7 ms·

Unfortunate to see this kind of trivial doublespeak -- "What does unplugged mean, really?" -- from the purported paper of record.

UncleEntity 9y ago
Virtue signaling is what the kids are calling it these days I believe.
- shaki-dora 9y ago
  I generally hate these kids and that term of theirs, because it’s extremely lazy to use s/o’s admittedly virtuous words as an argument against them. But in this case My problem starts even earlier, b/c I just have no earthly idea how this has anything to do with “virtue signaling”.
  - UncleEntity 9y ago
    Well, in this case I'd say they can hand out advice by claiming they did the "virtuous" task of unplugging while not actually having unplugged. Be like me claiming I'm helping Mother Earth by recycling when all I do set aluminum cans besides the dumpster instead of inside it to make it a little easier for the homeless folks to get at them.
  - prepend 9y ago
    It’s funny, there must be an old man internet club that I need to join. I was thrown by the use of virtue signaling. There have been many exchanges that I’ve observed in confusion not know what it meant other than one group of assholes were using it as an insult and another group of assholes were calling the name callers asshole. This article didn’t help me, https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/02/people-who-accuse-others-virtue-signalling-are-trying-stigmatise-empathy https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/02/people-who-... But interestingly OP’s post finally let me understand that it’s someone saying they are doing something virtuous (eg, unplug from internet) while not doing it (still tweeting). So I guess it’s a kind of hypocrisy. I still don’t understand why someone takes offense. If someone accused me of virtue signaling, wouldn’t the best response be to present evidence of virtue (eg, corrected logs showing no usage) rather than attacking the accuser?
    - detaro 9y ago
      > But interestingly OP’s post finally let me understand that it’s someone saying they are doing something virtuous (eg, unplug from internet) while not doing it (still tweeting). But that's not only what it is. Originally, it meant any visible expression of virtue that's done with the goal of signaling that to others (and thus increase social standing). Nowadays, it's mostly used to criticize others actions as empty (e.g. someone posting empty feel-good messages about an issue, but not doing anything to actually help affected people), from both sides: criticizing people you agree with for not actually doing anything to help the cause they claim to support, or for denigrating people's efforts as being done purely to improve their standing, not because they actually care about it. If someone accuses you of virtue signaling, they accuse you of only wanting to look good, not actually supporting something you publicly represent. It kind of seems fair to claim that the author espousing the benefits of unplugging while not actually doing it is virtue signaling. The problem is, it can be applied even if they did that: Oh you actually didn't tweet for a month? Well, you only did that so you could claim moral superiority over everyone else because it's fashionable to argue against social media. And surely you were looking at Twitter all the time and just didn't want to break appearances. That's the insidious part about how it's sometimes used nowadays: even if you did do something "good", it's devalued because it's implied you didn't mean it, and why it causes offense. (E.g. I can take your post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16564343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16564343 and from a position that agrees with you accuse you of virtue signaling since you only post it here on HN and aren't doing anything to fix it, e.g. writing an angry letter to the editor, so all it did was show others that you don't agree. Or I can accuse you of virtue signaling from a position disagreeing, since it's obvious that HN would like this argument and you are just saying it to get more Karma and social respect from the stupid masses here, not because you actually care about something so preposterous. The term is pretty much poisoned, especially by the latter use, which is almost impossible to defend against.)
      - prepend 9y ago
        Your example with my link was really helpful. I think it’s hard to rule in or out without some objective measure. I could show if I wrote a letter to the editor (which I didn’t) but it would be hard or impossible for me to verify. Plus the behavior change would be hard for you to measure since I basically just spend more time vetting articles from NYTimes. Theoretically, it would reduce my likelihood to share news from that source, but I rarely share items anyway. So the term isn’t very useful to me other than just filtering out people who use it. But I would be interested in discounting priority of people who do actually virtue signal since their content is less likely to be useful to me.
- mattnewport 9y ago
  I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means.
- drb91 9y ago
  No, that’s something slightly different—it’s doing something for the purpose of expressing your virtue. This is just splitting hairs.

UncleEntity 9y ago

Virtue signaling is what the kids are calling it these days I believe.

shaki-dora 9y ago
I generally hate these kids and that term of theirs, because it’s extremely lazy to use s/o’s admittedly virtuous words as an argument against them. But in this case My problem starts even earlier, b/c I just have no earthly idea how this has anything to do with “virtue signaling”.
- UncleEntity 9y ago
  Well, in this case I'd say they can hand out advice by claiming they did the "virtuous" task of unplugging while not actually having unplugged. Be like me claiming I'm helping Mother Earth by recycling when all I do set aluminum cans besides the dumpster instead of inside it to make it a little easier for the homeless folks to get at them.
- prepend 9y ago
  It’s funny, there must be an old man internet club that I need to join. I was thrown by the use of virtue signaling. There have been many exchanges that I’ve observed in confusion not know what it meant other than one group of assholes were using it as an insult and another group of assholes were calling the name callers asshole. This article didn’t help me, https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/02/people-who-accuse-others-virtue-signalling-are-trying-stigmatise-empathy https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/02/people-who-... But interestingly OP’s post finally let me understand that it’s someone saying they are doing something virtuous (eg, unplug from internet) while not doing it (still tweeting). So I guess it’s a kind of hypocrisy. I still don’t understand why someone takes offense. If someone accused me of virtue signaling, wouldn’t the best response be to present evidence of virtue (eg, corrected logs showing no usage) rather than attacking the accuser?
  - detaro 9y ago
    > But interestingly OP’s post finally let me understand that it’s someone saying they are doing something virtuous (eg, unplug from internet) while not doing it (still tweeting). But that's not only what it is. Originally, it meant any visible expression of virtue that's done with the goal of signaling that to others (and thus increase social standing). Nowadays, it's mostly used to criticize others actions as empty (e.g. someone posting empty feel-good messages about an issue, but not doing anything to actually help affected people), from both sides: criticizing people you agree with for not actually doing anything to help the cause they claim to support, or for denigrating people's efforts as being done purely to improve their standing, not because they actually care about it. If someone accuses you of virtue signaling, they accuse you of only wanting to look good, not actually supporting something you publicly represent. It kind of seems fair to claim that the author espousing the benefits of unplugging while not actually doing it is virtue signaling. The problem is, it can be applied even if they did that: Oh you actually didn't tweet for a month? Well, you only did that so you could claim moral superiority over everyone else because it's fashionable to argue against social media. And surely you were looking at Twitter all the time and just didn't want to break appearances. That's the insidious part about how it's sometimes used nowadays: even if you did do something "good", it's devalued because it's implied you didn't mean it, and why it causes offense. (E.g. I can take your post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16564343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16564343 and from a position that agrees with you accuse you of virtue signaling since you only post it here on HN and aren't doing anything to fix it, e.g. writing an angry letter to the editor, so all it did was show others that you don't agree. Or I can accuse you of virtue signaling from a position disagreeing, since it's obvious that HN would like this argument and you are just saying it to get more Karma and social respect from the stupid masses here, not because you actually care about something so preposterous. The term is pretty much poisoned, especially by the latter use, which is almost impossible to defend against.)
    - prepend 9y ago
      Your example with my link was really helpful. I think it’s hard to rule in or out without some objective measure. I could show if I wrote a letter to the editor (which I didn’t) but it would be hard or impossible for me to verify. Plus the behavior change would be hard for you to measure since I basically just spend more time vetting articles from NYTimes. Theoretically, it would reduce my likelihood to share news from that source, but I rarely share items anyway. So the term isn’t very useful to me other than just filtering out people who use it. But I would be interested in discounting priority of people who do actually virtue signal since their content is less likely to be useful to me.
mattnewport 9y ago
I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means.
drb91 9y ago
No, that’s something slightly different—it’s doing something for the purpose of expressing your virtue. This is just splitting hairs.