Barack Obama speaks out against online cancel culture

Image: Sven Hoppe / picture alliance via Getty Images

Next time you feel the urge to call someone out on social media, maybe stop and think about Barack Obama.

At an event for the Obama Foundation on Tuesday, the former president sat down with actress and activist Yara Shahidi and spoke to a group in Chicago. During the conversation, he voiced his concerns over certain types of social media usage, including cancel culture, and shared why he feels the act of calling people out online is largely ineffective.

"This idea of purity and that you're never compromised and you’re always politically woke and all that stuff — you should get over that quickly," Obama said. "The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws. People who you are fighting may love their kids, and share certain things with you.”

"One danger I see among young people, particularly on college campuses — Malia and I talk about this," Obama began, noting that Shahidi attends Harvard with his daughter. "I do get a sense sometimes now among certain young people, and this is accelerated by social media — there is this sense sometimes of the way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people, and that's enough."

Obama went on to explain his point further. "If I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right or used the wrong verb, then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself. Did you see how woke I was, I called you out. Then I’m going to get on my TV and watch my show," he said.

"That’s not activism. That’s not bringing about change. If all you're doing is casting stones, you're probably not going to get that far."

The former president has spoken out about social media and other tech trends like selfies before, and though his opinions aren't always the coolest the thought of actively working to reduce the amount of hate spread online sounds like a pretty solid idea.