> Since certain norms aren't as intuitive/automatic, it's as if everyone else is secretly playing a game with a set of unspoken barely-explained rules.

That's exactly how I feel lol biggest reason why I minimize my interaction with most of the society

Anyway, I think that people in general assume that others behave in a way similar to theirs, which works if you're average, but doesn't if you're not. You can see this when two cultures with opposing attitudes meet: both of them think "obviously I'm normal, it's them who's acting weird".

See also Three Christs of Ypsilanti

I think that general feeling -- of playing a game where the majority of players know the rules and you don't -- is something most people have felt at one point or other. I've certainly felt like that in foreign countries or at new jobs. Friends report a similar feeling while starting the process of buying a house, or getting married, or re-entering the dating scene.

I used to feel like this when I was a teen. Now I think everyone are mostly clueless trying to make do with what they have.

A friends mom always said, "There are rules, you just dont know them yet"

But are they? Or are they just conventions backed by people with various degrees of certainty about them?

Why are you asking me?

That's exactly what rules are.

> Some of them end up concluding it's all a cynical manipulative scam, and everybody else is the same as themselves except absurdly dedicated to keeping up the fiction.

See most people who use the phrase "virtue-signaling" pejoratively.

I think most behaviors in both corporate and actual politics are pretty much that of psychopaths. I don't believe this is true in general. Am I the psychopath?

If you cynically believe no one ever is truly empathetic towards an outgroup, or can hold altruistic values on the basis that you yourself do not, then I think it's a sign of something - perhaps not rising to the level of psychopathy - but it certainly shows a lack of imagination.

I use the phrase virtue signalling pejoratively to refer to things like https://www.shell.com/sustainability/nature.html. It's precisely because of the existence of real virtue that virtue signalling is able to be differentiated.

I suppose I should have specified when the pejorative is directed towards individuals. Companies are amoral, and have no values by definition.

So then it sounds like you agree that an identifiable subset of advocacy is only faking virtue, you just disagree with the scammers on which subset that is.

I do not agree.

Companies have always done brand advertising - Marlboro cigarettes didn't truly care about independence, ruggedness or cowboys - they just wanted to be associated with those themes to sell more product - hence the "Marlboro Man". Clint Eastwood, on the other had, seems to personally buy into that image in earnest - so Clint Eastwood doesn't "virtue-signal" about ruggedness and the old west and anyone who accuses[1] him of that is doing so in bad faith.

The culture warriors pretend companies pandering is new, and they term the branding/pandering they don't like "virtue-signalling"

1. He has some pretty strong opinions on who ought to be in westerns that I believe are misguided. My disagreeing wirh him doesn't mean he is insincere/virtue-signaling to the Country-music-listening demographic.

Okay sure. I’ll grant you that calling Clint Eastwood “virtue signaling” is misguided. But you were criticizing the use of the term in general, including for calling out ineffective actions that accomplish nothing substantive but make a brand look good. So you just moved the goalposts, if that matters to you.

Companies tend to be amoral, but nothing precludes from codifying a set of morals in their documents.

“Virtue signaling” absolutely designates a natural, useful category that, in no way, rejects the need for real virtue:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23474142

I ... can actually sympathize with that, even as I don't try to scam people (at least, I don't think I do). It can be infuriating to see others get what they want in a way that's "what??? Why does that work?" It can feel like the real rules are being deliberately concealed from you, and you are just fighting back by using the hacks that you think everyone else is.

I remember having this feeling hit me hard when I read the part of the Richard Feynman book when he calls a woman a selfish wh--- and that results in her adamantly wanting to sleep with him.[1]

If you can shuck the siren's call of the mob, you can sympathize with the incel and MGTOW crowd who felt they weren't taught the right model.

I've kind of taken it on as a life motto: "No cheat codes." If there's something that magically works, it deserves to be exposed so everyone can use it, and also learn why it works. That is, everyone deserves the same hack. Yes, even when it costs my information monopoly.

[1] Blog post summarizing it: https://geekfeminismdotorg.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/feynman-...