Yes. There’s an academic usage that is not exactly congruent with popular usage.
Wearing a mask before vaccines were available was useful, and also it was virtue signaling. It served its purpose and also served to communicate about a person’s beliefs and politics. That fact was also detrimental in that lots of people were so concerned about not wanting to communicate those things that they risked lives to avoid it. Now with new guidance about masks post-vaccination, the signaling is all confused. It’s interesting.
The way the term is popularly used is more like hypocrisy, but that leaves out the tribalism aspect. Perhaps “empty virtue signaling” would come closer. It’s used to say that people are paying lip service to gain acceptance with their group and feel superior, but don’t really believe or behave any differently from the person disparaging them. There are people who do that, of course, but the term get applied to anyone who uses, for example, race-sensitive wording, on the assumption that it is disingenuous.
I do perceive it as being disingenuous but it isn’t just one side that does it. It’s both the right and the left.
Shortly after 09-11-01 a number of my then co-workers started coming to work with American flags on their cars. They weren’t particularly patriotic before then. One woman (who was particularly unintelligent) kept the flags on her car for years afterward to prove she “didn’t just put them on her car because of 911.”
Look, if you do an act a self sacrifice, and a good turn, sure you get a warm feeling of having Done the Right Things. But why not also desire the reward of acclamation?
If you have a job you love and it is a public service, then are you saying you shouldn’t want the paycheck also?
At its best it can normalize a political view that otherwise seems isolated. So, putting up BLM on your lawn in the deepest of Trump Country is an act of defiance that might inspire other BLM supporters to be more vocal and open. It also takes some moxie, there’s a real risk of harassment.
When big corporations do it, they’re probably trying to distract from their lack of substance.
Take a look through your LinkedIn feed for the most egregious examples. I can’t count how many posts I’ve seen over the last few months from middle aged white guys posting exploitative pictures/videos of themselves hiring a down-on-their-luck homeless vet or giving some black guy his old shoes or with narratives that say (paraphrasing) “All we have to do is give everyone a chance, even bums like this guy have something to offer!”. Thank god they video taped it and shared it with the world or we’d never know how awesome they are.
Then queue the endless stream of atta-boys from 1000 other middle-aged white guys sharing it on their feeds and with each other back and forth for 2 months so everyone can get the virtue light shined on them too without actually doing anything. If I don’t give away some thumbs or amens I’m not as virtuous as them.
The story in this Gawker article is like a liberal version of some hyper-fundamentalist Christians, where every minutiae of theology is nitpicked to death, and woe to he who disagrees on predestination or Arminianism.
That’s pretty funny. But I don’t think it counts as virtue signaling because I have no doubt that everyone involved in that conversation was 100% earnest.
Virtue signaling is when you bring up something that has nothing to do with the topic on hand just to make you seem like you’re on the “right side of history” and then not allow anyone to contradict you.
Like when you listen to an episode of a podcast and for no reason the host starts randomly talking about how “Prostitution should be legalized” because they see themselves as a left-wing feminist, but then completely ignoring the fact there are left-wing feminists who actually believe prostitution should be illegal because of the sex trafficking concerns. But then on their Facebook group they get people unironically proclaiming how “woke” and “proud” they are for the host for “taking a stand” but then blocking people who argue the feminist point on why prostitution should remain illegal.
Wow, your neighbours have way too much time on their hands. Can’t help thinking a lot of this stuff comes from people having no real problems in their lives, so they have to go out and invent some.
Well, yes – the deal is that the Right Wing has pretty much decreed that everything is “virtue signaling”.
Also, beside that, at times it sounds to me like another large part of this society would be just fine with others doing things to build a better, fairer world, as long as they did not have to see it or hear about it.
The correct application of “virtue signalling” for me would be when people or organisations do the bare minimum of public performance in order to look like a good person whilst not actually giving too much of a shit about the underlying issue or otherwise showing breathtaking hypocrisy.
e.g.
Corporations and pretty much any fashionable cause from racism to the environment (still got your sweatshop agreements in place haven’t you Nike? Still extracting oil BP?)
Religious organisations who ostentatiously preach about the sanctity of life and the evils of poverty from the comfort of their finest robes and gilded palaces.
I put more worth on the virtuous act done in the full knowledge that no-one will ever see it.
I’d say there is still value in the latter: I-35 still gets cleaned up, and people who follow the media socialite might be inspired to do likewise (either just because it seems good, or because they too want to bask the praise of their own followers).
Of course pure virtue is pure, but public virtue can be inspiring, and humans sometimes need to be inspired by prominent examples.
You can’t know for sure and we should be wary about labelling people but when you have a pretty solid idea that their concern is superficial then the term would apply. Evidence of huge hypocrisy would help give the game away as well.
Of course. A good act carries with it an intrinsic benefit by dint of its outcome.
However, if two people were doing the exact same act and one of them did it because they felt it was the right thing to do and the other did it primarily to look good or just to set an example to others then I’d think more or the former. I feel there is a qualitative difference.
The outdoor apparel maker was recognized by the Colorado Oil and Gas Association with a customer appreciation award — the first time in the trade group’s history that it had given the prize.
It wasn’t sincere. The energy association was mocking a recent decision by the North Face, which since 2000 has been owned by the $30 billion clothing conglomerate VF Corp., to reject a holiday jacket order from Innovex Downhole Solutions.
Even though the North Face relies on petrochemicals to make many of its products, company officials last November told the Houston oil field services contractor they didn’t want their well-known brand and famous logo — a stylized image of Yosemite National Park’s Half Dome — associated with the fossil fuel industry.
The move to treat Innovex like a gun, tobacco or porn company — all of which are formally banned from applying their logos to North Face products — prompted dozens of incredulous headlines in industry publications and at conservative media outlets and, on March 1, the oil and gas award.