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Comment by asoneth | Hacker News Reader

My understanding is that "virtue signaling" implies that the primary goal is performative with minimal personal risk and minimal commitment to productive action. The example that comes to mind is a company that spends far more money informing the public of their charitable works than they do on the works themselves.

So an in-person march, trucker protest, sit-ins, having a private conversation, calling your representative, making personal sacrifices, attempting to bring attention to lesser-known issues, donating money, engaging in dialog to convince someone of your position, etc would not be virtue signaling.

But things like posting "Let's Go Brandon" online, or changing your profile picture with no further action, or unironically using terms like "virtue signaling" for internet points might qualify as virtue signaling.

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> My understanding is that "virtue signaling" implies that the primary goal is performative with minimal personal risk and minimal commitment to productive action.

And it's based on the flawed assumption that stating public support for something without doing anything else is useless.

But people moderate their behaviour based on perceived social norms.

When people publicly state their support for a given issue, they are communicating what they understand social norms to be.

When a lot of people do that, that becomes the norm.

So "virtue signalling" could just as easily be labelled "showing support", which is the way that we share and align on those norms.

But, of course, folks who don't like people voicing their support for those values, for fear that they will become normalized, needed to find a label to apply to insult those people and, hopefully, stop people from voicing their support for these social movements.

And thus the term "virtue signalling" was born. Suddenly saying out loud what you believe becomes itself a social moray.

Now flying a pride flag, or calling for increased diversity in the workplace, has become "virtue signalling" and something to be embarrassed about.

It's quite clever as a means of controlling the narrative. And it appears a shocking number of people have bought into the BS.

There are a few more dimensions to this.

1) Does "showing support," actually do anything? Are we really aligning on norms or just scoring points with people who already agree the same position? I suspect the detail matter and that there is continuum, where for uncommon positions maybe it does something, but for widely held views, it really is just "virtue signalling."

2) When does "showing support," become a substitute for more substantive action. Maybe I post a pride flag on my social media avatar, but don't bother to vote in a local election with discriminatory ballot initiative. Or consider any number of incidents of corporate "greenwashing."

But sure, plenty of virtue signalling, isn't _just_ signalling. And we shouldn't dismiss it on those terms, but rather ask about impact.

How much is a heap of sand? It's a Sorites problem. There exists a continuum between "changing your profile picture to be tinted like flag X" and "everyone is saying and doing the same thing and it's an entrenched social norm".

It's certainly less impactful than doing something substantive but it also costs nothing to signal boost. Same like boycotts, it only works en masse.

I think one of the important things about virtue signalling is that you're making a big deal about the prescribed norms that everyone is, in our unofficially official ideology, supposed to follow.

It'd be like flying a great big flag that says "I support the government and corporations." Whenever I see a pride flag, that is essentially what I see. It's like, (and it's useful to read the people who are against you as a mirror), when Patriarch Kirill of Russia says: ". Today there is such a test for the loyalty of this government, a kind of pass to that “happy” world, the world of excess consumption, the world of visible “freedom”. Do you know what this test is? The test is very simple and at the same time terrible - this is a gay parade. The demands on many to hold a gay parade are a test of loyalty to that very powerful world; and we know that if people or countries reject these demands, then they do not enter into that world, they become strangers to it."[1]

That's not far off from the truth. Virtue signalling, as opposed to protest, is oriented towards moving closer to power, rather than further away from it. In Foucauldian terms, protest would be a transgression, a breaking of the taboo, and virtue signalling would be the opposite of that, an adherence to and reinforcement of the taboo, in which one mimetically serves the strengthening of the taboo, until the mimetic crisis breaks into blodshed.

Virtue signalling is wearing the swastika in 1938, and bears no relation to wearing one in 1929, except to say that those who wore it in 1929 won.

[1]: https://www-patriarchia-ru.translate.goog/db/text/5906442.ht...

That's not virtue signaling. That's slacktivism.

I thought Slacktivism was when Slack bans Russia, and BigMactivism was when McDonalds pulls out of Russia.

What would you classify wearing poppies around remembrance day as?

Remembering?

At least here in the United States, those are usually sold by charities that benefit various veteran's organizations, so there's some actual skin in the game there.

Good question. I think it would on the motivation of the wearer.

If if they are wearing it primarily as a method of socially fitting in and signaling to those around them then it might be "virtue signaling".

If they would continue to wear a poppy on remembrance day in contexts where the people around them did not know what it meant then there's clearly something more than signaling going on. Perhaps it is their tradition, or it helps them remember.

(I should caveat that I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with social signaling so I don't use the term "virtue signaling" as it seems to have a pejorative or sarcastic connotation.)

Just about all of your examples of not virtue signaling could or could not be depending on the context. Going in person to march, posting selfies on facebook, marching two blocks and leaving would be an in-person march and virtue signaling for example. Virtue signaling is more about intent and advertising of the act.

To paraphrase the bible "Jesus said The pious pray in their closet. Those who make big shows of praying in public are nothing but douchebags."

You just successfully moved the goalposts by redefining what "going to a march" means...and even then didn't address how "all the examples" don't count. Even then, showing up for a mere two blocks still involves more risk than staying at home.

To me, it's the element of risk that differentiates virtue signaling from meaningful action. Posting "Let's go Brandon" on parlour or "Black Lives Matter" or Tumblr aren't risky actions. Saying "I think gay marriage is ok" in a conservative church is. Just because you can imagine a situation where the context lessens the impact of the action, doesn't mean the example is weak or wrong.

Then you missed the point of my post entirely. "Virtue Signaling" isn't about what good deeds you do or don't do. It is about intent and what you do "around" those deeds. You can do real good and still be virtue signaling, because virtue signaling is the advertising aspect of it. Two people do the same deed, one won't shut up about it. One is virtue signaling, the other is just a good person.

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