A question directed to GP, directly asking about their life and pointing this out is somehow virtue signalling, OK.
Maybe you’re just being defensive? I’m sure he didn’t mean an attack at you personally.
Accusing someone of “virtue signaling” is itself virtue signaling, just for a different in-group to use as a thought terminating cliche. It has been for decades. “Performative bullshit” is a great way to put it, just not in the way you intended.
If the OP had a substantive point to make they would have made it instead of using vague ad hominem that’s so 2008 it could be the opening track on a Best of Glenn Beck album (that’s roughly when I remember “virtue signaling” becoming a cliche).
Or should I too perhaps wait for OP to respond.
Yikes...
I know some people will roll their eyes at this, but it's worth reflecting on how even small phrases like "my two cents" carry historical and cultural baggage. Language doesn't exist in a vacuum; it encodes assumptions about who gets to speak, whose perspectives are valued, and how we frame participation in public discourse.
The metaphor of assigning a literal monetary value to one's opinion reinforces the idea that contributions are transactional and that their "worth" is measured through an economic lens. That framing can be exclusionary, especially for people who have been historically marginalized by economic systems. It subtly normalizes a worldview where only those with enough "currency" - social, financial, or otherwise - deserve to be heard.
It's not about policing every idiom, but about being mindful of how our words might echo structures we're trying to move beyond. There are plenty of alternatives ("just my perspective" or "here's how I see it" etc.) that don't inherit that baggage. Language evolves, and we can choose to evolve it in more inclusive directions.
No. It’s acknowledging that that perhaps one’s opinion may not be as useful as somebody else’s in that moment. Which is often true!
Your first and third paragraphs are true, but they don’t apply to every bloody phrase.
And when I say 'it never crosses our minds' I really mean it, there's zero thoughts between thinking about a message and having it show up in a text box.
A really great example are slurs, for a lot of people they have to double take, but there's zero extra neurons fired when I read them. I guess early internet culture is to blame since all kinds of language was completely uncensored and it was very common to run into very hostile people/content.
The lens through which you're analyzing the phrase is coloring how you see it negatively, and the one I'm using is doing the opposite. There is no need to change the phrase, just how it's viewed, I think.