The signal it sends is that appearances and whatnot matter more than actual substances, that appearing to do something is more important than doing something.

The signal it sends is that appearances and whatnot matter more than actual substances, that appearing to do something is more important than doing something. Bragging about how your food is cruelty free when you don't really care about the food, you care about being able to say that it's cruelty free doesn't make you against animal cruelty except by some absurdly expansive definition of "against". And there's also 800lb gorilla that is political discourse where people routinely say one thing and then not only do nothing to advance that, they live their lives by something that's close to the opposite. Rewarding virtue signaling absolves people of much of the requirement to put their money where their mouth is and relaxing that requirement is a bad thing.