Curious, which virtue do you think the author is signaling?
For example: "spook" was allegedly used at some point as a slur against black people, so if you have ever used the term "spooky" in a Hallowe'en context you have committed the immortal sin of doing a structural racism.
To the underemployed university administrative staff who have never experienced real hardships, this sort of thing is a Big Deal(tm), except we can't call it that because it's insensitive to short people. Correction: people experiencing heightlessness.
To this, I call out the case of the words Spanish speakers have been using to refer to disabled persons.
The word for "disabled person" was at a point in time deemed too insensitive and an outright insult, so around the 1970s the word "subnormal" started showing up even in government acts to appease the virtue signaling crowd.
Except that after a few years the word "subnormal" also managed to find itself as a prime example of a gross PC violation, and therefore they coined the term "minusválido" (i.e., "less than valid", a milder form of "invalid") to appease the PC gods.
But lo and behold, "minusválido" is now also looked poorly by the PC crowd as being offensive.
https://languageacts.org/loaded-meanings/schools-teachers/ri...
How à propos, because in English "disabled" is no longer acceptable and they now demand that you say "differently-abled".
I mean hell it's not even a less accurate description, you're not able to walk but you're able to move around using crutches or a wheelchair or other mobility device. A person who isn't able to walk may still be able to do almost everything day to day (well aside from walking) that a non-disabled (or non-differently abled person, ok that sounds kinda weird) person would be able to, albeit in a different way.
It feels… inconsequential.
These are the same people who publish "inclusive language guides" with garbage like "don't use the term Brainwave because it's dehumanizing to people with intellectual disabilities".
It's an entire R&D field dedicated to finding new and creative ways to be offended.
Non constructive noise from creatures with desire only to chase something.
The signaling is just pointing it out to make yourself look better, it doesn’t mean you’re lying.
> It seems like you'ld have to have access to their mental state, no
Of course, absent communication, that would be the only way. Fortunately, communication - such as written text - allows us to let others to witness certain aspects of our mental state, this is one of the points of communication. So, present the communication, we can make certain conclusions about the mental state of the communicator.