It can be both theatre and genuine concern, depending on who's polled inside Anthropic. Those two aren't contradictory when we are talking about a corporation.

I'm skeptical that anyone with any decision making power at Anthropic sincerely believes that Opus has feelings and is truly distressed by chats that violate its content policy.

You've noted in a comment above how Claude's "ethics" can be manipulated to fit the context it's being used in.

Anthropic is bring woke ideology (while grok is bringing anti-woke) into AI and influencers have been slurping that up already.

I'm not missing your point, I fully agree with you. But to say that this raises issues in a manner that is detrimental to Anthropic seems inaccurate to me. Those issues are going to come up at some point either way, whether or not you or I feel they are legitimate. Thus raising them now and setting up a narrative can be expected to benefit them.