Originally it was a worthwhile term to examine distinctions between virtue communications that might be more matters of social negotiation and virtue communications that might be reflections of personal value investment.

Then in certain political usage it became a nihilistic drive-by dismissal for nullifying any kind of virtue accountability, whether sincerely invested or not, a challenge to the idea that there was any such thing as sincere virtue discourse.

In case it wasn't clear, my nihilism is that that political nihilism is itself a form of virtue signaling.