The thing that gets me about “virtue signalling” is this built-in assumption that no one does anything earnestly, and that every action is performed according to how it’ll be received.

I just don’t believe that’s how the vast majority of people live their lives. OP did what they did because the status quo made them uncomfortable. People don’t have to be soldiers in a mythical cultural war, sometimes they’re just people. Whenever anyone invokes “virtual signalling” I think they’re inadvertently explaining a lot more of their own world view than they are anyone else’s.

> The thing that gets me about “virtue signalling” is this built-in assumption that no one does anything earnestly, and that every action is performed according to how it’ll be received.

This is because the people who use the term 'virtue signalling' consider morality to be transactional and cannot comprehend the idea that someone might actually be virtuous or have moral standards beyond which they will not tread. The term itself has now become its own 'virtue signal' to people who hold a particular viewpoint.

No one here said that not a single person in the world doesn't do it just to feel good inside but any person that shares this stuff on any kind social platform clearly does it because they crave approval from others.

Aren't you simply signalling your own moral purity by projecting the accusation back onto an accuser, as though it were a league table of moral status?

There was a time when one had to actually do things to be virtuous.

Is your comment just anti-virtue signaling then?

Sometimes people just want to share their opinions, and they actually feel those feelings. Sometimes those feelings are about ethical issues.

Feelings alone do not make a rational standpoint. This ex-pressing (pressing outwards) of our feelings was the problem of romanticism, and it has to be balanced with what the reality tells back at us.

In other words, people don't seem to be saying they shouldn't have shared their feelings, but when they did they should have been ready to receive the criticism especially on logical results of their reasoning.

Not using products you've already purchased and enjoyed is most likely not an act of virtue, it probably changes nothing materially in the world to make it a better place. However, it is a display of purity in protest, which might inspire others to take action to the extent they are impressed by it, but it mostly feels egosyntonic for the person who does this demonstration.

Hence the criticism of virtue signaling; it is not the virtue bit, it is the signaling bit, divorced from the essence of being virtuous.

From a rational standpoint, buying and playing games is a waste of time and money.

Definitely not - rationality is about a realistic view on the world and effective, perhaps even optimal, acts to achieve your goals, but it's completely, absolutely orthogonal to the nature of these goals. The goals, or perhaps "utility function" in formal terminology are essentially arbitrary from the perspective of rationality; it's generally rational to better understanding of your goals is very useful to effectively meet them, but a key principle is that "the utility function is not up for grabs", rationality is about effectiveness in obtaining what you want, but it does not and cannot constrain what is it that you want.

So IMHO games are a really good example - buying and playing games is a rational allocation of time and money if and only if the outcome (or, to be accurate, the sum of outcomes over long term) of playing games is more fulfilling than the alternatives; and it seems quite plausible that the enjoyment gaining from playing games may be very different for two completely rational actors and thus even from a completely rational standpoint they should make different decisions on whether playing games is a waste of time and money or a great use of them.

Exactly my point: if the current behavior of a company reduces the enjoyment you get from products that you previously bought from that company, you are both justified and rational not to want to use those products, and even to say "I do not want to use these products anymore."

No rational argument can change the original non-rational utility function. And no, there's no "virtue signalling" involved.

I don't understand this at all. You think it's rational to avoid things that one finds fun and interesting? That seems like an extremely suboptimal way to navigate through life.

As is participating in a comments thread discussion such as this. Rationality is too often overrated.

I feel like any debate over the term “virtual signaling“ is missing the meta game (along with people who virtue signal or accuse others of virtue signalling).

Like there’s an evil genius(es) with ulterior motives behind it all.

Could just be my cynicism though.

> Like there’s an evil genius(es) with ulterior motives behind it all.

In a sense, I think there is. Instead of a cabal, it is just our collective intelligence getting lost in attractive pockets of irrationality.

I think virtue signaling could be as old as humans, because there are social and psychological benefits to being seen virtuous, without paying the costs of being virtuous.

The more it is demonstrated that people can get away with it, the more we are trained to consider that as an alternative, that we can get away with it too, and collectively we converge to a pit of empty appearances.

That said calling out something as virtue signaling also has failure modes; it is ultimately an accusation of duplicitousness and we can't really be sure of people's intentions. It can also have a chilling effect on genuine enactments of virtue.

Claiming 'virtue signaling' always feels like a presumption of bad faith by the claimant.

That's because it is. The question to ask, of any argument, is "so what?": what do you want to do about it. The "so what" for an accusation of "virtue signalling" is to dismiss the original statement without any further consideration.

In recursive irony, those who use the phrase "virtue signaling" are also virtue signaling, and the it is, in itself a shibboleth for people of a certain political persuasion.

Calling out virtue signalling is useful to make people realize that judging a situation or person without having all the facts is damaging to society all around the world. This contributes a lot to the hipocrisy we see in the west nowadays which influences the entire world because of technology.

The outrage generated by all the mass media is not good as far as I'm concerned and it's good to remind people of that.