It’s a defining feature of our online conversations – but, as Obama noted, the point of highlighting someone else’s mistakes is not just to feel good about yourself

Even if you’re not that active on social media, you’ve probably experienced it: the sudden wave of dread that overwhelms you when you realize you’ve said something you shouldn’t have – and someone has noticed.

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You’ve been called out: your mistake suddenly feels grave and irreparable; you may even worry that this one episode could affect your whole life.

A version of call-out culture has been functioning for centuries as a tool for the marginalized and their allies to reveal injustice and the need for reform. The practise of directly addressing inequality underpins countless social justice movements, from civil rights to Standing Rock.

The contemporary idea of a “call-out”, however, generally refers to interpersonal confrontations occurring between individuals on social media. In theory, call-outs should be very simple – someone does something wrong, people tell them, and they avoid doing it again in the future. Yet you only need to spend a short amount of time on the internet to know that call-out culture is in fact extremely divisive.

Play Video 1:54 Barack Obama takes on 'woke' call-out culture: 'That's not activism' – video

Former president Obama pointed out this week at the Obama Foundation Summit in Chicago that call-outs can give the illusion that you’re effecting change, even if that is not true. “If I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right, or used the wrong word or verb, then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself, because, ‘Man, you see how woke I was. I called you out.’ That’s not activism,” Obama said.

A reason call-outs can be polarizing is they often challenge the status quo. They can spark discomfort and offense, as when Canadian activist Nora Loreto went on Twitter to suggest that the C$15.2m raised to support the Humboldt Broncos junior ice hockey team after a deadly bus crash last year was donated so generously in part because victims of the accident were young, male and white. Or earlier this month when, in response to Ellen DeGeneres tweeting about her friendship with George W Bush and kumbaya policy of being nice to everyone, critics pointed out that niceness is not an unalloyed good.

Some people feel that call-outs are an excuse for petty drama – a way to stir up gossip more than to promote social justice. Think of when Coleen Rooney launched a real-life soap opera by accusing fellow British football wife Rebekah Vardy of subterfuge last month, or the heady influencer drama that escalated between YouTubers Tati Westbrook and James Charles this summer.

Yet the most potent critiques of call-out culture come from those who feel it is an excuse for crude vigilante justice – “zealotry … fueled by people working out their psychological wounds”, as the New York Times columnist David Brooks called it earlier this year. A “trial by fire” method of responding to any alleged violation of propriety, writes the Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf.

A frequently cited problem with call-outs is that it’s all too easy to get carried away and overpunish people, turning alleged perpetrators of upsetting acts into victims themselves. “What can often start out as well-intentioned and necessary criticism far too quickly devolves into brutish displays of virtual tar-and-feathering,” writes the activist and writer Ruby Hamad.

This leaves one question: how can we benefit from the social good call-out culture can help achieve, without succumbing to the toxicity and futility that has come to be associated with it?

Some advocate a softer approach to call-outs. By ganging up on an individual, “you’re taking this moral high ground, with a lot of righteous indignation, and inviting others to participate in a public shaming exercise”, which is rarely productive, says Anna Richards, a therapist specializing in conflict mediation.

Richards cautions against taking a “reductionist approach” when calling out an individual. When we rationalize our own mistakes, “we tend to give ourselves really high context”, she says. “We think, well I was going through something, and there were certain norms at the time, I was following everybody else,” but when someone offends us we’re less willing to see what contributed to their behavior, aside from inherent badness.

While there is no one absolute right way to call someone out, Richards believes that learning to analyze our own motivations when offering criticism, and considering the context and possible consequences of the situation we’re contributing to helps call-out culture work productively.

Of course, it’s also up to the individual whose behavior has been called into question to be open, humble and willing to see such incidents as opportunities to learn, rather than a one-way ticket into a cartoon dust ball fight. After all, one tried and true way to begin resolving interpersonal conflict is to sincerely apologize when you have, intentionally or not, caused harm.

Unfortunately, apologizing can be challenging for some. According to Richards, in order for someone to apologize they need to have a fairly robust sense of self-worth, and often people are insecure and pathologically afraid of being wrong.

“People feel as though they’re already on shaky ground and if they have some sort of mistake highlighted it would be drawing from an empty cup,” she says. “Generally what I see is just a total collapse, where the person’s sense of self is eroded, or a kind of counter-attack, where they double down on their position and don’t want to learn.”

In other cases, a self-preservation instinct will lead people to offer a submission—a calculated, face-saving apology that doesn’t suggest true accountability. (Such as, most believe, those offered by actor Gina Rodriguez earlier this month, and comedian Shane Gillis this summer, both for using offensive racial epithets.)

Richards may believe in an empathetic approach to conflict resolution, yet she is wary of putting the onus of peacekeeping and politesse on the injured party. Rather, she suggests anger may be better channeled at the root of the systemic forces that give individuals the entitlement to behave in a way that’s uncaring of others. What that means is that there are circumstances when it may be better to confront not individuals, but political or corporate institutions able to implement change or influence others on a larger scale. After all, Richards mediates conflict all day long, and she says that an individual changing their behavior is “not as common as we would like”.

As the old saying goes: choose your battles wisely.

Anne Thériault (@anne_theriault) This is a really good flowchart pic.twitter.com/Wv3p7t9Pan

Still, positive outcomes are possible. According to writer and activist Kitty Stryker, the recent backlash to the Netflix animated series Big Mouth’s inaccurate definition of bisexuality is an example of functional call-out culture. Members of the queer community voiced their anger when the show misrepresented bisexuals as not being attracted to trans individuals. Producer Andrew Goldberg responded with an apology and pledge to do better in the future.

Could Goldberg have done more? Sure, his critics have suggested he hire a more diverse writing room, for one, and it remains to be seen how he’ll make his work more inclusive. Yet atonement is a process; the only way to begin it is by acknowledging a mistake and expressing the sincere intent to learn from it.

“I think what differentiates a call-out from bullying is that it shouldn’t be about punishing someone for something they have done, rather it should be about establishing a new pattern of behavior,” says Stryker, who has been on both the giving and receiving ends of call-outs throughout her career. “Basically, when someone calls you out they want you to start showing through your actions that you care about the issue you’ve been called out on.”

If you’re confronted about something offensive you may have said or done, Stryker acknowledges making an effort to listen and learn may be difficult. “You are going to get petty at times, you’re going to get mad, you’re going to be like, ‘why should I listen to this person?’ But you have to take a deep breath and not tweet when you’re in that state, and be like ‘OK, they are very mad at me, but what is the fundamental seed in here that I can take away?’

“When I get called out, I think, ‘awesome this is a chance for me to learn,’” says Stryker. “I don’t need forgiveness on top of that. I just don’t want to hurt my friends.”