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https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/stop-saying-virtue-signalling https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/stop-saying-virtue-signalling

rconti 6y ago
100% agreed. It's almost exclusively used as an ad hominem by people who lack that particular virtue to dismiss people who espouse a caring viewpoint. If you want to argue that your target does less to further that particular cause than you do, fine. If you want to argue the cause is misguided, fine. But using the term is just lazy.
- senderista 6y ago
  It’s like “PC” or “fake news”, it was originally meaningful but got co-opted by people who use it in bad faith.
  - cameronbrown 6y ago
    Just curious: Fake news was coined by Trump, so you're agreeing it was a meaningful usage?
    - stonogo 6y ago
      Ironically, it was not coined by Trump. https://twitter.com/CraigSilverman/status/522179364767924224 https://twitter.com/CraigSilverman/status/522179364767924224 and https://www.theverge.com/2014/10/22/7028983/fake-news-sites-are-using-facebook-to-spread-ebola-panic https://www.theverge.com/2014/10/22/7028983/fake-news-sites-... are good examples of its use pre-Trump. By the time Trump started applying it to actual news outlets, it was already in relatively common use.
      - triangleman 6y ago
        The irony runs deep in this case. The examples you point out are good ones for the term in common use through the end of 2016. Then this happened: https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/08/politics/hillary-clinton-fake-news-epidemic/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/08/politics/hillary-clinton-fake... December 2016 Hillary Clinton decides to use the term in reference to recent events like her losing the election. The media picks up on it and the term starts to lose its meaning. Then Donald Trump, always with a nose for catch phrase politics, picks up the term and runs with it, a turn of events that someone on HN called a huge "own goal" by the media, and I can't say I disagree with that assessment. For more analysis of this cultural specimen: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-42724320 https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-42724320
      - vxNsr 6y ago
        It's possible that the term existed before Hillary/Trump but your examples aren't it. In your examples the word "fake" is used as an adjective to the noun "news site". As in "a fake news site". "fake news" as it used today is a noun in its own right. As in "that's fake news" See also "alternative facts".
    - bawolff 6y ago
      It was always dismissive. Serious people used already existing terms like propaganda or yellow journalism.
    - DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
      It was not coined by Donald Trump[1][2]: > Author Sarah Churchwell asserts that it was Woodrow Wilson who popularized the phrase 'fake news' in 1915, although the phrase had been used in the US in the previous century. > The term actually dates from the late 19th century, when it was used by newspapers and magazines to boast about their own journalistic standards and attack those of their rivals. In 1895, for example, Electricity: A Popular Electrical Journal bragged that “we never copy fake news,” while in 1896 a writer at one San Jose, California, paper excoriated the publisher of another: “It is his habit to indulge in fake news. ... [H]e will make up news when he fails to find it.” [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news#20th_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news#20th_century [2] https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/In-a-Word/2019/0726/Surprisingly-old-words-that-seem-contemporary https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/In-a-Word/2019/0726/Su...
    - P_I_Staker 6y ago
      No, and it's total bullshit that we let him get away with re-claiming it. Originally, it was for stories that were ludicrously false and made up. It's like the stuff you see in tabloids. It was being passed around on social media as real news. Things like Obama being a secret Muslim, and not a natural born US citizen. You know the things that launched Trump's campaign.
    - senderista 6y ago
      Wrong, it originally referred to fabricated political news stories (generally pro-Trump) circulated on social media during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump later co-opted the term to mean any unfavorable news coverage.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  I disagree. Metaphorically speaking, online discussion is full of literal butt-heads and having the term butt-head is valuable to have in the toolbox even if some people call everyone they don't agree with a butt-head because it's easy and they're lazy. I don't really care if we call them butt-heads or ass-hats as long as there's a more or less agreed upon word for it. Virtue signaling or whatever you want to call that sort of in-group circle jerk is fundamentally unproductive and self-rewarding because it's just a reiteration of existing group beliefs that basically everyone already knows and has. There's no term you can use to describe that behavior that will not make people uncomfortable when you call it out because at the end of the day you're calling the behavior unproductive and selfish. For example, someone goes on Reddit and asks "should I put economy tire A or economy tire B on my 20yo, $2k car, also I have $250 to spend". The most popular answers will be invariably be "you should have dedicated summer and winter tires" and "you should use jack stands when you change tires" and many duplicates thereof many of which will suggest that anyone who does not do these things is not someone of good character, deserves to rot in hell, is a burden upon society, etc, etc. Neither of these sideshows are productive discussion. Both of them serve purely to signal to the in-group that the signaler believes something the in-group already believes. Of course everybody wants the greatest tires and nobody wants a car on them but the former is not in the scope for budgetary reasons and the latter is not a concern when simply changing tires never-mind that installing tires usually adds no cost over having them put on rims. The people circle jerking it to jack stands and fancy tires are negatively affecting the discussion for anyone who cared about economy tires. Virtue signaling takes legitimate relevant content and displaces it with low quality junk. I'm more technical than I am cultured but I see this kind of behavior across multiple topics and I'm sure that any serious amateur film critic, book critic, etc. probably could come up with a similar example from their niche. While that example is hypothetical you can see similar ones play out across a multitude of topics and I think this does legitimate damage to civil discourse. It's like how searching for a service manual for an appliance on the internet to yield results but now it yields a million sites that don't have what you're looking for but will try and sell you something. I see virtue signaling as having a similar quality degradation affect but on legitimate discussion. We can no-longer have detailed discussions about complex issues, regardless of subject because they all get derailed, bogged down and diluted by people showing up to signal their virtue on a higher level issue. Take for example the recent discussion about police. Many on the left and right have a litany of small points on which they agree. Any public discussion about common ground, like fewer MRAPs in the hands of suburban police departments, gets drowned out by riff raff showing up to tell the world which team they're on. At scale this is damaging to civil discourse. In conclusion, I think that having a nice, short, two-word, pop culture word to describe that behavior is useful because makes it easier for those who may not be articulate enough to otherwise do a good job call it out when they see it. Of course some people are gonna abuse it but I think that's just the nature of it being a negative thing since all negative things become a name you can call someone or their actions.
dokem 6y ago
Attempting to remove a word or phrase is exactly the kind of impractical behavior I expect from a virtue signaler. And with the annoyingly pedantic reasoning about how it's not technically signaling they way economists use the term is just the cherry on top. Virtue signaling is real, so is the misuse of the term, like every other, but so what.
- kennywinker 6y ago
  This seems like pro-virtue-signalling-as-a-term virtue signalling. We get it, you want all the other people who use the term virtue signalling to like you. ALWAYS dismissive and reductive. ALWAYS. It's not a good faith argument. If you think someone is all-talk-no-action, accuse them of being performative. If you think someone's cause is dumb, attack that. You can call ANYBODY advocating for a viewpoint a virtue signaller so it is an entirely meaningless attack.
  - dokem 6y ago
    The idea that you can't attack someone's behavior is ridiculous. If you want to consider what i'm doing virtue signaling then go right ahead I guess.
    - jeromegv 6y ago
      Yes. You calling other people for virtue signalling is a form of virtue signalling in itself. Don’t you realize how ridiculous and useless this argument is?
      - dokem 6y ago
        Don't you understand that I am arguing that virtue signaling is real. You saying I am virtue signaling is only agreeing with my point.
  - ImprobableTruth 6y ago
    In what way is there a difference between virtue signaling and performative?
skinnymuch 6y ago
That article gives such a bad argument that I feel I have now become more pro using the term than before. All of the arguments have huge exceptions or contradict each other. Signaling being a term used by some niche fields. We have that happen all the time. It’s how language evolves. The article says to use show off instead of virtue signaling. Right after the next argument is assuming the person is disingenuous. Which is exactly what you’re doing if you say they’re showing off. The two arguments can’t both be used. They are arguments against different things.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  I think a good way to put this is: Saying 'stop saying "virtue signalling"' is virtue signalling
  - BolexNOLA 6y ago
    At some point we are just circling a drain of nonsense when we make points like that.
- DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
  "To an asshole, all virtue looks like virtue signaling." -- https://twitter.com/drvox/status/1273472663621529604 https://twitter.com/drvox/status/1273472663621529604

rconti 6y ago

100% agreed. It's almost exclusively used as an ad hominem by people who lack that particular virtue to dismiss people who espouse a caring viewpoint. If you want to argue that your target does less to further that particular cause than you do, fine. If you want to argue the cause is misguided, fine. But using the term is just lazy.

senderista 6y ago
It’s like “PC” or “fake news”, it was originally meaningful but got co-opted by people who use it in bad faith.
- cameronbrown 6y ago
  Just curious: Fake news was coined by Trump, so you're agreeing it was a meaningful usage?
  - stonogo 6y ago
    Ironically, it was not coined by Trump. https://twitter.com/CraigSilverman/status/522179364767924224 https://twitter.com/CraigSilverman/status/522179364767924224 and https://www.theverge.com/2014/10/22/7028983/fake-news-sites-are-using-facebook-to-spread-ebola-panic https://www.theverge.com/2014/10/22/7028983/fake-news-sites-... are good examples of its use pre-Trump. By the time Trump started applying it to actual news outlets, it was already in relatively common use.
    - triangleman 6y ago
      The irony runs deep in this case. The examples you point out are good ones for the term in common use through the end of 2016. Then this happened: https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/08/politics/hillary-clinton-fake-news-epidemic/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/08/politics/hillary-clinton-fake... December 2016 Hillary Clinton decides to use the term in reference to recent events like her losing the election. The media picks up on it and the term starts to lose its meaning. Then Donald Trump, always with a nose for catch phrase politics, picks up the term and runs with it, a turn of events that someone on HN called a huge "own goal" by the media, and I can't say I disagree with that assessment. For more analysis of this cultural specimen: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-42724320 https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-42724320
    - vxNsr 6y ago
      It's possible that the term existed before Hillary/Trump but your examples aren't it. In your examples the word "fake" is used as an adjective to the noun "news site". As in "a fake news site". "fake news" as it used today is a noun in its own right. As in "that's fake news" See also "alternative facts".
  - bawolff 6y ago
    It was always dismissive. Serious people used already existing terms like propaganda or yellow journalism.
  - DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
    It was not coined by Donald Trump[1][2]: > Author Sarah Churchwell asserts that it was Woodrow Wilson who popularized the phrase 'fake news' in 1915, although the phrase had been used in the US in the previous century. > The term actually dates from the late 19th century, when it was used by newspapers and magazines to boast about their own journalistic standards and attack those of their rivals. In 1895, for example, Electricity: A Popular Electrical Journal bragged that “we never copy fake news,” while in 1896 a writer at one San Jose, California, paper excoriated the publisher of another: “It is his habit to indulge in fake news. ... [H]e will make up news when he fails to find it.” [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news#20th_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news#20th_century [2] https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/In-a-Word/2019/0726/Surprisingly-old-words-that-seem-contemporary https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/In-a-Word/2019/0726/Su...
  - P_I_Staker 6y ago
    No, and it's total bullshit that we let him get away with re-claiming it. Originally, it was for stories that were ludicrously false and made up. It's like the stuff you see in tabloids. It was being passed around on social media as real news. Things like Obama being a secret Muslim, and not a natural born US citizen. You know the things that launched Trump's campaign.
  - senderista 6y ago
    Wrong, it originally referred to fabricated political news stories (generally pro-Trump) circulated on social media during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump later co-opted the term to mean any unfavorable news coverage.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
I disagree. Metaphorically speaking, online discussion is full of literal butt-heads and having the term butt-head is valuable to have in the toolbox even if some people call everyone they don't agree with a butt-head because it's easy and they're lazy. I don't really care if we call them butt-heads or ass-hats as long as there's a more or less agreed upon word for it. Virtue signaling or whatever you want to call that sort of in-group circle jerk is fundamentally unproductive and self-rewarding because it's just a reiteration of existing group beliefs that basically everyone already knows and has. There's no term you can use to describe that behavior that will not make people uncomfortable when you call it out because at the end of the day you're calling the behavior unproductive and selfish. For example, someone goes on Reddit and asks "should I put economy tire A or economy tire B on my 20yo, $2k car, also I have $250 to spend". The most popular answers will be invariably be "you should have dedicated summer and winter tires" and "you should use jack stands when you change tires" and many duplicates thereof many of which will suggest that anyone who does not do these things is not someone of good character, deserves to rot in hell, is a burden upon society, etc, etc. Neither of these sideshows are productive discussion. Both of them serve purely to signal to the in-group that the signaler believes something the in-group already believes. Of course everybody wants the greatest tires and nobody wants a car on them but the former is not in the scope for budgetary reasons and the latter is not a concern when simply changing tires never-mind that installing tires usually adds no cost over having them put on rims. The people circle jerking it to jack stands and fancy tires are negatively affecting the discussion for anyone who cared about economy tires. Virtue signaling takes legitimate relevant content and displaces it with low quality junk. I'm more technical than I am cultured but I see this kind of behavior across multiple topics and I'm sure that any serious amateur film critic, book critic, etc. probably could come up with a similar example from their niche. While that example is hypothetical you can see similar ones play out across a multitude of topics and I think this does legitimate damage to civil discourse. It's like how searching for a service manual for an appliance on the internet to yield results but now it yields a million sites that don't have what you're looking for but will try and sell you something. I see virtue signaling as having a similar quality degradation affect but on legitimate discussion. We can no-longer have detailed discussions about complex issues, regardless of subject because they all get derailed, bogged down and diluted by people showing up to signal their virtue on a higher level issue. Take for example the recent discussion about police. Many on the left and right have a litany of small points on which they agree. Any public discussion about common ground, like fewer MRAPs in the hands of suburban police departments, gets drowned out by riff raff showing up to tell the world which team they're on. At scale this is damaging to civil discourse. In conclusion, I think that having a nice, short, two-word, pop culture word to describe that behavior is useful because makes it easier for those who may not be articulate enough to otherwise do a good job call it out when they see it. Of course some people are gonna abuse it but I think that's just the nature of it being a negative thing since all negative things become a name you can call someone or their actions.

dokem 6y ago

Attempting to remove a word or phrase is exactly the kind of impractical behavior I expect from a virtue signaler. And with the annoyingly pedantic reasoning about how it's not technically signaling they way economists use the term is just the cherry on top. Virtue signaling is real, so is the misuse of the term, like every other, but so what.

kennywinker 6y ago
This seems like pro-virtue-signalling-as-a-term virtue signalling. We get it, you want all the other people who use the term virtue signalling to like you. ALWAYS dismissive and reductive. ALWAYS. It's not a good faith argument. If you think someone is all-talk-no-action, accuse them of being performative. If you think someone's cause is dumb, attack that. You can call ANYBODY advocating for a viewpoint a virtue signaller so it is an entirely meaningless attack.
- dokem 6y ago
  The idea that you can't attack someone's behavior is ridiculous. If you want to consider what i'm doing virtue signaling then go right ahead I guess.
  - jeromegv 6y ago
    Yes. You calling other people for virtue signalling is a form of virtue signalling in itself. Don’t you realize how ridiculous and useless this argument is?
    - dokem 6y ago
      Don't you understand that I am arguing that virtue signaling is real. You saying I am virtue signaling is only agreeing with my point.
- ImprobableTruth 6y ago
  In what way is there a difference between virtue signaling and performative?

skinnymuch 6y ago

That article gives such a bad argument that I feel I have now become more pro using the term than before. All of the arguments have huge exceptions or contradict each other. Signaling being a term used by some niche fields. We have that happen all the time. It’s how language evolves. The article says to use show off instead of virtue signaling. Right after the next argument is assuming the person is disingenuous. Which is exactly what you’re doing if you say they’re showing off. The two arguments can’t both be used. They are arguments against different things.

TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
I think a good way to put this is: Saying 'stop saying "virtue signalling"' is virtue signalling
- BolexNOLA 6y ago
  At some point we are just circling a drain of nonsense when we make points like that.
DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
"To an asshole, all virtue looks like virtue signaling." -- https://twitter.com/drvox/status/1273472663621529604 https://twitter.com/drvox/status/1273472663621529604