While on stage recently, I had an interaction with a heckler which ended with him being thrown out of the venue. At comedy clubs, this is not a particularly unusual occurrence. But the heckler wasn’t noticeably drunk, nor had the joke to which he’d taken exception been especially offensive. So this incident stopped me in my tracks and made me think a little bit.

Here’s what happened: I was halfway through a ten minute bit about the #MeToo movement and I was pointing out that some of us are better at managing our creepiness than others. “Matt Lauer,” I went on, “pulled his dick out at work and that cost him a 26 million dollar job. Some people do the same thing on the subway and it only costs them 2.75.” Before I could go any further, a voice in the audience cried out, “Are you saying that’s okay?” “Is that what you heard?” I replied. “It sounds like you’re saying sexual assault on the subway is okay,” he retorted. “You’re validating sexual abuse.” We exchanged a few more unproductive words, he got belligerent, and then security arrived and bounced him out of the door so the show could continue.

Situations like this one are by no means unique to comedy. Spend some time on Twitter, and you’ll discover an environment ideally suited to callout culture. Sifting through the righteous anger, two related and recurring trends become apparent: First, the practice of holding others to an impossible standard of ideological purity and, second, the practice of advertising one’s own moral superiority. Neither of these practices has any basis in reality, because we all have flaws we strive to keep hidden and, no matter how ferociously we denounce our neighbor, we are all only one unguarded remark from a public shaming.

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