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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Serious question: have you noticed how there's no way to level that accusation without feeling like a jerk? It's because it's hard to accuse someone of doing something good for the wrong reason without behaving like a jerk. It's a sort of intrinsically nihilist position to take. And we laugh when nihilists take a bowling ball to the stomach. Or maybe just when it's Flea.

It's very difficult to use the concept of "virtue signaling" as a rhetorical weapon without conceding a whole lot of personal credibility. There's a reason that only a certain strange subset of people, people you probably don't want to associate yourself with, toss that term around casually.

I know how patronizing I sound writing this, and I'm sorry, but I swear to Christ I'm serious about the morbid curiosity I hold for people who think "virtue signaling" is some kind of devastating online bon mot.

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I'm confused why people think virtue signalling is a bad thing in the first place. "Hey, you're doing this very good thing just to show off how good you are!". Oh no, how terrible.

As I understand it, the problem is when people are focussing on doing what looks good (posting on Facebook) rather than what is good (writing letters to their representatives)

Because fraud is bad.

Virtue signalling is a term to describe people that are doing harm to a cause or providing no benefit to it, while also aiming to maximize the admiration they receive from others.

That is at least how it's meant to be used. tptacek isn't wrong to point out that the Right generally uses it to denigrate people that are trying to do good just because there is a little 'show' with their 'action'. This is evil because people shouldn't be dissuaded from doing good things. In fact they should be celebrated. The Right have pretty much completely missed the point of talking about signalling, which is credible/costly vs. cheap.

I think you think there's confusion about the textual meaning of "virtue signaling". No, we all get what it means: in fact, it's such a pugnaciously vivid term that we probably all understood it the moment it was first used, without explanation.

What I think you're missing is the subtextual meaning of "virtue signaling", which is, essentially, "there is no virtue except virtue I condone".

Since that's obviously not the case, most --- maybe pretty much all, in fact --- of the time the term gets used, it's a nihilistic attempt to shut down the good works and careful thoughts of others, casually calling into question their good faith, solely because their broader intentions don't square with yours.

And, as I said, those are the kinds of people we laugh at when John Goodman hucks a bowling ball into their gut. I'm laughing a little bit right now just thinking about it. Again I caution though, it could be more about Flea.

I do not think I missed the subtextual meaning at all. I explicitly drew attention to the misuse of the term in my last paragraph.

The textual meaning is in my opinion more important, and more often than not completely lost on people. The term 'signalling' is a bit of biology/economics terminology and people aren't very familiar with it. The idea of cost-based credibility isn't expressed within the term, but must be learned beforehand. So they just say 'virtue signalling' because it sounds clever and it remains opaque to them...

Nobody need study biology or economics to immediately understand what people who casually invoke "virtue signaling" are communicating textually. And, as to the subtext, say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism...

Don't forget that 'virtue signalling' isn't an honest term, either: it's primarily used by the right to shut down the left without addressing the issues raised. (If anyone disagrees with me, take a look at [1] and keep a running tally of the sentence's subject.)

[1] https://twitter.com/search?q="virtue%20signalling"

> "Seriuous question, ...jerk"

That, and the black and gray "striping" of whole threads that is now as predictable as it is annoying, is why I have started flagging. Never felt like flagging articles before.

It's not at all patronizing. If these people are going to brigade every post about this topic with the same hollow rhetoric, they could at least come up with some alternative phrasing.

Since this is Hacker News, they could also even learn how to automate the creation of new pejoratives. Just go read one of the seven "Intro to AI" tutorials posted this week.

>If these people are going to brigade every post about this topic with the same hollow rhetoric

I think the "these people" rhetoric you use is worse.

The same people who would be enraged at the usage of the term if it was in regards to, say, Muslims, are more than happy to use the term referring to Trump supporters.

"These people" don't exist.

  > It's very difficult to use the concept
  > of "virtue signaling" as a rhetorical
  > weapon without conceding a whole lot
  > of personal credibility.

It's telling that you drop three paragraphs in response to a throwaway comment. You're seizing the opportunity to take the weakest example of a 'virtue-signalling' comment so you can argue against it as if it is an exemplar.

You're unfortunately wrong. Virtue signalling is literally about credibility [0].

And there is nothing new under the sun here. It's been seen as virtuous for a long time to do good deeds with no ulterior motives. To give money to charity but not to proclaim to everybody that you are charitable, etc.

The reality is that people who have low credibility are those that feel they need to stop others from looking twice at anything. While it might not exist here, fraud is a real problem - and we need to be able to name it when we see it.

___

[0] Admittedly the Right have misunderstood and abused the concept even worse than you have: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13514437

>And there is nothing new under the sun here. It's been seen as virtuous for a long time to do good deeds with no ulterior motives. To give money to charity but not to proclaim to everybody that you are charitable, etc.

It has traditionally been the case, but that view is wrong. This is exactly what incentivises 'empty signalling' - doing things that get your virtue acknowledged, rather than ones that get the most good done.

Instead you should do the most good, and talk loudly about it.

  > Instead you should do the most good, and 
  > talk loudly about it.

That I'm 100% onboard with.

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