Virtue Signaling

[ionelv]

I take issue with the whole baggage packed in the beloved conservative sneering accusation of "virtue signaling". Without mincing words, I find this particular accusation divisive and cynical (at a minimum) most of the time.

Let's unpack this loaded label. Back in 2017, Mr Warner made an attempt at unpacking it, and quickly veered off-course into the Orangeland crooked mirror rabbit-/black-hole universe. Here is a good excerpt from Mr Warner's preamble:

How about the guys that wrote this? “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that they are endowed by their Creator with unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Virtue signaling up the hoo-hah! Self-evident truths? Who do these bewigged smartypants think they are?

Better attempts come from wikipedia (with the side note below):

Psychologists Jillian Jordan and David Rand argued that virtue signalling is separable from genuine outrage towards a particular belief, but in most cases, individuals who are virtue signalling are, in fact, simultaneously experiencing genuine outrage. Linguist David Shariatmadari argued in The Guardian that the very act of accusing someone of virtue signalling is an act of virtue signalling in itself.

An interesting history of the label is its definition on wikipedia which was modified over 250 times in the past 4 years and lost its pejorative mention which this 2019 blog entry pointed out:

[...] a pejorative for the conspicuous expression of moral values. Academically, the phrase relates to signalling theory to describe a subset of social behaviors that could be used to signal virtue—especially piety among the religious. In recent years, the term has become more commonly used as a pejorative by commentators to describe empty or superficial support of certain political views and also used within groups to criticize their own members for valuing appearance over action