Agreed, it is a terrible thoughtless cliche. It purports to see into the mind and heart of the person doing it and smearing the act as disingenuous and therefor

Agreed, it is a terrible thoughtless cliche. It purports to see into the mind and heart of the person doing it and smearing the act as disingenuous and therefore void of moral value. Obviously, we all KNOW deep down that they're doing it for bullshit reasons, it's obvious, we can all tell, can't we? Made worse by the fact that some famous and powerful people are phonies who in fact do things for bullshit reasons, which you can be convinced of by their past behavior. On top of that, doing stuff on the internet for attention is pretty common. People then make the leap to "doing X thing I don't like is virtue signaling". It's not that I think it never happens, people aren't always sincere and I didn't just fall off the turnip truck, but the accusation itself is just a baseless smear if it's not accompanied by something corroborating. We should be skeptical, not oafishly dismissive.