civilization turns out to be a deep dish.
2
We have evolved from throwing them to the lions to thowing them to Facebook.
Although the human-nature cause is the same, the retributive effect has made some laudable progress.
4
This reminds me of academic infighting, with its long-established saying that people fight bitterly over minutia because so little is at stake. Same here. Once Emily gets a job with a State Farm insurance agency and the erstwhile denizen of Richmond's "hard-core punk music scene" becomes a lineman for the county, no one will care about their social incorrectness, they will gain perspective, and they will live happily ever after.
2
I was bullied as a child, and therefore nothing can surprise me. This is not callout culture. This is bullying, made LEGITIMATE by callout culture that mixes up as Brooks says, Harvey Weinstein and R. Kelley with ordinary teenagers (and little kids and adults).
You cannot get past how much of this is just pure spite and pleasure in "getting one over" on another person -- note the young man who says that doing this was as pleasurable as an orgasm!
I am also struck that Emily was delighted to bully her male friend ("I believe women!" -- the rallying cry of the Blasey-Ford crowd -- even without evidence!) but was devastated when it was turned on her. Where her actions as a teen (mocking a nude photo) rude & insensitive? yes. But she could have made up for it by apologizing. Social ostracization as "punishment" for all wrong-doing, even decades early, is creepy and wrong, and YES, it is beginning to smack of communist forced confessions. And fascinating that it emanates from THE LEFT.
9
One problem I see with call-out culture is that it's not about getting people to change, look at things from a new perspective, or learn from their mistakes, which is what would ultimately improve society. It's about branding them, permanently. What are we supposed to do — move all the "bad" people to another planet?
5
"Even the quest for justice can turn into barbarism if it is not infused with a quality of mercy, an awareness of human frailty and a path to redemption. The crust of civilization is thinner than you think."
No Truer words were written.
5
Who knew punks were Puritans?
216
@Inspizient
Violently so. Google "Straight Edge."
8
Also, there is an extremely practical remedy which could go a very long way in solving most conflicts on the planet!
https://www.cnvc.org/index
1
This is how the establishment destroys the opposition: it gets it to eat itself. It divides and conquers. It revels in in-fighting. It encourages it, values it, promotes it, and deceives others into using its tools. Our President is a master at this. The institutions holding power are masters of it. They have encouraged and abetted a violent response by the oppressed aimed squarely at itself. Until the oppressed see who their true oppressors are - not their own flawed but well meaning sistren and brethren and not on the battlefield of social rectitude- they will continue to eat themselves to the delight of those who want to maintain the reigns of power and authority. Look at the inward collapse of 60's radicals. Look at the collapse of American Socialists in the 50's, pointing fingers at one another. Look at the utter collapse of labor unions - worker against worker. Its is in the playbook as old as history. This is not "speaking truth to power", it is absolutely serving the interests of power.
7
I agree with David
2
Read the scarlet letter. This is not new.
Also—please stop extrapolating from specific one-off irrelevant events. Some meaningless punk band and their intra-punk disputes are important? Please.
4
The Internet: 21st century witch-burning!
"Social media rumors in India: counting the dead"
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-46146877
"Across India mob attacks are on the rise, fuelled by false rumours on WhatsApp and social media. According to the BBC's analysis of incidents between February 2014 and July 2018, at least 31 people have been killed and dozens more injured.
"The WhatsApp video driving people to murder"
"A video clip shared on WhatsApp went viral in India... with tragic consequences. In the clip, a man on a motorbike appears to be kidnapping a child from the street. The messages that accompanied the video as it was shared from phone to phone...warned the community to be on the lookout for “potential child-lifters”. Vigilante mobs formed and killed an estimated 10 people."
"Burned to death because of a rumour on WhatsApp"
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-46145986
"The mob...was in the grip of...a story stirred up somewhere unknown and spread through the private messaging app WhatsApp.'Please everyone be alert because a plague of child kidnappers has entered the country,' said the message.
...As people held their phones aloft to film, the men were ...savagely beaten. Then the petrol that was brought earlier was poured on them.
...She watched in horror as... the same technology that allowed a man in Acatlán to summon a mob to kill her son allowed her to watch him die."
4
Nothing new here. Move on. Brooks attacks the call out culture with no mention of the current administration's abominable practice. David, reread your last paragraph (perhaps a couple of times--you seem to be slow to grasp things) and apply it to the real problem in the US.
@beaujames. Beautifully done what-about-ism. The current administration's talking heads have taught you well.
2
More of David Brooks wandering into stuff he really doesn't understand like your grandpa trying to read your twitter feed. Yes. This digital shaming is a problem. But, there are more useful things you could be weighing in on...things you actually understand (there are a lot of ridiculous naive and then melodramatic assertions in the column). As a conservative, you might continue to make the time to call out the racist maniac in the White House, for example.
3
How many NYT commenters were outraged by President Clinton’s affair with an intern? He doesn’t seem to have suffered nearly as much as the people named in this piece.
1
@Elle Roque: probably even fewer people were disturbed by Newt Gingrich's affair at the very same time with a yound staffer. It just wasn't as well reported even though all four parties in question were consenting adults and the two men in question were both married.
The barbaric liar in chief constantly strikes out at people with lie after lie after lie.
Why didn't you call out the evil would be dictator Trump in an old fashion way by asking for his resignation, he is destroying civility, culture and the best of us.
Of course your party has been lying to us for 40 years and no accountability and not giving dems a free pass either. All policies of the last 40 years has stolen wealth from the middle class and poor and you stood by.
Hurt people, hurt people.
5
I want to like this article, I really do - But.
The Grey Lady is the Queen of Call-Out Culture. This comes across to me as another attack on the NYT's prime competition: Social Media/New Media. Less about morality and justice and way, WAY, more about protecting their marketshare.
Do you really think Charles Blow is sitting in his office across from David Brooks and saying "by golly David you're right, the problem is me!"
No, it's everyone else, especially any other media outlet.
6
Why seek approval of strangers who dont share your values??? These people were liberated from false outrage of strangers, not victimized by it.
Lets worry about real life human conditions and suffering in reality. Oh nooo my imaginary on line persona has been victimized... make up some fresh lies and try again...
1
Vigilantism delivers a sense of power and superiority to someone who has none. The internet is just the latest fad for carrying it out.
I'm reminded of the Bible story in John 8:6-8 (NIV): "But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, 'Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.' Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground."
186
@W … this is a good story from the Bible but it is just a story … this never happened although it was in the character of Jesus to do this. It was one of many changes, deletions, additions and modifications to the original scriptures.
6
@Rev. Henry Bates
Regardless of whether the bible is historical fact, it does make good literature.
As for Jesus writing in the ground with his finger, this may also be the origin of the Ichthys (Jesus fish) seen on the back of many cars today. During the first two centuries C.E. many Christians were persecuted. To identify themselves to one another, a first believer would draw a curved line on the ground. If the other were also a believer, then they would would complete the shape of a fish (Ichthys) by drawing the second line that crossed the first.
It is an early example of spycraft, and is still studied today as a historical example of symbolic communication.
16
@W
Actually, what Jesus was writing on the ground likely were the names of those in the crowd who had slept with the adulterous women (in other words, were guilty of hypocrisy), when he says "let any of you who is without sin cast the first stone", it is therefore also about hypocrisy, juding the woman they themselves were guilty of.
And yes, this was not part of the original text, it was likely written as commentary on an early text, and someone copying it assumed it was part of the original scripture. Likely the person writing it had heard this story told to him, and wrote it down.
8
While I too find these incidents appalling and think that social media has intensified the rapidity with which such incidents of public shaming progress, I do have one huge caveat to Brooks' argument. This is nothing new. Call-out culture has been with us from the beginning of humanity. In America, call-out culture has been a part of our DNA, from the beginning.
As an example, each of the following call-out victims in 17th Century colonial American history is one of my great (however many generations back) grandparents: Roger Williams; Anne Hutchinson; William Wickenden; Herodias Long Wicks Gardiner Porter, a victim multiple times; Obadiah Holmes; Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick and their son Daniel, as well as multiple lesser known victims. There is a Wiki page for each of those I have named if you wish to look them up. As reality would have it, I also have ancestors who did the calling out. There is something about us humans that demands we ridicule those with whom we disagree or abhor. I suppose it is a part of, in Matthew Arnold's words, "The something that infects the world."
As I came to my adulthood in the 1970s and have progressed through it, I've had to live through many right wing, destructive call-outers like Phyllis Schlafly, the Moral Majority, the NRA, and the Libertarians in the Federalist Society, followers of Any Rand, one of the most verbose call-outers in recent history. Yep, I've called-out others too and been called-out myself.
1
Primal impulses meet social media. What could possibly go wrong?
Add in a thug in the White House with no seeming brakes on his primal impulses....
3
We are not living in a time when progressive ideals such as lifting one another up, justice, equality, mercy, and awareness of human frailty are at the forefront. Instead we're led by a man whose instincts are based on personal destruction, demonizing of "the others", fear, racism, misogyny, and an absolute lack of interest in the truth. This man is supported by an astonishingly large portion of the population.
I don't blame Trump for everything, but there's no question that he has pulled back the veil that has separated the base human instinct to destroy one another as a means of survival from the effort of civilized people to live according to a set of rules and laws that assure our mutual survival. Trump has re-introduced the zero sum game as an acceptable way to move through life and win. It's not surprising, in this atmosphere, that a person who suffered childhood beatings would have no empathy whatsoever for the victim of his call-out, including whether she lived or died.
"The guy who called out Emily is named Herbert. He told “Invisibilia” that calling her out gave him a rush of pleasure, like an orgasm. "
The "call-out culture" is essentially a form of sadism, where a nonentity cloaks himself/herself with group self-righteousness in order to exert power. It is very biological, like a flock that rushes to peck a wounded hen to death.
Basically, it converts moral into amoral - the sentiment is exactly the same as witch hunts in medieval times. Herbert is probably a psychopath - as were those who burned innocent women.
379
Any similarities between this situation and Mister Bone Saw is purely coincidental.
Or is it??
What sayeth Mr. Brooks?
5
@Kai
Not sadism, but puritanism.
The self-righteous signal their virtue by denouncing and sacrificing others. If the other in question is an insider, that serves to make the righteousness and virtue even greater, by making the sacrifice greater.
.
Puritanism is a vicious and destructive morality, but it is not sadism. The initiator may indeed pity the victim, but that pity is subsumed by waves of self-righteous vindication received from the other members of the group. The cruelty is a means to an end, not the end itself.
21
@Kai
Nobody reads!
5
This becomes a pattern after awhile. Behavior is variable, some of it can't be accepted. But name calling and not liking has to be let go because you can't be free if you always have to be right. The media always reports on what's extreme and is not interested in humdrum expressions. If you protest peacefully there is no news coverage unless you have huge, huge numbers. If you start a fire, someone pays attention. We're going to have to tolerate people communicating with each other in less than positive ways. If we don't, we give them additional power. Let punk bands do the things that punk bands do as long as everyone gets home safely. Last night CNN pundits were "outraged" that trump said that maybe Melania could make some salads for the Clemson football team. Let's drop that. In China people many people die in prison in every year for reasons unknown. The salad thing is inconsequential. I can even smile at the idea of Melania making salads for college football players because her husband shut down the government. Perhaps I am a bad person.
1
In the age of drone warfare, technology allows us to carry out remote verbal attacks more efficiently. Else, nothing has changed since the group began hurling stones at the woman caught in adultery. When this sort of thing happened with all players physically present, all players were vulnerable to public shaming. Today, the mob is virtual. And that allows for a shift into a mob of avatars and, therefore, varying degrees of anonymity.
We all project our avatars, even in flesh encounters, in order to be seen in the best light possible. Our deepest selves are usually hidden even from ourselves; we don’t want to know our own dirty secrets. And what we don’t want to know about ourselves, we inevitably project onto the most convenient other. Calling out is always a diversion tactic. It is the primary means of hiding. And it is this vast game of hide-and-seek that defines human cruelty and loneliness.
Perhaps there is great wisdom behind the "primitive" social groups who are afraid of being photographed. Maybe they understand that the resulting image is not themselves, but a frame lifted out of their lives which cannot begin to tell the truth of who they are—from their outmost avatar to their inmost truth.
The brilliant statement, "Who among you who has no sin, let him cast the first stone" elicits powerful responses by piercing right through every avatar: either shame and repentance or shameless contempt. It is a pop quiz of moral, and therefore human, development.
1
Punk is dead.
6
And yet a young senator from Massachusetts named John F Kennedy admired the call-out culture administered by the dysfunctional Senator Joseph McCarthy. Even tolerance can totter if not all-together evolved on adapting to change. Calling-out binaries prove that survival of the fittest is just a crap shoot.
1
David, this isn't a new social phenomenon. It is human nature, and it's been that way for thousands of centuries. Humans are inherently a competitive species which is how it has survived despite its uncountable weaknesses, e.g., relatively low physical strength, all but oblivious to natural threats, only tolerating a very narrow range in temperature compared to the vast majority of other animal species on Earth.
Rather, the problem is that these silly kids feel the need to openly publicize their issues so that the message becomes affixed in the public domain from which there is no escape! So yes, we pay for our bad decisions brought on by our own narcissism to tell others about our inner gremlins.
How many schools teach kids the real dire consequences of engaging in social media? How many kids are taught discretion? How many understand accountability and atonement?
Yes, it's a shame that some of these kids might have compromised future opportunities, but this is the price one pays for revealing your jugular to the universe with no way to redact it.
If we believe in freedom and democracy, then we must believe in ALL of the benefits AND consequences of that construct. We may not cherry-pick the positive attributes of freedom while attempting to vilify the harsh consequences of it. With freedom comes responsibilities. Those who aren't aware of those responsibilities suffer the consequences.
Nature doesn't consider fairness or goodness or forgiveness. So buyer beware.
3
Well said David Brooks, well said. We evolve through empathy, compassion and realizing and living into our commonality, not emphasizing our differences.
5
Have we not learned anything from Orwell and "Animal Farm"? Have we not learned anything from Hawthorne and "The Scarlett Letter"? This day and and this age are so painful. What ever happened to peace, love and understanding?
344
@robert
The problem is that people actually have to READ those books you mentioned. Getting most people from the front the back cover (and actually understanding what's in between) remains a very difficult task.
36
@robert. Word. So sad to see a prominent anthropologist like Richard Wrangham endorse anything that is so mean-spirited as a method of advancing society.... Have we not advanced since Hobbes' world view?
17
@robert We have not learned anything from anyone. That's pretty apparent, look around.
17
I share a biblical quote. Psalm 130:3 "Lord, if thou should mark iniquities who shall stand?" Sooner or later such shaming destroys us all. However this is the culture we live in. From Christian Nationalists down to secularists we've become a culture of legalism, outrage, and shaming. Mercy and Grace, Empathy and Care have been removed from our culture and hearts. We have lost the warm heart at the center of our humanity. Without it we become barbarians.
6
What Brooks won’t talk about is that conservative ideology is a machine in high gear that churns out binaries. Chop and dice conservatism any way you want, but the result is always a stark binary of us vs. them. It’s winners vs. losers in the American Dream. It pits the primacy of individual freedom against the welfare of the collective. It’s “Western values” vs. immigrants, Christianity vs. all other belief systems, wealthy private schools vs. impoverished public ed.
A decades-long conservative campaign to remake the courts and society into an image of conservative values has resulted in the inequality, desperation, and ignorance that contributes mightily to the desperate vigilante behavior and tribalism Brooks describes.
Yet Brooks is so appalled, and so in denial about what conservatism has wrought. There is no greater driver of social binaries than the conservative embrace of the unfettered, free-market system. Fed steroids in the 1950s by the Chamber-of-Commerce, then Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan, the “free market,” left to its own devices, plundered the many for the profit of a few. It gutted the middle class, created oligarchs, and the unsustainable binary of the 1% vs. everyone else.
Capitalism’s present and future cash cow is the very technology that produced social media and its “barbarism,” and the AI that will put millions out of work and produce exponentially increased inequality, desperation, ignorance - and more binaries with lit fuses.
4
@Michael
Intolerance is the currency of both the far right and the far left.
But the reality is that the far left has the cultural podium, at the moment. They are the dominant cultural force, so much so, that conservatives prefer silence, except in the voting booth, where they let lose and stun the media when they elect someone like Trump.
3
A step toward Rwandan genocide? If I was looking for a levelheaded take on call out culture this isn’t it.
It was ridiculous for Emily disavow her friend completely, you show no discernement of the scale of seriousness of him sending a nude without consent recently being of more consequence than her being a cyber bully 10 years ago.
Restorative justice has room for people to be called out without thrown away.
I would’ve liked to read a hot take from someone who had something more useful to say than calling our current situation Roman Bloodsport.
David Brooks on last week’s Newshour commenting "both sides should compromise...." (referring Trump Shutdown)
I have been deeply disappointed by Brooks’ mild criticism on Trump on Newshour. This NeverTrump has shown very weak conviction. And to me his softspokeness masquerades his hypocrisy.
Lets face it in any sane discerning intellectual's mind, aren’t Trump’s deeds/words utterly unacceptable? Thus only forceful condemnation can do justice to Trump’s falsehood. Brooks wavering criticism of Trump and “gentlemanly” demeanor have offended me greatly. Shouldn’t heavyweight intellectuals speak out their conscience in this dark time!?
In this regard, Brooks has failed his duty immensely for his light and mild criticism of Trump!
And Brooks credibility further deteriorated for putting honorable Pelosi in the same sentence with lowest of low Trump!
2
I agree completely.
1
"Forgive them Father, for they know not what they Tweet."
2
Love that you wrote this whole screed on "call-outs" via social media without once mentioning the Tweeter-in-Chief, whose "call-outs" are so derogatory and childish that I often think they might be satirical fakes.
I guess it only bothers you when the people doing the calling out are those who are NOT in positions of equal social, economic, or political power to those who are getting called out.
Basically, white men in power are irked to find themselves finally being told about their own bad behavior. K.
1
Excellent column. There is no person without some issue in their past that could be used to destroy them. The use of terms like "sexist" "racist" is just SJW bullying, and it needs to end. I have confronted the SJW bullies, and refused to back down when calling for the end of their bullying. They often leave, since a SJW who cannot win with bullying often leaves.
1
@GeorgePTyrebyter
I hope you spend as much time examining the content that the SJWs are decrying as sexist and racist as you do admonishing the socially conscious
1
@GeorgePTyrebyter
I agree, George. Enough is enough. More people must tell these nitwits to go pound an egg.
The call-out is not like Mao's revolution. It is more like medieval times and the scarlett letter. It is jealous individuals egging on gullible followers to bring down people who have had some success.
1
Calling out is taking a step toward Rwandan genocide?
Hmmm . . . That may be the oddest false equivalence of the year.
Great article, when everyone know everything it can be brought up at any time even when you are 80 years old. Twitters been around for awhile now... recently was told a story where a guy tweeted something when he was young adolescent like 13, now the guys articling for a famous law firm and it was brought up, I saw the tweet which was barely an infraction, brilliant guy super high SAT scores, he mentioned it in his interview, it happened over a decade ago pubescent, he was fortunately hired the company was aware of it.
The problem here is that "media" is now available to our increasingly large population of ignorant, hateful fools - which, unfortunately includes our current President.
It used to be that you would write a letter to the editor. In order to do that, you had to be able to...write a letter. And you had to identify yourself.
Any hateful, ignorant person can fire off a tweet or Facebook post and do some real damage. To make it worse, they can often do this anonymously.
Is it any wonder that this is Trump's favorite form of communication?
I don't use Facebook or Twitter. I don't trust these people, and the damage they are doing to our society and culture is far greater than any good.
1
The most interesting and thought provoking article I have read in a long time. Thanks!
2
Calling out, bearing witness to bad behavior, as a means to change and redemption could be a powerful positive force. It would happen in a small face to face group with a good moderator. But I can't see anything good happening in a large, maybe anonymous, social media group. Peer pressure and guilt is too powerful to be used without extreme care.
Twenty years ago I participated in message boards of various interests. They were a good source of information, but they also had these stupid Flame Wars. Some people enjoyed stirring up trouble.
116
@Sharon
You make a valid point, especially regarding Flame Wars, though my experience has been that most of the flame comes from trolls. People have high emotions about this stuff, real emotions, borne out of experience, not just to stir the pot. My fear is that this article is laying the groundwork for a social shift, where people who suffer abuse and call out their perpetrators will be labeled trolls.
As for small, moderated sessions, i disagree. It empowers the perp too much. That’s why company’s force employees to go to arbitration, a small moderated session where a perp can control the narrative.
7
"Calling out" is not historical, except when someone acting radically didn't listen to those speaking confidentially to them about their behavior. THAT used to be the norm, where either a designated representative of a social group, or someone caring enough to take it on themself, would basically say to someone , "Check yourself. This is how you're perceived". That's how responsible people act.
1
For once I agree with David.
I simply wish to add, however, that the question we need to ask is, "why?" Why do people turn to call-out culture? Is it solely because it's easy?
I would suggest that perhaps it's because we have a society that is resistant to change, and which is therefore not capable of keeping up with the pace at which awareness spreads in the internet age. The problem is that calling out bad actors is too often the only way to get anything resembling justice.
The problem is that it's justice for the individual, not justice for the collective.
2
The impact of all these social media "tools" (distractions, really) is astounding to me. Imagine if to shame someone you had to write and mail a letter to a newspaper, or to the person themselves.
Sure, people still gossip but without the quick trigger of these "tools" the public shaming sickness would not be so virulent. If someone does something illegal, we need to address it but Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc. etc. prevent people from being human.
1
We are well on our way to a handmaid's tale future.
As is often the case, David Brooks has scored a bullseye with his essay on “call out culture “. To be a “ conservative “ used to mean to pay close attention to history, in order to apply its lessons in the conduct of current human affairs. In that sense, we should all be “conservative “, in order to never forget the lessons of “call out” culture which became foundational instruments of European fascism, of Soviet and Chinese totalitarianism, of the genocides of Cambodia and Rwanda, etc. I find these lessons particularly critical to our society at this moment in history, in which we have put into the most powerful job in the world an immoral man with no apparent knowledge of or concern for the lessons of history, our “Caller Out In Chief.”
So grateful for the common sense and common decency of David Brooks' columns. Assuming that there is a common understanding of sense or decency is perhaps the wrong assumption.
1
There is nothing more toxic to freedom than allowing the establishment of guilt by accusation alone. When the accused have no rights, nobody has rights, because all it takes is one person who is willing to lie - and those people have always existed and always will. I'm a millennial and a liberal, I've seen SJW culture first hand, and I'm proud to say I oppose it. I believe accusers should be taken seriously, but believed only if they can show credible evidence, and I believe norm-breakers should be punished proportionate to their offense. Nobody should be destroyed over one small misdemeanor, and that applies regardless of whether it's the criminal justice system or a social media mob going after them. I support shorter criminal sentences across the board, equalization of funding for all schools regardless of the race and family income of the students, an 80% top tax rate, and more call-outs for the disgusting hypocrites who point to real injustices to cook up justifications for committing injustices of their own. I refuse to cower in fear, and I will fight for what I believe in, against both conservatives and the far-left any day of the week.
3
Call-out culture, in my experience of the last ten years, has been a fantastic and quick way to see where you're coming up short, check your biases, and rethink things. Ask questions, read, reflect. It's about accountability. I've not seen so many people learn so quickly and expand their understanding of issues of race, class, gender, ableism, etc. as I have in various forums and blogs online. Via social media this has already had a great impact on making the (younger) world more willing to confront systemic injustice on all levels.
It's a mutual process as well, though, the engagement in a discussion, which Brooks misses. If you are going to call out you have to be ready to be on the receiving end yourself. Brooks isn't a participant, so he's merely pointing in confused horror from the sidelines towards egregious examples within a youth culture he is no part of. Take your ball and go home, Brooks.
Due Process is a good idea, like the wheel.
2
"we no longer gather in coliseums to watch people get eaten by lions because clergy members...have made us less tolerant of cruelty" If you ignore the nearly 1500 years after the coliseums when members of the clergy were happy to burn people alive in public for whatever religious mishap, you are probably right.
1
This column is really scary. If a person is inspired to condemn another person because of the emotional animus arising from the condemnor’s past experience in another life context and if the person uses social media to lay down their judgment, the coherence of society is gone, standards of justice are debased, shunning and scapegoating replace justice, we are reduced to a revenge culture, and our collective is governed by a system that is a monstrous enlargement of small town gossip.
4
An absolutely perfect example of how the abuser justifies their abuse. Well done, sir.
3
I just can't help thinking of the possibility that some people get caught in the mad rush to accuse who didn't do whatever it was or it was greatly exaggerated, or--
We have a rule of law specifically so that a person can't accuse someone of a crime and it's done; there's a process for examining the accusation. Here, we have eliminated everything in that process, including the consideration that an accuser might be a vindictive witch. When we lost Al Franken to this business it went past what I can support. It scares me that there is so much vindictiveness, and it is okay because it's women.
..and here we are as humanity, thinking that we are more open minded than ever. Sigh.
2
Hmm, so what do we do? Accept the abuse and pray that someone else will stop it? Accept the abuse and pray that someone else will speak up? Mercy is given when the victim can appreciate the true horror of the perpetrator's soul. It does not happen right after that first blow. And it takes a supportive social structure to allow mercy to be manifest. Your assumed binary thinking does not reflect the universe.
Perhaps the people who lost their friends because they were called out need a different kind of friends
When you have a President who does this everyday, how
would you not expect people to be any different.
I miss the 90s.
1
Dave -
Just curious, but when folks like me were called unpatriotic cowards because we really didn't think "they hate our freedom" was a coherent thought, let alone a convincing reason to invade Iraq, what was that? Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have spent decades vilifying anyone and everyone who doesn't fall into line exactly with their line of thought, so is what you're talking kind of like that?
Oh, and does this mean we're supposed to let Stephen Miller off the hook when all is said and done? Just asking for a friend.
Social media continues to illustrate exactly what you get when you run around the streets yelling Power to the People!
1
This is important, Mr. Brooks. What is happening here is that a new group is finding power for the first time, and getting drunk with it. It's no different than how a black person can use the n-word and be admired for it, while a non-black, especially white, person who uses it even in a purely academic context risks their job and their career.
It's just about power: the message is "I felt weak; now I'm strong; I can prove it by hurting other people." Once we realize this we can begin to talk the newly-empowered out of their excesses, while acknowledging their right to their new-found power.
The last thing society needs is shame wars between various tribes (which now include poor, disenfranchised whites, as Trump's victory illustrates) using technology to hurt each other as a means of psychological self-medication.
1
I agree that call-out culture can be destructive. But the closer comparison to the Rwandan genocide, in which the government maligned an ethnic group as cockroaches that had to be exterminated, is the incitement from the President of the United States and his state television about migrant rapists and murderers that have to be stopped at all costs. This column seems to miss the larger context of incitement of good and evil that is going on today.
1
Like Brooks, I find the zeal of the man calling out unappealing, but let's judge by actions, not motives. We hear Brooks' concern for people who behaved badly and are then held to account, but little for those they actually harmed. I do not choose to associate with sexual predators, many of whom are both charming and adept at hiding their actions. In fact, alerting others to their actions might save someone from becoming a victim. The "victims" of call outs portrayed here were in fact bullies in the full sense of the word. We encourage children to stand up to bullies. We should be "upstanders" ourselves.
The research of prominent anthropologist Richard Wrangham focuses on primates, particularly the behavior of gorillas and chimpanzees. What cultural anthropologists mean by "civilization" is state-organized, complex societies, which first emerged perhaps 7,000 years ago. Prof. Wrangham's ideas about human societies 1.8 million years ago, related to food, cooking, brain size and tooth size, are interesting and controversial, but they don't have much to say about the complex, global-scale societies of today. You can't draw a simple line from the hypothetical behavior of paleolithic humans to the cyber-bullying of today. Mr. Brookes should find some more relevant research on the nature of human interaction.
The cruel mass barbarism of endless call-outs is a direct result of naïve philosophies like deconstruction and the intellectual dumbing down of Americans who no longer read or analyze anything. I don't think most of these people are evil, just badly educated and informed.
Truth will out and if mass condemnation is deserved it will become obvious very quickly. In the meantime, we should always ask: Do I need to say this? now?
I loved the comment about letting him/her who is without sin cast the first emoji.
155
@wspwsp
Your "dumbed down" person wouldn't have the slightest idea what deconstruction even is, or its history, or who Derrida was. Why? Precisely because they DON'T read or analyze!
So what we really need hear is not wild accusations about certain theories, but the reading and discussing of MULTIPLE theories, and for that, we need more funding and interest in the humanities in public education, rather than continuously and attacking them and cutting their funding.
20
@wspwsp Perhaps the call-out culture is, in part, a result of the lack of a "right" education. Being educated extensively in ethics, morality, critical thinking, through a 'great books' process. (And, not necesarily the great books only of Western Civilization.)
15
@wspwsp
I believe willful ignorance is evil. If one chooses not to read and be informed, then does something hurtful to another based on that ignorance, that's evil.
7
Brooks: "I’d say we no longer gather in coliseums to watch people get eaten by lions because clergy members, philosophers and artists have made us less tolerant of cruelty, not more tolerant."
One look at the violent fodder served up by the media (TV, film) today tells me that we are backsliding on this point. These may not be actual killings as in the days of Rome but they harden us in similar ways to the mayhem witnessed in the coliseum.
Yes, the crust of civilization is thin indeed.
2
mark you are failing in not mentioning the book of Charles J. Sykes: A nation of victims subtitled: the decay of the American character. This much better, more general approach at the same time explaining the uniqueness of your country (I'm Dutch) should have been a lesson for any one('s society).
We're dealing with more and more deception at almost all places on earth. The receipt is operating out of doubling down on existing deception roots like there is and was religion in the first place. Their main idea is that everything is fixed or made up in ways we are not able to manage. Since most what lfe is about is happening in real time it becomes true that every moment or part of a day, there will be no clue else than to believe and repeat believing that it is like that.
Doubling down is the attitude to consider the unavoidable consequence of any predestination is, that not history and just you is made up but also the future.
Once you landed in this matrix it becomes all about the management of the rest of one's future, it's prospects and available (rest)motivation.
I tested it on a personal base for over 50 years. Nothing has ever stopped this automatic proces of adaptations
Beware; important knowledge is being withold and manipulated because there are people who desperately want to join and use the best knowledge ahead. These kinds of people know for sure they aren't able to add anything worth wile to future. So stealing the most is now grabbing the utter whatever.
Are we supposed to feel sorry for the bully turned on her “best friend” before hearing his side of the issue? Is mass murder really an accurate comparison to cyber bullying? Are we shocked that crowds turn on innocents when basic fears and resentment are whipped up? When the helpless discover a tool which gives them a measure of strength the only thing which may hold them back is their view of humanity, and when that view is a vail of anger and hurt, others will feel pain.
1
I agree with Mr. Brooks' assessment of the toxic call-out culture. What is unfortunate, though, is that this toxic culture was brought about by victim-shaming and automatically believing men when a woman made an accusation. If women or minorities had been treated with dignity in the past, the rage that brought about the call-our culture wouldn't exist. Mr. Brooks is spot on when he says, "You see how zealotry is often fueled by people working out their psychological wounds." Yes! This society has wounded women and minorities, and now the oppressed are taking a harsh revenge. I believe that all accused people are owed due process - including women and minorities. Toxic call-out culture is the direct result of centuries of only white men benefiting from due process.
Our culture is more oriented towards punishment than rehabilitation. This filters from cruelty to other humans down to cruelty to animals.
People are more likely to learn to be better human beings if they are approached about wrongdoing in a way that recognizes their humanity and does not make them defensive.
Norway has a criminal justice system that follows the more human approach. Prisons are actually pleasant places where inmates are treated well. Recidivism is much lower than in the US. (There was an article in the NYT mag sometime in the last few years.)
5
Someone please tell me how to "call out" David Brooks for making the lessons for every single one of his columns that we follow a "path to redemption" ... and also for never understanding that economic realities such as healthcare, living below the poverty line, and not being able to pay the mortgage can be actually more important than sharing a beer and a spiritual worldview with the neighbors ... and also for cherry picking his topics to simply ignore the majority of the offenses of this criminal president and write instead about NPR shows and the tremendous impact on our lives of elite delicatessens
5
I have also seen a culture where men, whether it be Priests in the Catholic Church, Doctors dealing with Teenage Gymnasts, Men in various high profile positions of power, have been called out and compared to the silent past that protected them before hand, has been more effective in both dealing with the perpetrators as well as changing society as a whole.
Sweeping everything under the rug, has been cruelty without justice. It hasn't been compassion, it has been cowardice to protect those we like, over those we feel we can sacrifice. Women and Children. Mr Brooks might find that sacrifice okay, might be concerned that people who have been exempt from justice who he likes are going to have to face it now, but decent people don't.
Further to compare the calling out of what are real actions compared to the thought crimes of Mao's Cultural Revolution shows a deeply problematic inability to see a difference between political freedom and deeply hurtful actions against others.
Should we have compassion for those who accept responsibility for their actions, who can truly apologize, who learn to behave differently, who express a certain repentance.
We should have forgiveness not for those who demand it, but those who deserve it. Those who do the work that atonement demands.
We should have compassion for those who cannot do that work. Empathy. But forgiveness, I don't think so. Forgiveness comes with agreeing to be part of the social compact. It requires trust.
2
@Edward Brennan Our justice system, rather than our Red Guards, has dealt with the Doctor and the Priests.
This article is long overdue. It's a pleasant surprise for me to find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with Brooks.
Call-out culture punishes someone for doing something wrong without a) caring/understanding whether that person even KNEW it was wrong at the time, and b) providing any incentive whatsoever for that person to modify their behavior. If everyone already hates me over something I did 10 years ago, why should I bother trying to be a better person?
However, in response to this, some non-profs and "grassroots" groups have adopted "call-in culture," in which one or two Chosen Ones have a private conversation with someone who is accused of doing harm. This process is also inadequate, as it lacks transparency; no one else in the group knows what is said in this conversation or if it even took place! It also draws no distinction between someone who made one mistake and someone who's made the same mistake for the 30th time; both get the same little quiet talk, with no real consequences. The victim's voice (if there is a clear victim) is entirely ignored; the situation is resolved not when the victim feels better or when the culprit makes some sort of reparation, but when the Chosen Ones decide that it is.
The answer is simple: just TALK TO PEOPLE. As a group, or as a "victim" with 1-2 friends for support. Be clear. Be transparent. Be forgiving, but set limits. You don't need to publicly shame anyone, and you don't need an authoritative third party to resolve it for you.
6
What's striking to me is the selective "outrage" of social justice warriors.
For instance, last year we saw a call to boycott In-N-Out Burger because of some political donations by a founder. I think I read a half dozen articles about it.
At the same time, when's the last time you heard of a boycott of Boeing (2nd largest defense manufacturer) or Exxon Mobil (5th largest oil company) gaining any traction or media attention.
What's occurred to me is that, perversely, the weak, rather than the strong, are the most susceptible to victimization by outrage culture. Probably because so-called "outrage" (expressed mostly online in 144 characters) isn't really all that deeply felt--it's just really a low-cost means of virtue-signaling.
And that's scary.
16
well, no -- the crust of civilization is certainly not thinner than i think. but i seem to be in the minority about the crust of civilization.
the operative principle here is that there is an explicit moral code (who defines the code, and how, is a separate inquiry), and the separate imperative that everyone must conform to the code or be ruined. Orwell knew this dynamic clearly: it has the effect of making the traducer feel virtuous, and of raising his or her social cred.
to claim that traducing errants is "how civilization moves forward" is simply to cast civilization as a form of oppression and progress as a series of witch hunts. i prefer the enlightenment model: civilization moves forward by stripping off superstition in favor of human nature, and the free exchange of ideas.
"emily" is simply a person whose merit as a person is reputational. this is the real point. trump has said and done things far worse than emily, but his power has other resources. this is the power hierarchy limned by Orwell: if you're high enough in the party, you're free.
this is the real insight: are in you in the "party of belief" or not? people who found their careers on a party of belief (including opinion columnists) must always toe the line, or face retribution.
those of us who renounce all parties of belief, with thanks for the privilege, see "the cruelty of call-out culture" as obvious proof that living by your party of belief is a precarious foundation for a human life.
5
Although I would love to have respect and belief in the rule of law, what happens, Mr. Brooks, when the man sitting at the top defies those laws, and makes a mockery of the justice system? When the very system that is supposed to uphold these laws, stands by and watches as the Constitution is trampled upon? Who is going to uphold the law when 1/3 of our (Male) Supreme Court justices have engaged in reprehensible behavior to say the least? Sometimes there is no other alternative to vigilante justice; you only have to look at the history of the world. There is no such thing as a wise and empathetic revolution, only a violent one. Even Gandhi was unable to stop the violence that brought down the British oppression in India. At some point, people will stop believing in the rule of the law because the so-called lawmakers have long stopped upholding it. That's when the the society will undergo a seismic change. Mr. Brooks, we had an empathetic and wise president, but your party worked very hard to destroy his vision, his reputation, and his capacity. The current occupant of the White House is what happens when one party in a two-party system decides that decency is overrated, and ethics and integrity are just two words in a dictionary.
7
@Kalpana
Your post indicates that you think people like you will win a revolution. What if you're wrong? What if the rights that have won in the past 30 years are lost because you overplayed your hand? Trump is an example of backlash that can occur when change is pushed too hard and too fast. Even if it's justified, your cause will be lost if you force people rather than convince them. Be careful wishing for a revolution you might very well lose.
2
David Brooks instructing anyone on the "right way" to "do" change is like receiving a lecture from a triceratops on successful extinction avoidance strategies from the salad bar at Applebees. People have been shunning each other for infractions of societal norms since the beginning of societies. What Brooks is reacting to with all the rusty incompetence of a chariot wheel is that those who get to do the shunning and on what norms has changed. And as a member of the former ruling establishment, he doesn't like it. Not. One. Bit.
8
@Mrs Whit
You are way off. This is not like before. Social media has made the speed with which things move so fast that there is no time for reflection or consideration. Attacking the messenger rather than the message, as you are doing here, is an old approach to trying to win an argument you are on the wrong side of.
1
we have thought that education would free people to think rationally. we have thought that we are not born with wisdom but acquires it by experience.
all those things we thought, for awhile anyway, no longer hold in this culture, in this world. i have to assume we are moving backwards, not forwards because we are scared witless of what the future portends and without realizing it we are shaping our future right now.
all the mess- calling each other out, trump, fox news, school shootings, people going bankrupt because they get sick, pervasive addiction, homelessness - this is what we have become and this is our future until we are willing to accept each other and work together to create a better society for ourselves, our children and grandchildren.
there are no easy fixes here. there are no right answers but we do have a choice. we are looking for someone else to step up and take charge. keep dreaming or stop complaining and start acting like what you want this world to be.
1
Outing someone on social media is easily done as it is so impersonal. That is also why it is far easier to shoot someone with a gun, versus stabbing that person with a knife. Distance aides detachment.
8
@Al
Great analogy!
Your life is ruined because you were mean to another kid in school? I find the idea odd.
The combination of moral absolutism with social media is a very bad one.
10
Then Mr. Brooks, I assume you condemn the President for calling an entire group of people rapists, terrorists and drug pushers? Why focus on individuals when the one with the most power does it everyday? Don’t believe I’ve seen that opinion piece from you
5
An humanistic overview of social comity and justice such as this column advocates seems inappropriate coming from a lifelong Republican, but cross the aisle, David. You will find a welcoming home
1
This is your brain on social media. It's scientific... we lose our empathy. And along with it, what's best about humanity.
5
@Barbara You're confusing how science can explain how a thing happens in the world with the thing its describing being "natural." It's not natural or unchangeable that some lose their empathy on social media. It's part of a culture that develops, changes, evolves. Your shrugging excuse ends up giving an intellectual defense of this bad behavior, although I'm sure you don't mean it that way.
Seriously? What is next? Shaming a 12 year old for marking up the walls of his house when he was 4 years old? How rediculous this is. And how passive/aggressive too! This behavior is not "therapeutic" ,it is just vindictive.
8
"He was asked if he cared about the pain Emily endured. “No, I don’t care,” he replied. “I don’t care because it’s obviously something you deserve, and it’s something that’s been coming. … I literally do not care about what happens to you after the situation. I don’t care if she’s dead, alive, whatever.”"
Righteousness rarely travels well.
8
The most important difference between R Kelly and the girl who posted an emoji is that she lost 'everything' important to her and R Kelly, a known serial child rapist has lost nothing - not his career or his freedom.
3
“because clergy members, philosophers and artists have made us less tolerant of cruelty, not more tolerant.”
CLERGY MEMBERS?
I’m so sick of conservative opinion columnists (including in the Times) insisting that organized religion (particularly Christianity) holds they key to “morality” & higher standards of human behavior.
In the USA Modern Conservative Christianity in particular can be quite brutal towards its “enemies.” That includes not just clergy, but prominent Evangelical pundits as well as congregants.
Need I mention the anti-homosexual campaigns that target military funerals by Westboro Baptist members? How about the Baptist pastors that literally CELEBRATED the Pulse Nightclub shootings of gay male patrons?
Certain conservative Christian pastors, etc. have notably criticized Muslims, other Christian denominations & even (on occasion) Jews with respect to various issues.
Christians actively harass people associated with abortion in their home neighborhoods.
They are quick to criticize all manner of individuals & behaviors for the “downfall of American”- except when it involves one of their allies like Trump.
Anyone heard of of the various campaigns by Evangelicals like the Falwell clan against the Clintons et al. over the years?
What about the great Evangelical pundit D’Souza, pardoned by Trump, famed for his anti-Obama tabloid trash level work?
If clergy is the answer, heaven help is.
4
This callout culture is a real danger to our kids. I thank god there was no social media when I was younger - between naked pictures, silly videos, and the progression of minority (esp trans/gay rights), it’s hard to imagine coming away without having said or done something stupid with today’s lens applied.
Even Obama opposed gay marriage when he ran for president the first time. Obama! Times change, culture changes, and people change. If you don’t believe all of those things, then calling people out really is just about sadistic pleasure. If you do believe in change, then it seems you’d come to the same conclusion again - that it’s wrong.
4
Let he who cast the first stone be without sin.
1
I encourage everyone to listen to the actual broadcast and form your own opinion prior to criticizing or praising this editorial. The show is richer and more nuanced and the actual facts might influence you to think differently.
4
Agree completely with the description of call out culture - the good vs evil simplicity, the lack of forgiveness, mercy, judgment or nuance.
One other important point, however - inaccuracy. The culture repeats internet rumors. There is no investigation. If something titilating appears somewhere on-line, and its juicy, then boom. That is the telling point about the culture - it isn't really interested in justice. It's interested in having targets.
3
I hope this powerful and important piece gets huge play beyond The Times. Can we translate the last two graphs into a meme?
Why does all of this remind me of the "Five Black Categories" during the Chinese "Cultural Revolution"?
3
A very good article, if perhaps too polite. It should mention the word 'solipsism', the now-popular habit of accrediting 'fact' through 'feeling' for the noble purpose of 'power'. The wider fact is that youth like the punk musician are being taught 'ethical relativism' and post-truth-truth, all bolstered by fake information pouring through digital platforms. Their political enemies use exactly the same reasoning to take and keep power. As for mob justice, lauded in the quote from that idiot anthropologist, it's the opposite to civilization. There's no civilization that will stand, without prior restraint on cult, rumor, belief, and identity.
3
I am glad that I grew up in the 80s and early 90s, and was already in college and an adult by the time the internet became widely accessible and mainstream and well before the age of Twitter and Facebook and the smartphone.
My youthful rebellions and missteps and mistakes remained analog and unrecorded and largely unremembered, rather than preserved online forever and spread out as wide as the internet.
Yikes.
This is why I largely stay off of social media.
5
No, no, no. Problematic moral equivalence is pretending that not being allowed to participate in an artistic subculture--even if that outcome leads you to hide in shame--is somehow the equivalent of Rwandan genocide. No matter how inappropriate you find Herbert's near-orgasmic thrill, HE DIDN'T KILL ANYONE.
It. Is. Not. The. Same. David. That should really be pretty obvious. The fact that society's method of enacting revenge or enforcing its cultural mores has become shaming people on Instagram rather than displaying their heads on a pike mounted to the town walls is a GOOD thing.
3
"The Lottery", by Shirley Jackson only on steroids comes to mind.
3
"...once you give random people the power to destroy lives without any process, you have taken a step toward the Rwandan genocide." Yes, Yes, Yes! And a step towards a Trump White House. Nice that David can see the mote in his neighbor's eye.
3
There is a whiff of hypocrisy about this article. The call out culture of today is just a remix of the social shaming that has been around for centuries. Like the scarlet letter, traditional cultures have held women in check with shame and ostracism. This is nothing new.
What is new is that the tool is being used against men.
Mr. Brooks starts with the example of Emily "calling out" her friend for sending a woman a sexually explicit photo. He never reveals whether Ken did or did not send the photo, only that his bandmates didn't believe it. He implies, without stating, that the punishment didn't fit the crime.
Well, if you really want to see social shaming in action, without the use of social media, explore what happens to a young girl who accuses popular football players of rape. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/opinions/arlington-texas/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c2cd68eea62d
The #me too movement may have led to rough justice, but before #me too there was most often no justice at all. The only thing new here is that some small measure of power is now in women's hands.
4
When Brooks is good, he's really good. Great column.
7
Mr. Brooks, I appreciate your drawing attention to the horrors of the "call-out" culture. It is unfortunate however, that you do not mention that one of the leaders of this "call-out" cult is the vile and hateful Donald Trump.
2
With apologies to The Clash: It's up to you not to heed the call-out.
And perhaps a digital Arthur Koestler, seeing the latest iterations of self-denunciation before show trials after their Soviet precedents, will for the age of errant sexting and nude selfies write his novel under the working title Darkness at Poon'.
As for visiting the sins of one's abusers upon one's own victims in turn - Pssst! This hurts me more than it hurts you: pass it on! - I often recall a passage from Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943) by the anarchist-elitist Albert Jay Nock:
“I was immensely interested in reading John Adams’s clear forecast of the scrimmage I was witnessing, and his prophecy that ‘the struggle will end only in a change of impostors.’ One afternoon in 1900 I listened while a young Jewish Socialist was breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the rich. I had asked him just what it was that he proposed to do when he had got them all properly killed off. ‘We have been oppressed,’ he said, ‘and now we shall oppress.’ I thought he put the matter well, for I could see no other prospect.”
"We all have it coming, Kid." Bill Munny, Unforgiven
Much like “The Scarlett Letter”. Shaming is nothing new.
1
@Mike The Scarlett Letter was applied to people cheating on their spouse, which is one of the most destructive acts a person can engage in. Consequences of cheating on your spouse including STDs, which can be fatal, fetuses with STDs leading to miscarriage or lifelong deformities, suicide, depression, bankruptcy and children growing up in broken homes. Most cultures try to keep cheaters in check for these reasons.
1
I'm going to counter-argue this article directly. Liberal biases should be questioned, definitely. However, in articles such as this there is a lot of thinly concealed reactionary rhetoric going on.
Is the absolutism of the situation described in this article too much? Yes, it is. BUT, is the cause worth fighting? Oh most definitely yes, it is. The revelation that Emily's accuser was a guy describing a misogynistic motive doesn't diminish that she had behaved poorly, and in her wisdom and self-reflection, she acknowledged as much, though she may have rightly questioned the harshness of her punishment.
More broadly, though, we're talking specifically about misogyny here, and we're obliquely talking about #MeToo. David intentionally worded it differently, but lets not be misdirected. We shouldn't destroy people's lives willy-nilly, nor create a culture where we're afraid to speak honestly. The problem is that people who hold misogynistic points of view, well, there are a lot of them out there. Some don't realize their misogyny. Can we be allowed to kick them? So, they feel righteously angry every time they get some pushback. Just because there are a lot of misogynists who think their feelings are valid doesn't make them so.
We need to expand an avenue for forgiveness in the #MeToo movement, sure, and that will happen, but lets be clear, David is proposing we reject the movement. Its the same kind of reactionary tack that re-branded Feminists into Feminazis.
3
Sociopathic media has bed to the "high schoolization" of adulthood with its petty cruelties, status seeking, group sorting. Trump a master high school bully, tweeting insulting names on his opponents.
" The crust of humanity is thinner than you think".
Just remember the Donner Party.
1
When contemplating the destruction of someone's life there should be at least some basic due process. Before you burn someone as a witch, at a minimum you need to determine if she weighs the same as a duck.
4
“Once you adopt binary thinking in which people are categorized as good or evil, once you give random people the power to destroy lives without any process, you have taken a step toward the Rwandan genocide.”- comparing being called out on the internet for making mean comments to taking steps towards the Rwandan genocide is exactly the type of binary thinking that you are critiquing.
3
Kingsley Amis famously warned about social changes to come: "More will mean worse."
Seeing how the children of the baby boomers have turned out, just imagine what childish, ignorant, foolish, and socially incompetent adults the millennials' offspring will be.
4
Some how it reminds me of Salem, Massachusetts - you know, witch hunts.
2
But Mr. Brooks, don't you know that any sin committed in the name of leftism, is really no sin at all?
3
I am tired of straight white men and their worries. Don't act the fool and you likely will not be "called out". We're finally in a time when abuse is being curbed. And yes, that mean emoji sent by a high school girl to another high school girl is also unacceptable. Sorry, white people (and I am physically white although Puerto Rican), the rest of us get to live here, too.
3
Brooks uses exaggeration to prove a point about nuance. How ironic.
He sees phantasms of violent denunciations in the puritanical but peaceful behavior of the punk community.
Here's some news: what's great about America is that we tolerate different types of communities from Manichean punks to hedonists and everything in between.
2
"... once you adopt a binary tribal mentality... You’ve eliminated any sense of proportion. Suddenly there’s no distinction between…" Your Sitting President and the many he insults / attacks / bullies on a daily basis.
Today's homily, Reb Brooks, must bear immediate self-referential application.
1
The whole Rwanda genocide was too much. The rest was ok. R. Kelly consequences and those of a woman who cyber bullied seem to be on pair though, since both hurt people profusely.
David and his baby boom generation has done such a bang up job that America is completely banged up. Well the children of today learned from the best (sarcasm abounds).
1
...seems to me that we condone "telling on" people when it benefits us personally or perhaps when the personal being told on is somehow an outsider.
It is ironic that when Brett Kananaugh was called on his past behavior, many people gave him the benefit of the doubt that he had changed and matured. And he got to be a Supreme Court Justice! One hurtful mistake for some punk artist, and they lose their entire life. One criminal act by a white guy and he can be forgiven. Hmm.
2
Life is long, for most, and the world is a big place. If her punk community ejected her for a decade-old high school mistake, this is a great opportunity to move on to another community that is more understanding that people can improve.
So if one acts like Dr. Nassar he/she deserves to be ostracized, but if one molests one child he/she should be forgiven? How about 2 kids, or 5 kids? Where do we draw the line David?
Is the decision a gut call? If so, who's gut do we use?
1
These are the same people rallying behind criminal justice reform and pushing for restorative justice and abolishing minimum mandatory sentences, treating juvenile offenders fairly based on the science behind brain development. These are all good ideas but these fake progressives only back this reform in theory. They like to say them aloud to sound progressive but really they think everyone should get the death penalty if they don’t think the correct thoughts. “Hang em all” says the new liberal, #metoo progressive.
2
Call-out culture is part of the larger body of semi-psychotic ideology emanating from the campuses, where human relations are understood to be solely about power. Hence, that brand of "social justice" is essentially about coercion, about pushing other people around, making them think "correctly" and act accordingly. Congratulations America on raising a generation of fascists.
2
Throw in the 1950’s Red Scare David. Lives ruined by baseless accusations and guilt by association.
2
David Brooks, for shame. There is a difference between punk/not punk and VICTIM/ABUSER. What on earth is your motivation for drawing that false equivalence?
4
Kindness and civility could lead you to not take-down some punk girl for being mean on social media. But for decades kindness and civility kept the Catholic Church from facing it's child abuse problems and has lead witnesses to bury their heads, turn away or deny. Which way do you want it? What world do you want to live in? The Catholic Church can still not agree to a solution 20 years later. If we stopped at kindness and civility it would forever be 1960 again.
2
Go Emily!!!
2
David,
Don't you think comparing the shaming culture of Americans on social media to the Rwanda genocide is a bit much?
5
Excellent article
2
"Let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone," said someone a while ago.
2
Annonymity, hiding behind Internet accounts with cryptic names, is a huge part on this on-line moment of bullying, trolling, tweeting, and calling out other people. When I submit a letter to our local newspaper, I receive a call to verify that I am the writer. My name is printed with the letter. When I submit comments here at the Times, I do so with my name and town of residence. Want to clean up the Internet? Require people stand behind their posts in the light of day, no more trolling by cowards hiding behind false names.
4
Point well taken Mr. Brooks.
Well, the leader of the country is a social media freak with the ability to unleash his "calling out" to his millions of agog, zealous followers and take down his enemies, real or hallucinated. He is Mr. Twit.
Brooks writes "... zealotry is often fueled by people working out their psychological wounds. You see that when denunciation is done through social media, you can destroy people without even knowing them."
In other words, there's our president, still chewing orange peels in the school yard hoping somebody will notice, when along comes Twitter, and lo, he can spit at everybody simultaneously. It was made for him and everybody who pays attention to social media. And has no other life.
2
David Brooks has a genius for inappropriate equivalences. The mutually-juvenile behavior of anonymous punk band types doesn't have much to do with BLM and Me-Too. I wish he would stop trying to find ways to diffuse the guilt of the Republican party and a large percentage of white males.
4
The false equivalency of comparing abuser and victim to punk/non-punk or any other dichotomy is absolutely ridiculous. Have you ever experienced abuse or has anyone you love been raped or abused? You need to look further, you stopped at a convenient and ignorant place. Talk to some women for this article, not just pontificate based on an NPR episode you listened to on your way to work.
4
White European American Judeo- Christian culture can be very corrupt cruel evil immoral and inhumane. Writing from within the context and perspective of that culture denies the humanity of outsider.
The white majority enslaved and denied the humanity of the 4 million Africans who on the eve of the Civil War were worth more than all of the other capital assets in America combined except for the land. The white majority denied the equality as Americans of black Africans who were segregated and separated. Both their enslavement and separate and unequal status of blacks by whites were lawful.
Being a physically identifiable colored ethnic minority in America calls you out all of the time to derision and marginalization. Even if you are President and First Lady of the United States.
CNN recently did a year end summary of all the times that white people called the cops on blacks for doing a myriad of innocent normal things. Tamir Rice and Michael Brown lost their lives to white bigotry and cruelty.
3
All those folks on death row. Some of whom are innocent. They weren't put there by millenials now, were they?
The cruelty in our civilization does not lie in the "call-out culture" of some inconsequential punks.
2
No one is perfect but we would all be wise to look inward before judging outward. Words of wisdom spoken by Jesus nearly 2000 years ago when an angry mob of self-righteous people were lining up to stone a woman known to be an adulteress:
How can you think of saying, 'Friend, let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,' when you can't see past the log in your own eye? Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend's eye. Luke 6:42
1
I finally agree with David Brooks.
4
David, you are wasting your breath. Do you think this is going to change?
.
I'm posting this because I'm reading your column online (though I do subscribe to the print edition). And the paper encourages us to comment online.
Live by the internet, and die by it. Can't have it both ways.
Jesus said it best “Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone”
David: Would you actually show mercy to someone who abused your kid? Yes or no?
2
As always I have issues with DB's slight of hand. So he cherry picks a few accounts from a community that he has no connection to in order to prove that calling out people is cruel. Meanwhile white boy rapists get hand slap sentences because white boy judges don't want to mess up their potential achievements. The real issue beyond mean girls and hothouse environments is that women's lives are destroyed and the justice system and conservatives don't really care. Well as they said in the Old South, the real Conservative position anything goes as long as you don't kill a girl or have sex with a boy. Call them oit and keep calling them out.
2
A positive feedback loop of negativity. Sad.
"Even the quest for justice can turn into barbarism...."
I was not reminded of the Rwandan genocide, but instead, The Lord of the Flies.
1
Let us not lose sight of the fact that groups which have committee the greatest evil - Nazis, Stalinists, Maoists and others (the list could go on and on) - didn't see themselves as villains trying to get away with something. To the contrary, they saw themselves as avenging angels here to set right and purify a broken world - to finally eliminate Jews and their "conspiracies,", capitalists and their greed, or intellectuals and their treachery, etc.
There is perhaps nothing more dangerous than a righteous zealot. Beware of angry utopians.
1
Who are these people who have never done anything wrong
in their lives ?
Who are their "Internet Judges" who condemn "miscreants" without a hearing ?
Is there no recourse in the courts against the Internet Sites
and Providers who enable the spreading of "awful"
moments of one's life and the Internet Mob's attack on the person ?
I used to wonder how the Parisian Mob could sit there
and watch one "Enemy of the Revolution" after another
be guillotined, after reading this article and others along
the same lines, I no longer wonder.
If this is how most of the people under 30 feel and act,
then I can only warn them that all Revolutions devour their
children.
1
When I look at my Gen Z son and his Gen Z friends, I feel hope for the future. They have little interest in social media, believe strongly in social justice, but have little patience for social justice warriors and their increasingly ruthless methods. My son and his friends are funny, kind, compassionate, humble, loyal, and hardworking. They will go far in life, and they will make our world a better place.
4
In general I agree with your points in this article. There is a call-out occurring in our culture, a great swing in the 'other direction' and with, perhaps, inevitable misuse of the legitimate outrage. And the social media allows for both for anonymity to make accusations without taking any responsibility for them, and for the social media platforms to treat this as interactive entertainment.
But the last paragraphs have statements that undermine your points. We certainly do still have coliseums. We entertain ourselves by watching largely underserved peoples achieve fame by violent confrontations, person to person, and that cause severe, debilitating injuries, after which we get rid of them, we call it football. We have huge numbers of clergy, scholars and philosophers that are not more moral humans by being so, they are only more convenienced. We have leaned that being highly acclaimed often comes with a license to abuse, based on a willingness of the acclaimers to turn away from awful behavior in favor of standing in refracted light.
The most moral and effective people I have encountered are often 'small' people, who have lived sometimes very difficult lives in difficult places and maintained senses of dignity, humanity, humor, grace, and great responsibility to their communities and without having read these philosophers, or ascribed to 'great' religions.
Thank you, David Brooks.
Well said.
Long overdue.
NYT is major offender.
Poor John Lassiter...
2
"In this small story, we see something of the maladies that shape our brutal cultural moment. You see how zealotry is often fueled....You also see how once you adopt a binary tribal mentality — us/them...victim/abuser — you’ve immediately depersonalized everything. You’ve reduced complex human beings to simple good versus evil."
So true, David. Now if only the zealots in Congress could compromise, imagine what would be accomplished:
Instead of 'the wall throws money at a fake problem vs 'we gotta stop those bad hombre rapists pouring into our homeland,' the two sides admit the humanity of each other's pov - and compromise on half as much spent on a wall.
Instead of 'tax cuts for the rich effectively starve social services and decrease middle/working class spending' vs. 'imagine the pain of the rich man that can't afford another yacht'...the zealots might have agreed to go half and half, giving the rich only 50% of the tax cuts.
Gosh, that goes for our whole history: if only the civil rights movement could have been less "binary" - could have compromised more: maybe had blacks sit in the middle of the bus, maybe had a separate but equal 'colored section'...could have borne in mind that white supremacists that blow children apart with church bombings are people too.
I too have to agree that the younger generation is lacking in many traits, and these weaknesses are multiplied by social media.
So many younger people believe they are the center of the universe. What they feel at that moment is everything and the stronger the conviction, the more true it must be. There is little reflection or self doubt. Being thoughtful is a weakness.
Growing up, learning frequently meant going to the library, using the stacks to find books or using Encyclopedia Britannica. While not always efficient, it taught my generation perseverance and patience. The younger generation (with some exceptions) grew up with the internet are so addicted to instant everything, they have no tolerance for thoughtfulness that may include taking time and considering other viewpoints. Instead they are drawn to the most extreme, intolerant and loudest voices, creating a binary universe.
It is all too true that these younger social media addicts have little understanding of community, civility and social constructs that require empathy and understanding. It is too nuanced for them to comprehend that good people sometimes do bad things and "bad" people also do good things. They social isolation (though media connectedness) makes them distrust society and vigilantism is a viable alternative. Interestingly, many in this generation have no problem anonymously being judge jury and executioner.
1
@nydoc the McCarthy era, the Rwandan genocide, and the Salem witch trials were not led by especially thoughtful, patient, or compassionate people. (Mr. Brooks seems to believe that a social media clash within a teenage punk scene is the same as the Rwandan genocide, so that’s why I mention it.) They didn’t have the internet or social media. Many of them, I assume, even had access to libraries! And yet McCarthy et al were able to shun people from society, get them fired from their jobs, and permanently damage their reputations based on nothing except ill-will & spite. It’s almost as if “kids these days” aren’t the problem at all...
1
I tried to present a counter argument to this op ed yesterday. I included no profanity. I strongly disagreed with Mr. Brooks’ tack here though. Maybe that was considered uncivil? Either way I’m disappointed in the NYTimes, who seems willing to post comments on many articles that literally argue that women should not be in leadership, yet didnt post mine that stated Mr Brooks is engaging in sneaky, reactionary writing here, akin to the forces that rebranded Feminists into Feminazis.
One commenter aptly asked where mr. Brooks’ statistics are on this phenomenon? I’ll also say that, yes, our justice system has failed us here, where male sexual aggression is allowed to dictate the rules of behavior. These are strong forces, and a degree of brutality is needed to get through the thick skulls of misogynists. Let them run in fear.
OR, instead, lets step back so the status quo can take a sigh of relief. Lets write op eds aimed at toning down the outrage. After all, hey, its not so bad right? Gee, I don’t know. I can only speak of my own experience, that my earliest memories are of sexual assault by my neighbor, who’d thought maybe that was okay because he’d been assaulted by another, who’d been assaulted by another, who’d...etc. Maybe I’m just unusually sensitized due to this formative experience. Maybe my oversensitivity opened my eyes to the daily gauntlet of male sexual aggression? Maybe I shouldn’t get worked up. Maybe I should consider the feelings of the aggressors a bit more.
2
Yes, Yes!!! Thank you.
1
Is the #metoo movement part of what has David so upset? CK can't get him no love? Tulsi Gabbard catching some heat?
There's the quote from Maya Angelou "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." If you violate the norms of your group, they may - or may not decide that you are not especially welcome. This is not new thing.
1
Did David Brook's "historical alarm bells" that rang on Mao and Stalin also ring on Joe Mc Carthy?
1
Bravo, David Brooks!
2
Too many commenters refer to this as a millennial issue. Our president deploys this tactic daily (with mixed results). This comes from a lack of critical thinking skills, empathy and knowledge. It is ageless.
Mr. Brooks it shows a special level of amnesia to be coming from you-a mouthpiece for the Republican Party. The conservative base long ago weaponized the concept of calling out and shaming outcasts as a savage and effective political rallying cry. And even the NYTimes has admitted to becoming complicit in spreading the shame. (See recent article on use of debunked term “crack babies”.)
I’ve never had an issue with people being called out for what they have done..especially hypocrites like this Emily character..
Live by the sword, die.......well, you get it.
1
yes call out culture is as old as humanity and has been adopted by modern politics to sever conseqiences in the last century.
It is troubling calling people out; but that this is now part of our politics.
Calling out single folks on the other side and objectifying them as evil:
Hilliary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. Even traitors to the capitilast class, no matter how successful such as Mr Soros are called out.
It is easier to pick one person and yell lock her up than discuss the pros an cons of political philosophy. It is easier to shut down a government than to try to negotiate an agreement than requires give and take.
That was what the first 1/2 of the 20th century was all about, Nazi or Communist two groups of hooligans fighting it out. That political calling out left Europe in ruins and 80 million dead civilians in about 40-50 years.
Live by, and thru, “ social media “, and die thru it.
Grow up, Kids. Put down the Facebook and get a real life.
Volunteer, help others, adopt a Pet, learn something new.
You will survive.
1
We love the boomerang effect. We especailly love it when it returns to plague hipsters, social justice and eco-warriors, loudmouthed know-it-alls and other in-our-faces morons whose lives are so barren they must stick their noses into others’. If we could accelerate their “non-personhood”, we would. Bubba claimed to feel their pain; we aim to ignore it.
1
I think that this call-out culture is misleading. The idea that "vigilante justice may be rough justice, but it gets the job done" is likely somewhat true but the more relevant fact is that Emily's Valjean Herbert felt that "calling her out gave him a rush of pleasure, like an orgasm".
Calling her out was a video game experience for Herbert. That's the danger I see from today's ubiquitous environments of narcissistic social media and video games, they have merged and they have corrupted the moral centers of our youth.
How do we combat these dangerous trends? Is it too late? I don't know and I fear it is.
3
Why is it apparently the height of absurdity to suggest, yes, to actually suggest, to not participate in Twitter? And Facebook.
And does it not resonate with anyone that the third platform of the leading social media triumvirate now has a satiny egg as its leader?
That flabbergasting Instagram news should make EVERYONE pause ...and rethink ...and step away.
Y’all are wasting your lives away with such trivial pursuits in such time sinks; it’s really really true: if you ignore all of it you will be oblivious to those get-a-life morons trying to rob you of your sanity.
Yes it really really does work that way.
2
Hear, hear!
In the end, I suppose, we are all unpersons.
Social Media is a zoo with no bars. In many, many cases all it takes is an accusation - unsupported by facts - to bring the mob and the piling on of righteous indignation.
If the accusation is proven false, how many of the haters will rescind their comments and apologize? None.
In this case it sounds like Emily might have learned a hard lesson in how her former band member felt when the mob turned on him.
But the "I don't care" guy who got such a rush from "outing" Emily's ill conceived comment from the past? One word: Loser. Get a life, you jerk. Sorry you had a bad childhood. Doesn't justify or excuse jerk behavior on your part.
Most social media platforms are a worthless waste of time. Oh some things are innovative and a fun way to communicate, but when it turns into the mob and a rush to judgment, that's when it's time to pull the plug.
You can have a good life without it. Really.
1
A critical subtext here is that the use and power of social media is a far cry from “normal” human social interaction. I imagine that most of the people engaged in call-out culture would never use those same words if they confronted the offender in person. Social media takes us away from empathy and extended exchanges, and consequently our ability to bridge gaps and make amends, which are critical for improving our society.
I wonder if this is a symptom of living too much of your life on social media. For my generation I'm an aberration because I spend almost no time on Facebook or Twitter. Would this article resonate more if I did? And could it mean that so called "call-out culture" is only as effective as you let it?
It's not just binary, but also win/lose behavior (another form of binary) that has caused our current predicament. Win/win is a form of showing empathy, striving to raise all parties in the interaction/transaction.
1
People get 'called out' for all sorts of things, all the time, for being the 'wrong 'skin color, for being fat, for not being tall enough or dressed appropriately or not pretty or handsome enough or not measuring up to a situation. Some of this is prejudice pure and simple, and needs to be shut down where ever we see it, sometimes it is merited but things get out of hand and go far without proper understanding. In our culture we are not very sensitive to shades of grey and confront one prejudice for another. As humans perhaps we can not avoid doing it, but this does not let us off the hook in our quest to make correct decisions.
My personal yardstick is how much harm are we doing to each other and our selves with our actions and beliefs? I guess it is a form of the golden rule, something that has mostly stood us in good stead as we try to do the best for ourselves and each other.
1
One of the (many) issues I have with the examples in this particular story is the distance between the 'offense' and the 'justice.' When 10 years passes, where is the acknowledgement of change? Growth?
I recognize that there are things for which time does not make up, but in the case of a 10 y.o. juvenile comment made by a teenager, there was no opportunity for Emily to evidence what she had learned in the intervening years. In what world is this deemed acceptable?
To use today's standards to judge 10, 20, 30 y.o. opinions (differentiated from crimes & violence) stands in direct opposition to one of the basic tenets of our humanity, the ability to grow and change. And to be accepted for who we are today, not who we were.
When we as a society refuse to accept that people change, we actually impede progress, not promote it.
3
Herbert sounds like a sociopath.
5
We can't ask our kids to treat each other well online if we aren't paying just as much attention to how they treat each other offline. We have to demand from ourselves and others that we be better, have parents more involved, that we value each other in our daily interactions, and have role models that speak to our better angels.
1
Sounds Trumpian. Everything binary -- win or lose, us or them, me or the highway. Impersonal, removed. Via Tweet -- sowing division and malice in the silence of dark, pre-dawn hours. Waiting in glee (perhaps orgasmic?) for the hurt to happen.
1
I am past the age of a lot of the “new stuff” and have no desire to participate in social media. That most news outlets and columnists cannot be contacted except via Facebook, Twitter or instagram is something I now accept as reality. I used to find it odd that they would want feedback from only users of social media. Someone once wrote “the medium is the message.” It seems that was prophetic. As e-mail became old fashioned, so did feedback from those who preferred to communicate that way.
2
Why compare call out culture to Stalin, Mao, and the Rwandan genocide?
Isn’t the closer-to-home and more accurate analogy McCarthyism?
Using the proper analogy shows that political and social intolerance have always existed in America. Ask anyone who was openly gay or openly against the Iraq War in 2002. Young people engaged in call out culture aren’t learning from Checkists and Red Guards so much as from their own elders in this country.
373
@Aoy Except that call-out culture is almost 1 to 1 tactically the same as Red Guardism.
8
@Aoy Except it's being done by individuals not the state
8
@Aoy Learning from their radical, maladjusted elders. Strange that they don't take direction from the vast majority of caring, tolerant elders from the generations of which you speak. That intolerance existed does not mean it was the norm.
Part of the problem is, those acting unconventionally now insist that the masses accept and approve their behavior, rather than just tolerate. Sorry, you can't force that, and trying to do so will create clashes.
8
Eeny Meeny Miny Moe .......
"Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts..."
It's trickle down...what we learn from the generations before
It's how we continue everyday
And we act the same as the previous generations have
just we do it in a manner not seen previous
and act shocked by all we lack in understanding of this generation, so different
but are they
no, just their generation that they are understanding
and tomorrows generation, they also will be called out by those you are calling out today.
Conservatives made a deal long-ago with the right-wing Christian-conservative bloc, easily the most over-reactive, judgmental, hate-filled and hypocritical group in America today but now they just happen to be concerned that a 20-something was kicked out of a punk band because of something that was posted on Twitter?
2
Okay, so let me see if I've got this right. We're going to cast out everyone who bullied someone else in school.
We're going to shun every person who ever made a sexual advance towards someone who turned out not to be interested.
And a fair number of the younger generation thinks that cruelly and joyfully excommunicating people from their own social circles, jobs, and living situations as penalty for a clumsy sexual advance or being thoughtless and mean as an adolescent (who does that, right? Oh wait, ummm ... everybody) is actually serving some greater good.
It seems we are going to have a whole generation of Emilys who will need help healing from the devastating effects of growing up in a culture that has adopted as a mission convincing others that they're not worthy.
7
Brooks draws unlike things close together and says they are equal. They are not.
5
Brooks' piece is a lone MSM voice of sanity and humanity in our shrill Snowflake Age of Social Justice Vigilanteeism bred in political pundit drive-bys and on college campuses everywhere. Indeed, dog-chain-wearing Punks of yester-years will find these tiny-tot, easily "photo-offended" look-alikes to actually be puritanical traitors of the vitally resilient Punk Spirit...
7
"Call out culture" took down Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein. Call out culture is the very reason Republicans finally took their baby-step towards censuring Steve King. Returning to turning a blind eye towards the powerful's abuse of the powerless isn't leadership. But let's just label it "bad" because we don't like some of the results and go back to the terrible way it was that allowed all these powerful men to abuse their positions.
I would rather we use the good and discard the bad. Harness the power of non-blindness but fuse it with mercy. Adding mercy is much better than going back. Because the world I grew up in was far more terrible. Call out culture has been fixing the problems of Brook's generational blindness to abuse.
4
Humans are arrogant, self-righteous, brutish, selfish, emotionally cruel, deluded and self-deluded, closed-minded, narrow-minded, headstrong, hypocritical, deceitful, dishonest, prejudiced, vapid, clannish and tribal.
I’m shocked. Shocked.
2
Tolerance or Death!
2
If social media had existed during the McCarthy era, think about how many more lives McCarthy and his henchman Roy Cohn could have ruined with his wild allegations of being a communist or soft on communists. Of course, that's the way people were categorized in the McCarthy era: a patriot or a traitor, often for no reason other than to categorize as traitors those with whom one disagreed. It was Roy Cohn who taught Donald Trump the art of the ruthless attack on his enemies.
3
If today's society continues to perpetuate an environment where all kids are super-duper special, and there are no losers, etc. kids will grow up to believe in their perceived superiority. What is noticeable about the twitter mobs and armchair experts of decorum, is that these people are (mostly) illogical and irrational idiots who use their shame buttons to feel better about themselves. As is often the case, the loudest voices are the dumbest.
1
Can someone please tell me, right here in this comments section, that he/she genuinely feels in possession of the moral authority to "call out" other people? If you feel you do, can you explain what gives you that authority? I don't get it, really.
322
@RE Compassion and empathy, tempered by humility. The same authority that rests at the foundation of all moral values.
14
@RE
What is "moral authority" in your question?
In all things when one speaks it is assumed that one has thought about the things one is saying and having deduced from that thinking these words.
Thus when one "calls out" which is really insidious way of saying the much more specific and accurate "accuses" one can list a series of points that rationally show the accusation to be a valid and fair evaluation of reality.
That is how.
6
@RE Some of us are required to create/maintain a respectful workplace or classroom environment. So in some way the boss or instructor is required to 'maintain civility', including calling-out bigoted remarks and potentially calling out the calling outers. Hopefully any or all of this remains in the confines of the workspace rather than in the public domain and is used as a correction not welded as a battle axe as per Mr. Brooks argument.
On the flip side of this coin I have also seen this 'maintain workplace civility' used to quash legitimate criticism of a coworker's failings. This is one of the reasons that I am always suspicious of 'civility', 'professionalism', and quashing the 'call-outs'. Lack of 'civility' or some such variant is typically used against under represented groups by those in power to maintain the status quo and resist needed reforms.
20
The dishonesty here is stunning. I suspect your so-reasonable calls for empathy are less about victims of online injustice and more about protecting male abusers.
Getting run out of town? Isolated? Shunned? Shamed? That happened way before the internet. To the victims of abuse.
The me too movement - because that’s what you’re actually talking about right? - is the first time in the history of humanity that any powerful man, anywhere, has been held accountable for horrifying abuse of women, children, and those less powerful. The first time. Ever. And men who are invested in and benefit from the power structure simply can’t get over their self-serving fear and loathing of it.
And you lump this first-ever accountability and visibility in with some punk scene jerks who are too immature to know the difference between being meaningful and bring mean?
Getting your life destroyed over a teenage emoji is ridiculous. Emily should stand up for herself, or go find friends who will accept her for being human and flawed. But Les Moonves and Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby deserved all they got and more.
And no Louis CK, does not “deserve” a second chance. But he might earn one someday, although I doubt it.
4
Oh, and I’m not sure why anybody’d be surprised that if you stick high tech in the hands of adolescents, they do really really dumb things with the high technology.
Is this corrosive of society? Sure. Schumpeter didn’t call it “creative destruction,” for funsies, you know.
America is a Sophomore in High School getting C minuses in everything.
4
Thanks, Mr. Brooks.
1
David, aren't you a tad over the top? I guess if you really stretch your argument you can imagine a connection between Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Rwanda, the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, Genghis Khan, Road Runner, and the "call out Culture." But that's your paranoia, isn't it? I can imagine a connection between brushing my teeth, shining my shoes, having a mistress while being happily married, buying an expensive wristwatch and stealing a Maserati. But so what? Or better yet, I'll use one word to sum up both your Op-Ed and my comment: "whatevah." [emphasis on second syllable.]
Get a grip, Lad. Tomorrow will be a new adventure. Like, uh, Imagine.
Trump is the Hater-in-Chief. Surely this has an enormous influence on the cruelty that has become endemic in our culture.
1
Youth and naivety don't last foreve
Thanks, David, for your thoughtful analysis and recommended course correction.
1
Let him who is without sin cast the first emoji.
453
@Frank
:-)
12
>
Social warriors are secular optimists that actively seek-out crusades to find meaning in the emptiness and meaningless of life. Pascal was quick to point out that “[a]ll human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room." And nothing is more dangerous than an optimist on the move.
Being on the optimistic side of the human continuum, optimists pose great danger and folly to civilization. Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot....they were all optimists out to perfect and reformulate the world and the species.
At this time, I'd like to point out a fact: nobody worries about pessimists, a peaceful and harmless lot as there ever was.
Like religious zealots, optimists believe in the secular God of Right. Perfection is their goal.
That said, I'm not sure a nude pic meets the criteria for abuse for any sane person.
I thought women were supposed to be as tough as men. I didn't realize they needed to be socially bubble rapped.
The cause of this nonsense is three-fold: run-of-the-mill human boredom, helicopter parents, and left wing professors with their logic that has tangled up their flock in the Gordian knot as to their crusade to perfect the world. Once one cause is either lost or remedied, it's on to another, no matter how small or intractable.
N.B., I'm a left wing pessimist
If the world is ever to be settled down to a low boil, it will be with the philosophy of pessimism not optimism.
6
Ok, I agree that online shaming and "call-out culture" has gotten out of hand, but this reads like an defense for the people being called out. According to Brooks, shaming someone for being a racist/homophobe/whatever is just as bad---no, possibly even worse--than the person engaging in that conduct to begin with. This is clearly ridiculous. Surely the current status quo is better than the past where this was all ignored or covered up?
Brooks also isn't helping the matter with his hyperbolic hyperventilating about Rwandan genocides and the Cultural Revolution. (Pro tip: comparing racism-by-tweet with genocide and millions of innocent deaths is almost always a bad idea.) We need to find a middle ground where people are held accountable for their actions AND people understand that a single mistake should not ruin a person's life. Brooks shouldn't frame these as mutually exclusive options
198
Thank you. Notice the demand for empathy is usually one that absolves those in a position of relative power. What if gay people started harassing and terrorizing straight people. What if black people started setting fires to white homes? Do you think we'd have Brooks writing articles on forgiveness and understanding stresses inherent to being the other?
16
@Bob K Brooks confuses call out culture with blaming. One is a conversation (hence"culture") moving towards accountability, and blaming without providing reasons, critiques, questions is well, just blaming. I don't think he understands online communities, social justice groups, or people who engage in these conversations on a regular basis. He seems to think it's all off-the-cuff outrage.
6
@Bob K
You know, sometimes the people being "called out" ned to be defended (e.g., an adult now trashed and shamed for essentially thoughtless smart-mouthing as an immature teenager (and yes - I know that's redundant!))
And there is a big difference between a mean tweet or essentially not-harmful action and a physically harmful action (and yup - got my own teen angst challenges that are well-recalled - but you grow up, eventually)
7
David, I agree with you that call out culture--when taken to an extreme--can be very harmful, not only in its binary thinking, but in branding people who innocently make mistakes in using various terminology (such as the terminology surrounding transgender and transsexual identity) as hateful. It alienates people who are, at heart, allies.
However, I very much disagree with you that, if we only enforce laws, civilization progresses. Your coliseum analogy doesn't work in that sense. It was lawful to watch people get tortured in coliseums; people who fought against that were fighting against what was lawful. People who fought against slavery were fighting against what was lawful. Breaking the law--civil disobedience and other peaceful ways of protesting--is a huge part of what moves society in a more tolerant, empathetic direction.
Solely enforcing laws keeps us trapped in current legal, political, and moral systems. It is the opposite of progress.
1
To add to my earlier comment, as a committed leftist I believe much of the left, unfortunately, is afflicted by this hyper - judgment and nasty readiness to condem and even destroy those who are not wholly pure in their speech and actions all of the time. I suspect it is the same among committed conservatives. All of us would do well to remember that "puritanism" literally led to the Salem witch trials - men, women, and I believe even animals were put to the stake (although more women than men) and is also in the more generic sense behind all inquisitions, pogroms, ethnic cleansings," reeducation programs", and religious wars and strife. Again, reasoned judgment and justice yes, but vengeance and pleasure in the annihilation of the other - no. In fact, the story in Brook's column reminds me of the Italian proverb that runs something to the effect that "he (or she) who starts down the road of vengeance would do well to dig two graves".
2
From a lifelong social liberal who has long been growing ever more disturbed by this very phenomenon among my own ideological peers, THANK YOU. This needs to be said, repeatedly. Because of the corrupting influence of today's social media, liberalism is becoming a cesspool of smug, self-righteous self-aggrandizement where a purported desire for social justice masks a Trump-like insecurity and a cruel willingness to elevate one's own status at the expense of others. It is becoming a sickness which is decaying the tolerance and empathy that were once the hallmarks of liberalism.
2
Mary Beard told the story of a young man who said an awful thing about her in a online forum .... he regretted it -- it was a "Ladd" thing -- and it had a huge impact on his life ... she met with him and they talked and she wrote a letter of reference for him to help him on his way.
Her story was in the Dec 15 2017 NY Times Book Review podcast, "Women & Power."
1
I read David’s piece as I normally do. However, as my read progressed, my trepidation increased. As a 70-Something, I wondered how many among us have not done or said things years, even decades ago, that would now be call-out targets? My guess is not many; I know I did and I hope nobody remembers.
5
The only thing worse than a call-out is a fake call-out, like when your typical right-wing politician calls someone a communist.
In 1950’s America this was a pretty common tool for destroying a person’s career, and the secret call-out, politely whispered behind a person’s back, was a common way to get a person fired. You could probably say that the nation has progressed.
Unfortunately the leader of this country has made cruelty his mainstay. Just look at his call outs on Hillary Clinton, President Obama and nearly everyone who opposes him or stands in his way. Trump has made such behaviour acceptable along with lying. How can we expect our young people to be any better.
2
Brooks has focused on a fundamental issue with social media - depersonalization and exaggeration. The lack of proportion allows people to lose their composure over minor infractions and slights and blow up fixable problems into insurmountable chasms between and among people. I decided to stop posting on social media for 3 months - I've continued lurking but refusing to play the ridiculous social media escalation game (I call it arguing with strangers) has been liberating. in the end, social media at its worst is a rabbit hole.
Great article. Call out culture just help bullies rise to power. It's particularly damaging to the left and its ethical goals. It hurts the cause of reform because it calls for reform & makes amoral chicanery seem not only more fun but more humane. Everybody hates puritan shame justice!
2
Usually, the very intelligent but often clueless (in his frequently blind conservative adherence to shibboleths such as "government bad private sector good") leaves me annoyed or worse. Still, I read his columns because he does have a wider range of interests than almost all of the other NYT columnists and he sometimes is right. In this column he is right. With the coming of social media and the growing political divide, our culture is too quick and vicious in it's judgments and it's seeming glee - schadenfreude is the word - at the destruction or downfall of others and this crosses all political and religious and racial and gender boundaries. I condemn the words and acts of racists,bullies, power asserting sexual harassers, misogynists, extremists of every kind who believe violence or vengeance or discrimination is justified because of some abstract political or religious principle but taking pleasure in the destruction of such people brings us to their level - reasoned judgment and justice, yes okay , but fighting monsters can very easily turn one into a monster as I believe Nietsche intimated.
Jesus knew we have a tendency to pass judgement, so he included this in his Sermon on the Mount: "Stop judging, so that you won't be judged, because the way that you judge others will be the way that you will be judged, and you will be evaluated by the standard with which you evaluate others." (ISV Matthew 7:1,2 ; Luke 6:37)
He was right in every detail.
2
It thunders now beyond the tree
Can you hear it?
It's sparking, crackling, and churning
Can you see it?
It's coming now, too fast to flee
Don't run.
It's rising, writhing, and booming
Don't turn.
It's upon us now, am I still free?
Stand.
It's howling, roiling, and burning
Firm.
Now, only I remain.
Thats atleast what comes to my mind when thinking of the online mob. Good column.
1
The reality is that those who seek fame make themselves targets for those who get pleasure in taking down the famous.
The "Golden Rule" works much better than mob rule.
3
Slime and backstabbing were always part of the corporate world. Some of transgressors are like the Russians you wrote about, Peter and Pavel. They have no desire to hurt. They just want to survive.
Others are antisocial. They use false information, distorted information or they create their own lies to either make some gain or enjoy some perverse form of pleasure. Schadenfreude's exist.
I've mentioned this before. Splaying, collective reasoning and cognitive bias, when used in conjunction for some nefarious reason are, to my mind, one of mankind's greatest weakness.
Scapegoats are easy to manufacture!
1
...“Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
Martin Luther King.
2
The phenomena described are, of course, Trump’s stock in trade. Having such a prominent example of brainless insensitivity labeling people disparagingly to score points with a mob does nothing to help us behave.
1
I agree with Mr Brooks. That stuff is vigilante justice.
2
Yes!! Thank you!!
This “calling out” practice can grant extreme power to an individual or small group. But where is the check on this power? There is none. Empowering victims is one thing, but granting power to anyone who wishes to take down someone else is very dangerous.
The media is playing a significant role in this game. If a prominent individual is accused of misdeeds, the fact that they have been accused enters the news cycle. How many times have we seen the headline: “Person X resigns following accusations of misconduct”?
“Accusations” is the new “guilty.”
3
When Lenin was roughing it at La Closerie des Lilas before going back to Russia and setting her on a disastrous course, he famously pronounced that “on ne fait pas d’omelette sans casser des œufs” (one doesn’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs ... pardon my native French). I am afraid that this man, whom History judges harshly, had a point there anyway. In order for long oppressed segments of our society, like women, people of color, LGBTQ folk, to get out from their objectionable status, some injustice is unavoidable. I don’t want to sound like Robespierre, but Mr. Brooks sounds to me like a Conservative in sheep’s clothing here.
I assume more and more people will model the cruel and bullying behavior of 45. He clearly must have had a cruel upbringing, which he is now using as an excuse to hurt much of humanity, with complicit buy in from McConnell and friends.
“Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
2
The great part of call-out culture is when the self-righteous call-outer becomes the called-out and gets hoisted on their own petard. Since it's mostly a left wing phenomenon this is usually liberals eating their own. When BLM showed up and turned Bernie into a cuck at his own rally--THAT was magic. When AOC did a sit-in at Pelosi's office--pure delight. Can't wait for the next two liberal wackadoos to get together and fight over who is more outraged.
The Times just cannot bring itself to tell the truth. Our justice system the police are the enemy and sadly more often than not if you call in a crime you will be arrested just because. What choices do we have otherwise that are based in reality opposed to some kind of homily.
Great, timely article.
1
Certainly there is no great practitioner of “The Call-Out Culture” than the man who currently resides in the White House.
The Internet has ruined life. In fat, the more I think about, maybe posting here is making us all part of the problem?
"The crust of civilization is thinner than you think." It seems we have crept to the edge of the darkness of a downward spiral and that seems recurrent throughout human existence. Trump and Trumpism epitomize this perverted celebration of ignorance, intolerance and hatred of others.
Us v them is straight out of your bible. Republicans are all about that: you are either with them or against them. Nuance is democratic. Intolerance is republican.
1
Mr. Brooks claims that "the “Invisibilia" episode implicitly suggests that call-outs are how humanity moves forward."
I listened to that episode. I hear no suggestion that "call-outs are how humanity moves forward."
Please, Mr. Books, follow the standard of high-school English courses: "cite specific passages to support your claims." It is ironic that in an essay derogatory of "call-outs", Mr. Brooks calls out "Invisibilia" -- and calls it out for something it didn't say!!
You can't make this stuff up.
Thank goodness for the 'staute of limitations' imposed by Father Time. No Internet, no Twitter, no Facebook, how did we ever survive? Because there was no Internet, no Twitter, no Facebook!
There are numerous comment sections(not the NY Times) that are nothing but venues for the distribution of hate. This is pure mob mentality with a extra evil twist of anonymous. I have not and will not use social media because it brings out our worse angels whilst the owners of the media platform make millions. Our great political divide today is the result of the freedom social media gives us to hate with impunity.
I agree David. But you are a Republican.
Your president bullies and abuses from the highest office in the land. He brags about groping women. Should we make nice with him so that we can all reach a point of forgiveness and sing kumbaya together?
Your party has a propaganda machine (called Fox News) that lies, manipulates and deceives 24 hours a day.
And the problem we are facing is calling out people for what that have done? The only difference is that now there is proof, whereas in previous times there would have been simple denial.
I think all Brooks wants to do is undermine all women - and men - who have legitimately been harassed or abused. He chooses a day when it is revealed that Trump was revealed to be the object of an FBI investigation into whether he is a Soviet agent to attack his invented call out culture.
I doubt anyone in the punk culture reads Brooks' columns, and I doubt he seriously thought he would accomplish any change with his column. If there is any group that has an us Vs. them mentality it's the Republican establishment with rich white men Vs. everyone else and they have a lot more power and have done a lot more damage than punk rockers.
All species but ours seem to be interested merely in survival.
Ours, in contrast, seems interested in perfection. When imperfection is encountered, it is banished, or extirpated. Those can be accomplished by murder, war, genocide, and suicide, for examples.
If I can tolerate feeling imperfect in myself, I may not need to find badness in someone else. Imperfection, after all, is not inherent to anything, it is just a belief oriented around a compulsion to identify what is good, bad, right, wrong...
The beliefs, which play out in the human mind, are not easily recognized for what they are: fictions.
Call-out happens when the fear of being unworthy is projected out onto an other: "it is you that is unworthy."
I have long been inured to the viciousness and cruelty coming from the extreme right; indeed, I had come to the tentative conclusion that these people had adopted right-wing ideology as their preferred world view *because* they were already basically bitter and angry people at heart.
What I find disconcerting is that of much of the vicious zealotry is now coming from people who identify as "left", where the stridency and absolutism become the purity test for "wokeness". Unfortunately, a jackboot in your face doesn't feel much different whether it is a left jackboot or right jackboot. I'm already missing the days when the left distinguished itself through tolerance, open-mindedness, and kindness. The modern "progressive" left is becoming an increasingly ugly thing.
Sorry, but what kind of vigilantism are we talking about here? To invoke the Rwandan genocide and Maoist purges when arguing to give accused abusers the benefit of the doubt is disingenuous at best. I want you to tally up the numbers of people who have been killed for getting called out on one side and those who have been killed by abuse in the other and see if you change your tone.
I agree that some people go too far. Most people don't.
It sort of surprises me that people hold punk rockers to the same standards they might hold say an elementary school teacher. It sounds like the individuals did some things that weren’t so good, but, you know, they’re punk rockers. I mean, aren’t those the people screaming on stage with a bunch of tattoos and strung out on some substance and not eating any fruits or vegetables?
Live by the sword, die by the sword. Choose your words, friends and methods wisely. Live by the web, die by the web.
1
Could "call-out" culture be a mass manifestation of borderline personality disorder? A characteristic of people with that condition is that those around them are "in" or "out." People capable of normal interpersonal relationships are able to stretch and bend in their dealings with others. People with borderline personality disorder can only break off. I wonder if social media technology is facilitating this type of behavior.
3
Nothing like an old-fashioned blood sacrifice to get the social juices flowing.
You mention the call out culture of the young passed down from abusive relationship to abusive relationship. Sounds like Trump's life. Military schools pre the 1980's were pretty abusive places. Military punishment was harsh. Bullying was a way of life. You elect a bully because you want to be a bully.
Some say this is a by product of the internet. It's partly that, but I see it as a phenomenon much more linked to identity politics than to the internet. These "call outs" typically involve a similar appalling simplemindedness, dangerous scapegoating, simplistic black/white thinking, as well as quite overt racism, that is the foundation of the entire nonsense of identity politics, and all its hypocrisy and double standards.
After all, statements like "I believe women", (or I believe blacks, gays, trans folk...any minority) are completely illogical, mindless products of identity politics where people in group X are always good and right, and people in group Y are always bad and wrong.
When I was in 6th grade, we began to be taught the skills in critical thinking and logic that would help reveal the serious flaws in this whole call-out process, and the bullying and hate that identity politics is rife with. What happened to education? Clearly we need to go back to the basics.
Just when I was at peak exasperation with Brooks' bothsidesism and unwarranted nostalgia for the mythical right of yesternever, he writes yet another amazingly thought-provoking piece.
I guess I just can't quit you, man.
1
I can't help but think that this a side point, that in a very positive development people are finally speaking out to condemn sexism and racism. Do they occasionally go too far? Yes.
But, the example stories David Brooks uses feel off somehow, both exaggerated outliers and not representative.
It also feels odd that in a week when...
1) it has become more apparent that the President is a foreign agent, that NATO is at risk, and our government is compromised
2) the Republican Party's dance with White Nationalism and White Supremacy might finally be up for discussion
...that one of America's foremost political columnists has devoted significant column space in one of our nation's most important newspapers to the question of whether or not a teenage punk girl did or didn't get mistreated after using an insulting emoji on social media.
Petty? A distraction? Or just an inability to prioritize? Who knows.
1
Terrific, sensitive, and thoughtful piece, as usual, David. The crust is indeed thin...and brittle!
Well-- but this is how we work.
There's push. There's pull. There's push-back. There's injustice, and the struggle to find equilibrium of a kind we might tentatively agree is actually "just."
This column is even a part of that process. One way or another, it'll work itself out.
Or else implode.
I mean, seriously: as cruel as people can concededly be, do you have a plan to fix this? 'Cause if not, what I described above is going to have to suffice.
As a side-note, "kids these days" seems to be an endlessly durable theme. Do you remember when Gen-X was being denounced as a bunch of unmotivated slackers? Now we're all middle-aged and it's the Millennials' and Gen-Z's turn.
Pfft.
Elders these days.
Anyway: it'll be all right, David. So long as The Orange Problem doesn't get us all nuked, we'll work it out. History will march on.
The next time you want to explore "...how zealotry is often fueled by people working out their psychological wounds" perhaps look at the people with real power right now. Getting distracted by some one off call outs misses the point. Our culture is being dominated by men who were abused by their fathers who are now adamantly asserting masculinity is the ability to abuse rather than processing the terror of their childhoods. Trump and his supporters don't even hide their desire to mirror and uphold the image of their authoritative, abusive fathers. This is the real crisis of culture that most of us are suffering under right now.
"But the “Invisibilia" episode implicitly suggests that call-outs are how humanity moves forward. Society enforces norms by murdering the bullies who break them. When systems are broken, vigilante justice may be rough justice, but it gets the job done."
This is not how society moves forward - it's how it dies. This is how the French Revolution went from a righteous uprising of the oppressed into an orgy of blood lust.
I think much of David's piece is analogous to my thoughts on the Me Too movement in the sense that we haven't developed any kind of cultural due process for transgressions that, while not illegal, don't fit in modern times. For
For example, at some level Al Franken and Harvey Weinstein were punished for very different crimes in essentially (their respective world's version of) the same way: total banishment. Does Weinstein deserve to come back from his transgressions? Absolutely not. Does Franken? Probably, but how, when, and in what context? Until we figure this out as a society, I don't see us making real progress against the more casual sexism and harrassment that women endure every day. Culprits see their options as deny or be obliterated,
1
Young people cry out for justice.
Oldsters want mercy.
1
Mr. Trump is called out and mistreated eight ways from Sunday. The Editorial Board seriously suggests that the President must be working for Russia. The entire Administration is dumb according to Mr. Krugman. Mr. Blow leads the resistance and Mr. Bruni is hopelessly anti-Trump.
Still, President Trump has many political supporters that see through the wild allegations and put aside his pre-presidential blunders.
“Even the quest for justice can turn into barbarism if it is not infused with a quality of mercy, an awareness of human frailty and a path to redemption,” is well said. Perhaps the left must become more like Trump’s supporters.
1
"The Cruelty of Call-Out Culture" brings to my mind the culture of throwing stones. In 1948, Shirley Jackson wrote a short story first published in "The New Yorker" magazine, titled "The Lottery". It was about a village convinced that once a year a random selection of a villager by lottery and the stoning of that person was good for the life of the village. It was a complete perversion of Spock's ethical proverb, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few (or the one)." The other story that came to my mind other commenters identified. It is Jesus challenging would-be stone throwers casting the first stone at an adulteress, likely standing defenseless in a pit. Like the naked woman in Manet's 1868 painting, "The Luncheon on the Grass" looking out at her viewers, the adulteress knew intimately many of the men holding rocks. So, let the virtuous one throw the first stone. All dropped their rocks and went away. The call-out culture lacks grace and humility and is in danger of becoming like Shirley Jackson's perverse village. My coda is we as a culture need a better way to address the pleas of victims of assault, bullying, violent hatred, and rape than the call-out culture provides.
2
Call-out culture had it coming. Call-out culture deserved to be called out!
5
Having mercy is good, but not ignoring the racism and sexism that happens right in front of us every day is bad. David Brooks and his generation have enabled abusers for far too long and let things slide. Instead of being defensive when called out for racist or sexist remarks people should say "THANK YOU" and LEARN from their bad behaviour. Mercy is a 2-way street.
David Brooks has misread the situation. "Call Out Culture" is good. It is just mob mentality that is bad. They are not the same and should not be confused or conflated.
Perhaps the Oresteia should again be taught in schools, reminding people that replacement of trial in place of blood feud is a good thing.
Perhaps the little novel, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, could be fit into the 8th grade curriculum, as well as The Oxbow Incident.
People are, by nature, emotional little balls of lynch-mob murder, and when they can pretend to be "moral" while engaging in violence, well...then there are no limits.
Self-discipline and sobriety matter, and need to be taught. Barry Goldwater might have thought that "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice," but it is.
We must shatter the hegemonic discourses that have silenced victims of the Catholic pedophiles, the Hollywood coercers, and the workplace predators, but having shattered the silence, we must impose aggressive, but careful, fact-finding, and proportional punishment, which includes, progressive discipline, not total destruction.
2
This whole call-out culture seems tightly associated with this notions that the world is one huge power play.
If I perchance say something off-putting to another person, I'm not simply unthoughtful or just a little off that day, but some monster wielding his power and privilege and my remark illustrates how I abuse all those I feel inferior to me. Well, if I read that that much power dynamic into my every utterance, I'd hate me too and certainly love to see myself taken down a notch. This outlook only breeds resentment across the board.
Instead, we're human. We all deserve understanding. Some who have truly done wrong even deserve a chance at redemption. If we don't believe these basics of human dignity we're headed for a cruel world indeed.
2
Word travels faster in the cyberworld than it traveled in the days of the pony express. Today's sullying of some sexually predatory males' reputations has not come close to the primal psychic destruction suffered in the not so recent past by females shamed, often by perpetrator males and their trusted female protectors, for having been sexually victimized and/or having engaged in consensual sex with a guy who bragged about it. While, I am happy to see David Brooks calling out "call-out culture," that relies on binary, naïve, us/them distinctions, based on my long term reading of Brooks' columns, I know that he has often called out single mothers for shaming in an effort to uphold male dominated religious notions of "family." The photo that accompanies this column presents one call-out culture image. Call out culture has always existed. Sometimes the bullies were dressed in their Sunday best smirking and whispering on their way in to religious services.
public humiliation for mistakes (i'm not taking about sexual or racial/religious crimes) made during an adolescence where role models are either scarce or complicit is a forgivable sin. sexual harassment and racist crimes committed as an adult need a calling out and consequences (exposure, loss of job, imprisonment) implemented.
The worst part of this is the farce that civilization "advances." This kind of thinking not the mode of it, call out culture, is the real problem. Also there is more than one kind of "call out" and Brooks picks the worst kind to make his point which is also a bit of black and white thinking.
Only time when I tune into David is when he's commenting on society, because I rarely find much in the other opinion pieces I agree with when they start to veer towards the same.
Only a Sith deals in absolutes.
The "call-out" culture that Mr. Brooks decries in today's column has found its epitome in the current POTUS's disparagement of anyone he considers disloyal or politically opposed to his agenda.
A list of the denigrating denunciations Trump has made about former administration "advisors" and opponents from both parties provides ample evidence of the barbaric manner in which he calls out his supposed "enemies."
The insults he has used to describe them include "sleazy,""weak," "lazy," "stupid," "overrated clown," "dummy," among many others. Not only is Trump not apologetic about throwing these unwarranted, ignominious terms around, he has made them a hallmark of his candidacy and presidency. He has not yet apologized for any of them, and could care less about the damage he has inflicted on their reputations.
As Mr. Brooks stated: "You see how zealotry is often fueled by people working out their psychological wounds. You see that when denunciation is done through social media, you can destroy people without even knowing them." The kind of character assassination that Trump tweets so frequently is part and parcel of this "brutal cultural moment" as well.
When Mr. Brooks finds it convenient, it would be equally gratifying to read his denunciation of the barbarous leadership the public is currently experiencing on an almost daily basis.
This reminds me a lot of our president who gleefully tweets to millions insults and lies against victims who have no ability to refute his attacks.
2
This form of social justice infuses the already spiralling levels of narcissism in society. It stokes the mentality of, "I'm right, you're wrong," and solidifies the personality of reductionism and arrogance.
In a true system of justice, there is an element of not knowing, with the burden of proving, through evidence, the final decision of guilt or innocence. Social media is not interested in integrity. Its objectives are to elevate the self by reducing the other. It feeds the narcissistic personality.
Fortunately, many of those whom I know have already shut down their social media sites. Interestingly enough, I have yet to hear from those who have one iota of regret.
Social media is not an avenue of experiencing our humaness, in all it scars and insecurities. Wave it good-bye to all those junk sites and come back to the messiness of human intimacy.
1
Morton Downey Jr. was one of the first really nasty talk show hosts. He encouraged violent speech and action. Then came Maury Povich, Sally Jesse Raphael, Jerry Springer, Howard Stern, et al. They encouraged people to be base and hateful - to let it all hang out and say whatever came into their minds, no matter how cruel. I believe that what people saw became normalized.
With the advent of the internet, people felt emboldened in a new way. You can speak your mind anonymously and don’t have to see your target’s face or reactions. You can find like-minded people and be part of a group of hateful, angry people on almost any topic.
And, now we have a President who is a bully. He has no compunction about name-calling and demeaning others, even the ill and disabled. He says he hits back 100 times harder when he feels he has been insulted. As if that’s an admirable quality!
I’m actually glad I’m in what’s probably the final quarter of my life. I despair to think of the world we have created and the death of civility in the world our young people will inhabit. Life is difficult enough. It is so sad when kindness and generosity of spirit are in short supply and labeled “weak.” Heartbreaking, actually.
1
Totally agree, and that’s a first for me and Mr. Brooks.
1
Has the time finally come when people who take 10, 20, 30 years or more to gather the courage to announce that they have been abused can be ignored or at least patted on the back and told to get on with their life? As a card carrying member of the NOT ME movement, moving on seems better.
And David Brooks ought to get a good editor that will stop his offensive moral equivalents, genocide or Salem Witch trials are not in the same ball park as calling someone a bully.
This happens to Doctors to. And businesses. People can write whatever trash they want and there's nothing they can do. When I think how upsetting it is to have experienced this cyberbulling personally, I think about how much harder it is for the kids who are subjected to it. I understand how they can get overwhelmed with negativity of their online image.
We should be able to own our identity on the internet. If someone wants to use our names, they must receive permission to do so. Our names should be proprietary.
At some time in the future someone is going to invoke the judicial process and sue for libel and slander when someone fabricates or misstates a “call out”. One must be extremely careful when they take up the mantle of accuser, prosecutor and judge on the Internet.
Oh the irony, David. And the number one avatar of the "call out culture" is our fearless tweeter trump, who demonizes everyone and everything in a ceaseless twitter spew of hate, lies and fear.
I'd like to take David out for a cup of tea and a nice quiet sit down. Mean girls conjure up Mao's horrors and murdered grandparents? Puh-lease. There's little wrong with modern liberal democracies that would not be solved simply by dialing the hysteria down a bit. If we could all just gently untwist our knickers, we might find that most things are fairly fine after all.
Yes, the single instance cited is pretty nasty, but as usual Mr Brooks is performing a lazy and rather less than honest sleight of hand whereby he transmogrifies the particular into the universal, and hey presto, the call-out "culture" is born.
As for "cycles of abuse", well, they've already been around for some time now. For example, another wave of allegations of abuse and cover-ups recently hit the US Catholic Church, and sports professionals around the world are being accused of long-term sexual assault against their charges. If the worst millennials have is a bit of snark and low empathy, I'll take that over the rapist priests and the drunken abusive fathers.
In fact, one doesn't have to be "called out" to suffer the sort of pangs of remorse Mr Brooks describes. I myself frequently indulge in self-recrimination over past indiscretions, cruelties and mistakes, and as a keen reader of world literature, I am persuaded that this is not unusual among humans.
I recommend two courses for Mr Brooks: the first, a course of tranquilizers, natural or chemical; the second, a course in the scientific method.
Yesterday I read that the interim president of Michigan State University said that some of the women who exposed Larry Nassar were enjoying their fame. I hope he loses his job and is permanently shamed. Call out culture? Maybe. But maybe it's also time that the honesty and decency that caused those same women whom he maligned to say "Enough" are honored and the dishonorable men who protect the powerful are shamed. No child deserves sexual assault and no man should suggest that they are enjoying themselves. Why shouldn't that be called out? As for the example from Invisabilia, I certainly feel sorry for the people involved and their overall meanness. But they are not powerful people who harm many lives beyond their own. Equating what one group of powerless people did to each other to what powerful men do to support each other as actual crimes are committed is not just quantitatively different; it's also qualitatively different. I shed no tears for the Harvey Weinsteins and Charlie Roses, and Louis C.K. Nor do I shed any tears for the hierarchy of the Catholic church and other powerful men who minimize the damage that other men have done to women in children. They deserve their public shaming.
I usually pound on Brooks, and for years. He's usually way, way, way off. And on nontrivial issues.
Not here. Spot on. The only critique is that he should have extended this to non-"leftish" circles, because if you think this is bad, and it is, take a guess what happens to an evangelical kid who wants to break out of that cult. Etc. It's a human predisposition now hyper charged by technology--and even that is not unique (nuclear weapons?).
But he's absolutely spot on. I am absolutely thrilled to be pushing 50. I don't actually want to see what the world is coming to, as almost all the drivers are toward some form of fascism. Yes, this is one of them, and Brooks is right to make the connection. It infects and infests the whole spectrum of opinion, and you can find another cause not in technology but in the endless amounts of bespoke-tailored-to-you-ness that is capitalist PR and advertising.
No one will stop it. Works too well, as a weapon and on ourselves. As long as we're told we're just super special (which is right next door to, "...and those unpeople over there are BAD!"), we really don't care much beyond that. Which is why most woke liberals will welcome the new PR push by the defense industry to launder their MO as "progressive" and "feminist." More here: https://therealnews.com/stories/media-whitewashing-the-blood-soaked-us-military-industrial-complex
Who cares if a rough beast is slouching towards Bethlehem if it's 50% female and knows how to code resiliently?
Sounds like David is condemning the me too era, and for that I am thankful.
2
I don't have Twitter, I don't have Instagram, I don't have Facebook. I have a life. I try to insulate myself from the pettiness of those whose life is the two dimensions of a TV, phone or tablet screen.
Kindness makes such a difference. And not just in Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. It has an effect on the hearts of people. The human soul is very susceptible to kindness. Don’t let social media convince you of anything otherwise. Kindness spreads like the seeds and spores of the earth. With such a heart of kindness, even when someone has wronged you, they wish they hadn’t. Human beings really can’t do wrong and not feel badly about it, unless they’re sociopaths. These youths David speaks of in this article have fallen under a delusion of morality. Honest justice is how we truly feel about what we do, when we admit it to ourselves. Not just how we are told by the social crowd — the jock crowd, or the popular music crowd, or whatever crowd — that we should feel. When humans listen to their heart know the true difference. They hear the true music in they’re soul. A lesson taught by kindness and love. Eventually the young souls who now claim to be “woke” will wake up for real. But sadly, a lot of them will be hurt before this happens. Be gentle with these souls now. We must be patient with youth. They’re barely learning to walk in life through a mean fog of hatred stoked by social media. So much garbage shrieked at them every day. Don’t label them all with a great brush. So many youths are wonderful people, who see the beauty and want to pass it on. Like the song. It only takes a “spark” (of kindness) to get a fire burning. And all are warmed by its glowing.
"Calling out" is not the same as "zealotry," and the author is wrong to conflate the two. As for the degree of "punishment" inflicted upon the two people he cited as being "called out" for certain actions, if nothing else, it teaches all of us that ALL actions, even though as a stupid teenager, have consequences. Why does anyone thing they should be immune from them?
In another article in the NYT, Steve King was called out for his racist statements. Is that okay, Mr. Brooks? There is a lot of nuance to this discussion about who gets called out as well as the (sometimes utterly reasonable) motivation for people doing so.
Yesterday on NPR they did a segment on the song Quiet by Milck. It is about speaking out. "But no one knows me no one ever will
if I don't say something, if I just lie still"
It seems to me that the problem is not the bully being called out, it's what the rest of us do with that. That doesn't to have changed much. Like schoolyard kids, we still want to yell "Fight!" and gather around to watch two people pummel each other with fists.
All this really comes down to is when you feel tempted to say "J'accuse!", you'd really better have something important to "J'Accuse!" about.
There are gradations of offense. Venal versus mortal sins. Macroaggression vs. microaggression. However you want to put it, there are distinctions to be made.
It may be very righteous to go after genocidal leaders, and denounce them to the ends of the universe and back. But to do the same to someone who makes an offhand nasty comment?
We need some sense of perspective.
1
The qua,its of mercy is not strained, it fallen from the heavens as the gentle rain. W. Shakespeare
Judge not, lest ye be judged.
This is more a reflection on the "spare the rod.." type of American culture that is embodied in the paper, The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer and also now reported on the staunchest Trump supporters: https://psmag.com/news/inside-the-minds-of-hardcore-trump-supporters
The most significant practitioner of this type of bullying is Trump. His personal pathology has done more than bring out the dark and ugly side this nation - it has legitimized it.
David, start with your chosen leader if you want the culture to change.
If your life depends on social media you have no life. I do fear for the future though. Incapable of any normal thought process, this generation of sociopathic victim zealot's will wreak more havoc before they past to the dustbin (hopefully quickly).
The most shocking part of this op-ed is the revelation that there is still a punk music scene.
“Political correctness does not legislate tolerance; it only organizes hatred.” - Jacques Barzun (quoted by consultant Alan Weiss)
Somewhere....Orwell weeps.
I read Mr. Brooks columns regularly and also watch his commentary on the PBS Newshour every week.
I’ve started to notice a disconnect between Mr. Brooks columns and his commentary that, I believe, speaks to a certain lack of intellectual integrity. In this column, and in so many others, Mr Brooks speaks of empathy and compassion but given the platform of the PBS Newshour I hear him talk of just giving Trump what he desires and rarely, if ever, “calls out” the lack of empathy and compassion of the current administration. This past Friday, Mr. Brooks spoke of “the wall” as though real humans weren’t affected by its erection and real humans weren’t affected by not being paid their wages they had earned.
So yes, I’m calling out Mr. Brooks for his intellectual dishonesty and inconsistency. Why doesn’t he practice what he preaches when he has such enviable platforms from which to communicate from?!
I used to wonder how a puny ape like Homo Sapiens became so dominant. The phrase ‘killer ape’ explains a lot. We’re so cruel to one another. I consider myself quite mild & laid back, but you should see me when I get behind the wheel! I’m afraid we’ve reached the pinnacle & it’s down hill from here. That’s all, folks.
Maybe when our so called “Justice” System stops calling out people when they are accused, because sometimes it’s a tactic by malicious prosecutors, and essentially makes them presumed guilty, as a society we can stop using similar tactics.
I was accused of so many things over the past four years, which hurt my reputation especially in philanthropy, and I’ve had to fight hard to win and clear my name, and it’s something I’m still fighting as a result of an irrational ex, and also a rabbi who recently claimed I made a terroristic threat, and bad behavior by judges.
And just FYI, bad behavior and lying isn’t reserved for priests.
Rabbis lie too.
And that’s why he was reported to the FBI:
http://bit.ly/FBIInvestigatingLawEnforcementAndRabbi
And my ex lied to the police who suggested I file charges against her for a false report which is so sad:
http://bit.ly/ProtectingKidsAndTheDisabled
I’m public shaming everyone from judges, lawyers, a day program where my daughter was abused, to prosecutors, the rabbi and my former family.
And it’s sad that I have to do this, but it took a village to hurt my reputation and I’ve had to do everything possible to clear my name to protect the financial future of my kids and especially my severely disabled daughter.
1
You very conveniently forget that even "the thin crust of civilization" is totally absent from the Putin -run Republican Party.
I can remember laughing at liberal friends when they called Mark Zuckerberg a “genius.” They thought I was crazy. Look now, nobody calls him a “genius.”
So this is a social media thing. How did it start? Probably as all the racists among FB friends came out and were then called out. It is better for elders as they are not out right murdered as you say. It is also better than a plate full of food sent across the dinner table from dad to mom as the kids watch.
That is where we are at. The number one call outer?: Individual 1 of course, from his lonely perch in the big White House.
These are punk rockers Mr. Brooks. They do alternate things. FB gave millions of people the opportunity to be punk. But they are moving on. This is really the death knell of the current punk scene.
How are you banned from the punk scene by being a punk?
Millineals, man
1
Mr. Brooks glosses over three things, as if they were meaningless: (1) Emily was a cyberbully. (2) She accepted the justice of her calling out. (3) Her life will go on, despite her current despair, and her acceptance of her responsibility for the pain she caused suggests a maturation that will stand her and those she encounters well in years to come.
I disagree with much that Mr Brooks writes, but I share his concern with the collapse of civic culture and civic virtues, with the personalization and psychologization of all human relationships. Odd that Mr. Brooks cannot see this call out process as this generation's means, perhaps horribly alien to their elders, to restore norms of public decorum. It's not as if that process could ever have been painless. Their norms will be different, without the glaring exceptions carved out for white men by generations past. But eventually, shortly at the current pace, they too will no doubt arrive at the wisdom that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.
Social media is a destructive force. It's a bunch of smug idjits banging on an atom bomb with hammers.
1
We no longer go to the colesium to cheer for the lions or the patriots, with a thumbs up or down. But we do go to the colesium, or watch from home, and revel at the CTE inducing bashing of men playing football. We evolve, only so much.
If your life depends on social media for validation and fulfillment then you have no life. I fear for a future colonized by these shallow, self absorbed and self righteous, sociopathic "victims". I hope they are an aberration and not wholly representative of their generation but have scant confidence. Brooks need look no father than this publication to see what eggs them on. Best case they either self extinguish or grow up.
Shall we edit the article as such? Please refer to the Golden Rule.
These reports always refer to “society” as if these incident play out in society at large the way the cultural revolution did. Putting aside prominent figures accused of perversities and the iconic missteps such as the Google firing, most of the time these incidents play out within the distinct subculture of the PC left.
At this stage the revolution is eating its own children.
Main aspect of the social media virtual universes is that participation is voluntarily.
You cannot throw me out of the church I don’t belong to.
Republicans finally figured that out during the Kavanaugh hearings.
The endless charges bandied around are becoming a self parody.
Plus the closed population of the left is missing the irony gene (I include Mr. Brooks)
A punk band?
"The crust of civilization is thinner than you think." It's so thin now it doesn't exist for republicans. No need to pretend. Thanks, David! "Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud now hatch out."
Wait, what? We shouldn't call out sexual harassment, sexual assault, sex discrimina, or predations such as 'slut shaming'? You mean "there are good people on both sides" or "don't call out the Nazis because you may hurt their feelings"? Exactly what remedy do you propose we substitute for shaming?
1
Emily's confused: If you're in a punk rock band, sending pictures of your genitals to people is as common as reading the Sunday paper. To which school of punk rock did she attend?
This reads like a high school senior's response to a writing assignment: "What themes in The Scarlett Letter still persist in our society today? Can you identify behaviors and actions by your peers similar to those that were directed at Hester? Do you think that, on balance, the townspeople's behavior was harmful or helpful to create a healthy society?"
1
Loved this Mr. Brooks. I have been wrestling with this topic in regards to metoo as well. It's all so hysterical and immediate and lacking any relative punishment to size of crime. I listen to Sam Harris a lot and I think he has a reasonable voice in this conversation. (There is a great Black Mirror episode that takes this on as well. Robot bees.) Your article is reasonable too, and has improved my day and general outlook. Thank you.
1
Who are these people who have never done anything wrong
in their lives ?
Who are their "Internet Judges" who condemn "miscreants" without a hearing ?
Is there no recourse in the courts against the Internet Sites
and Providers who enable the spreading of "awful"
moments of one's life and the Internet Mob's attack on the person ?
I used to wonder how the Parisian Mob could sit there
and watch one "Enemy of the Revolution" after another
be guillotined, after reading this article and others along
the same lines, I no longer wonder.
If this is how most of the people under 30 feel and act,
then I can only warn them that all Revolutions devour their
children.
1
David Brooke’s essay on the call out culture is meant to be a thought-provoking commentary on the tragic consequences of publicly destroying someone’s life by exposing one or another of their flaws and pronouncing their guilt to the world. I can’t help but consider the US Constitution’s 6th amendment right of the accused to confront its accusers, to respond to the accusations and to be judged by an impartial jury. That these same concerns and safeguards against the practice of public accusations were expressed over 250 years ago, and were considered so fundamental that they became a founding principle of our society, should give pause to responders who trivialize this essay as simply the expected position of one who stands on the opposite side of the binary divide from which the responder is standing, or the byproduct of David Brooks' political persuasion. To judge from this perspective is to miss David Brooks' point entirely.
The Huffington Post, once a site that I enjoyed visiting, has become Call-Out Central. It is now completely unreadable and the editors, in a metastasized group-think, seems to be doubling down on this doomed approach. I wonder if there is a creature bearing human DNA who fits their definition of honorable person. I know one thing, its not anyone sporting male genitalia.
1
@stan continople i agree! well put
David Brooks, you are the one who has mentioned several times in your columns that the LGBT community should have just sit on their hands and waited until the rest of the population were "ready" for them to be included as a full citizen with equal rights into our society. You, and your so called conservative colleagues are the absolute last people who should be listened to when it comes to talking about how to do social change. By definition conservatives do not want to change the status quo of society so why would you even think you have anything constructive to say in regards to social change. You oppose social change based on the fact it is social change alone. Conservatives are "How not to do social change." Conservatives, wanted to keep slavery, opposed universal suffrage, supported segregation, opposed women in the workplace unless it was in support of one of their wars, etc, etc, etc. David, just give society a break and keep your uninformed, backward, bigoted views to yourself and get a grasp on the fact that the only thing that is consistent in this world is change itself.
2
Mr. Brooks, you opened a very complex can of worms that one column can't hope to appropriately analyze. All of our problems today are multi-variable, yet we go at them as if they are binary.
Start with the enablers of calling out - the tools - Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (I am showing my age - there are so many more I either don't use or am not aware of). They are created and launched and it is the wild west....all of a sudden everyone has a platform. It is a mass distribution of participation awards - it is a way for bullies to be bullies without the acts of bullying or even the need to accurately identify ones' self. From "this is a great way to see my family's children playing soccer" to "this is a great way to gang up on this person who we deem pathetic" to "here's a way we can micro target people with lies so that our candidate wins". The root cause of the issue here is money, of course - the owners of the tools become obscenely wealthy as their tools aid the destruction of our society - or at least, those people who become victims.
The other real casualty of course is truth. The call out culture extends to use of lies to paint decent people. Yes, I am thinking of the impacts of lies on Obama and Hillary - and the biggest liar and bully of them all, trump. (he does not deserve a title or even capital letter). The hamberdler himself.
Look at the precedents we have in extreme conservative churches, shunning and calling out from the pulpit. None of this is new.
Mr. Brooks has made a career of telling us how society is going to hell in a handbasket, yet he steadfastly supports, and refuses to condemn, the political party in this country primarily responsible for marginalizing as many of the “other” as they possibly can. The GOP has given us Trump, Bush I and II, and Reagan. The Democrats have given us Obama, Carter, and, perhaps an outlier here but still not bad for the worst of the bunch, Clinton. How on earth does the GOP and its apologists like Brooks still make any claims on the moral high ground?
Calling people for sexism and racism vs, siphoning off vast sums of wealth and concentrating it in the hands of a very few... Why don’t you actually do some good for a change, Mr. Brooks, and call out THAT outrage in an article for once?
2
This is a choice between the American Revolution and the French Revolution. Will the Reign of Terror follow?
73
@Monkey
I suggested what seems like Eons ago that we set up the guillotine at the foot of the steps of the Lincoln memorial as a symbolic dig at the degenerate traitors.
1
Only after the couch potatoes get up.
(meaning after the Super Bowl, March Madness, World Series, and other circuses)
3
Especially significant -- and disturbing -- is that Herbert freely admitted to the NPR program that the act of calling out Emily "gave him a rush of pleasure, like an orgasm."
I've noticed this on both the far right (while condemning people for being unpatriotic) and the far left (while condemning people for being politically incorrect). In truth and in practice, it's really about the powerful, almost addictive endorphine rush the accusers experience, not about social principles.
It's time for Americans of good will and intelligence to stop taking these extremists at face value, deny their phoney cover of political activism, and see them for what they truly are -- self-righteousness junkies.
1
This is a little rich coming from someone with a giant megaphone who can "call out" whomever he wants whenever he wants. He seems most concerned about the democratization of "calling out" wrought by social media and the me too movement. As Idris Elba recently said, those who have done nothing have nothing to fear. Those who have snickered over a nude photo of a minor as this person apparently did do.
1
So do you think Kristin Gillibrand was right to drive Al Franken out of office?
It's the opposite of the Oresteia. We've reverted from the Eumenides with jury trials to Furies of vengeance.
52
@Clinton Davidson
Terrific analogy. There was a lot of wisdom among the ancient Greeks. Sad that so few seem to have gotten it.
4
I do not have a problem with people being called out on damage they have dealt to people. We do need to own our pasts, and I say this as someone who has definitely made mistakes.
The big issue I have with the calling out culture is that it treats old wrongs as fresh injustice. Yes, it's important to put the person's past in context, but we should also put their present in context as well.
This does not mean a free pass to forgiveness; it means we need to see if the person has shown contrition by mending their ways. Cosby kept doing what he did for decades. Weinstein did too.
In the case of Emily? I am not in the punk music scene. However, she can make the case that she has mended her ways when she refused to support a friend when shown evidence that he had been too forward.
If the sins of our childhood must forever haunt all of us, we need to allow a chance for forgiveness when we show personal growth and improvement. That growth does include us owning our own mistakes.
We should not treat people who own it the same way we treat those who hide it.
2
We have to be able to make the distinction between in-grouping and holding people accountable. Technology did not cause the problem of witch hunts, but it did bring up new questions. Do people have a right to be forgotten? What is unforgivable? How can people fight back against unsubstantiated claims or claims thrown around with the intention of ruining people? Tribalism is what happens when there is a breakdown of the common good.
2
All social structures ostracize members who do not conform to there prescribed norm,in ways great and small, however it's only recently that it could be done with complete anonymity through social media. With any repressive culture it is quickly learned that being the accuser reaps greater rewards with less accountability than being the accused.
5
The problem is not just the call-out culture, but the fact that some people have set themselves up as arbiters of what behavior is acceptable and what isn't, without context. This has been born from well-meaning movements that are trying to correct real social problems, like the Me Too movement or the Black Lives Matter movement, both of which I wholeheartedly endorse. But others have taken these social justice movements and are using them to underpin a political correctness and social correctness militancy now that is terrifying, and where the ultimate desire is conformity to a strict code of behavior that strips us of opinion, individuality and inner strength.
6
@MJ - maybe "wholehearted endorsement" has been part of the problem. As with any social movement, BLM and #metoo may have some positive things to offer, but we should always question, continually, assiduously, and critically.
4
Americans have been fascinated with the Wild West for well over a century. Let's simply admit that the internet is the new frontier. Now, at least, petty disputes aren't settled at the business ends of Colt 45's and Winchester 1873's.
1
Occam's Razor theory become the norm.
The internet is all about selling everything it is possible to buy. Many have sold their souls and their future happiness without even being aware of it.
3
I think that people are so wrapped up in their lives that sometimes it has to get bad enough to shake them up. It is the only silver lining that I can see to the election of the Orange One who is ruining so much of our country, land and economy. Just the national debt alone will take years to undo. What he's doing to our national parks may ever be undone. Sometimes people who are abused seek out more abusers, abuse others or injure themselves in response. I'm not sure how this is different.
1
As an anthropologist myself, I would say that Wrangham's views are not typical. He works with primates, which have a very different sort of cultural system than humans. David's view is closer to mine, and, I would say, most of my colleagues.
2
I think it is necessary to "call-out" injustice. Which is why Trump and his cohorts are being called out for all of their criminal behavior and criminal deeds. These call outs are not cruel, but needed.
That said, I agree with David that some people use callouts to workout their physiological needs. Others are right to call out another person if they believe that what they have done is harmful. The real problem is they choose to do it, not face to face, but on social media. Which is just wrong.
It is why there is so little civil discourse anymore. And the lack of that is what is tearing at the fabric of our country. Name calling stinks, but in the case of Trump and his Administration is is understandable. Sometimes you just have to call it as you see it.
1
I would challenge the assertion that civilization moves forward only when people abide by the rule of law.
American civilization certainly hasn’t — there’s the American Revolution, for one thing.
Human history’s full of paradox. Perhaps no paradox is more evident throughout human history than that good good can emerge from evil, and evil from good.
This is why many spiritual traditions teach that, morally, we’re accountable only for what we intend by our action, only for what’s in our heart when we act.
It seems to me that this is germane to the subject of calling people out. Surely the intention is to harm, to inflict pain, and to indulge in self-righteousness at somebody else’s expense in the promise.
As far as I know, there isn’t a halfway decent spiritual tradition that, in its core teachings, promotes engaging in self-righteousness at somebody else’s expense.
3
As with most things, there are positive and negative elements to "call out culture." The positive is that people who have long been allowed to predate upon others have been ousted and punished. But the negative is that there is an irrational appetite for victory and social approbation that develops, and the call outs become more frequent and over matters of less consequence.
None of us should be judged by our worst day. If we are to be judged at all, we should be judged by consistent patterns of behavior and the consequences of that behavior.
2
When parents abdicate their responsibilities to protect and nurture their children, this is exactly what happens. But now it's non a national level. We have lost care for decorum. We have lost respect for even the most basic rule of law and decent behavior. Our president is a wild child who has exposed the fact that the president can ruin the country. Alone.
Our culture does not protect women, transgender and minority people, and so now it's up to the rabble rousers to show us what happens when nobody is at the helm. It's like a crazy dysfunctional vacuum. Our Congress apparently was raised in a barn and has no morals. We are at the mercy of a monster that we created, because mostly, decent people don't want to be involved with politics. Now we are reaping that sour harvest.
Social media shunning (that's what this is) is just a symptom of the bigger problem of people feeling there is nobody who will protect us. It is no different from the shunning that we often disdain in religious groups. Why don't our communities or the law protect us? What, otherwise, is the purpose of local and national government?
We did a good job this last election, but we need far more women, people of color, young people, scientists and doctors stepping up to help run our government. If our politicians are disconnected from what is important to the majority, it is frightening. We need more average people in government at the top levels.
5
Ultimately, call-out culture is about power. Regardless of whether We the People are taking advantage of our proper political communication channels (calling our Senator, protesting), we feel that we have so little power in this society ostensibly run by the politicians we elected but truly controlled by corporations and other "people" with vast amounts of money. We are taught that democracy is easy and logical, America is great, etc etc etc but at the moment, that is so obviously untrue that we are disillusioned. So, we take power where we can get it: social media. It's just too easy to scour someone's old Facebook posts and find something embarrassing, if not disastrous.
I understand that satisfaction that Herbert felt because it's so immediate. He took action against something he considered unjust and, for once, there were consequences. That rarely occurs in a political system paralyzed by gridlock. The problem is that Herbert is taking his anger out on Emily, rather than on a system that perpetuates racism, sexism, and homophobia (among other various injustices) because it moves so slowly. It's so much easier to destroy someone like Emily, who has little to no perceived or actual power, by typing a couple of comments as opposed to taking on the racists, sexists, and homophobes that someone who lives very far away from Herbert elected into office.
5
I am young-ish (30). If i were "called out" online, I would not be aware of it (unless I lost my job, which seems unlikely). I know that for some people, online culture IS real life, but for many of us, it still isn't. My friends are the people I get coffee with, and my family-- who live far away-- are the people I text with, or travel to see. I certainly hope I'm never the victim of an online shaming, but if that ever were to happen, I would be embarrassed but not destroyed by it.
4
Hobbs and Locke noticed that all men are created equal. Why was this not widely believed before? Because it was not true before their time. Members of the aristocratic military spent all of their time working out and practicing war, so a common person was surely going to die going up against one of them.
Once guns were available, any commoner was the equal of any noble.
Now the internet has taken all of this one step further. Anyone, regardless of intelligence, knowledge or education can take down anyone. It will be interesting to see how this works out.
2
Thank you David Brooks for a realistic perspective of good vs. evil in our contemporary, social media-based lives. It is truly scary how people can be brought down so easily and quickly, simply by the tweet of a vengeful human being.
4
What's lost in this discussion is the lack of forgiveness and providing the opportunity to those who we assume to be at fault, to amend their ways. All of us have experienced -- or even committed-- actions that could rightly be judged to be prejudicial. Some have made an honest effort to overcome such actions that emanate from many years of exposure to prejudice during our formative years. However, within this group are well-intended people who have lapses in their behavior from time to time. When they acknowledge their faults and sincerely ask forgiveness, they should be forgiven as well as given the opportunity to try again and not be ostracized by being "called out". Isn't that what Jesus would do? And, who ever said leading a good Christian life is easy....
2
You seem to decry the very thing that has characterized the conservative ethos for a very long time .. namely, a Manichean view of the world. In that case, there's an old saying .. as you sow, so shall you reap. I, for one, am hopeful that this will be mercilessly applied to the Trump GOP ...
And, yes David, this IS how to do social change.
Thank you for an excellent article.
It appears Herbert's motivations are essentially criminal, to inflict psychological abuse. Since his victim is not perfectly blameless Society allows it.
It's a sad business. I'm tired of people hurting each other.
Most of the infants and very small children I've seen, so long as they have been fed, are naturally happy. Joy seems to be the natural condition we are born with.
How do happy babies end up like this?
7
The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court negates the entirety of Brooks' argument.
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@stuart
Just the opposite, Stuart- call out culture was thwarted. It was an appropriate stop.
1
"...civilization moves forward when we embrace rule of law, not when we abandon it."
Perhaps the "rule of law" is not functioning as it should. Perhaps the cyber-culture is expressing a lack of confidence in that. There are many wrongs that are not considered crimes, and many that are, but do not get enforced equitably. Mao and Stalin are both examples of despots who rose to power in the wake of failed governing systems, and citing their regimes as examples should be a wake-up call to the failures in our own system.
4
Thank you, David Brooks. It is a question of what kind of world we want to live in, what we want to carry in our own hearts and what we want to plant in the hearts of our children. There will always be wrongdoing and those who deny their own are vulnerable to being "called out." We can have accountability without heartlessness.
2
"But the 'Invisibilia' episode implicitly suggests that call-outs are how humanity moves forward. Society enforces norms by murdering the bullies who break them. When systems are broken, vigilante justice may be rough justice, but it gets the job done." This is the myth of 'sacred violence' (Rene Girard) - only this time applied as overkill to the malefactor rather than the innocent. It does get the job done all right; it leaves us in the same place as before awaiting only the next form of "sacred" retribution. There IS a redemptive process but we have foreshortened the process with attention only for the prosecution who, like Javert, have their own secret world of pain.
5
The drift of some of some responses here is that we shouldn't worry too much about what happened to Emily and about how easily a passion for justice can become delight in bloody revenge. Because the real problem is how bad THEY are. Compassion and self-reflection mustn't distract us from the urgent need to overcome THEM and punish them for their crimes. Only when that is done can we spare attention for trivial cases like these.
3
@Robert
I see a lot of pleading for mercy from the people who have never seen a problem with entrenched injustice in police uniforms, three piece suits, and judges' robes. It sounds like a fading class of privileged people who recognize that they are losing control of the direction of the country, and they want the future to be kinder to them than they themselves ever were in the past.
Honestly, I see nothing but sniveling children who are realizing that the "SJWs" they loved to deride online actually have a lot of political (and economic) power, and they are learning to use it WITHOUT even having to get elected. Even gerrymandering and the electoral college cannot stop the reckoning. And now... you call us "unkind"?
Please. You guys tried to turn "social justice" into a punchline because you had no respect for our appeals to your decency when you had all the power and we could only beg for your decency. Now we have the power to temper and correct you ourselves. And we will. This is your fault. You guys were happy with the "might makes right" status quo when it favored you, but now we should be gentle? I don't think so.
You expect what you never gave. You'll receive instead what you deserve. Correct yourself or be corrected. And you overestimate the number of people who are going to care about your struggle if we are forced to correct you. You are a perpetrator; not a victim.
@Andre. Could not have said it better myself. Bravo.
That said, I do think we will eventually need to turn from justice to mercy, from condemnation to re-integration. But as long as 40% of the population supports Trump , I would say that we are not there yet.