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Curious, which virtue do you think the author is signaling?
by kelseyfrog 2y ago
Curious, which virtue do you think the author is signaling?
- x3n0ph3n3 2y agoThe progressive "virtue" of aggressive anti colonialization.
- kelseyfrog 2y agoSorry, I havent heard of that one. Can you explain how it's virtuous?
- x3n0ph3n3 2y agoIt's not, hence the scare quotes.
- kelseyfrog 2y agoI'm not quite connecting the dots. If it's not a virtue then I'm not sure how it would qualify as virtue signaling. What am I missing?
- echoangle 2y agoVirtue signaling doesn’t have to be done with something that’s actually a virtue, you just have to think that what you’re signaling is perceived as a virtue by your target demographic.
- defrost 2y agoMoreover an article isn't neccesarily virtue signalling merely because an internet forum user stridently declares it to be.
- echoangle 2y agoAlso true. But just saying „but what he’s signaling isn’t actually a virtue, how can it be virtue signaling?“ isn’t a very good argument.
- dkdbejwi383 2y agoSounds like “virtue signalling” has the same definition as “hipster” did in the early 00s - a proxy for “something or someone I don’t like”
- echoangle 2y agoIt’s certainly sometimes used that way. But the real meaning is something like „making sure everyone knows how moral you are without making a lot of effort to actually be moral, just by telling everyone“.
- dkdbejwi383 2y agoBy that definition the linked article doesn't fit, then. The author has put a lot of effort into research and writing about this subject. The "morality" part is a relatively small part of it, just a single paragraph in the conclusion.
- echoangle 2y agoI’m not saying that it’s virtue signaling, I was just criticizing the bad arguments against the claim that it was.
- prmoustache 2y agoThese days the word is "woke" or any of its variants.
- defrost 2y agoI struggle to differentiate commenters muttering "radical wokeism", "virtue signalling", etc from dogs barking at cars. Non constructive noise from creatures with desire only to chase something.
- kelseyfrog 2y agoWhat perceived virtue do you think the author is trying to signal? How do you separate it from a true belief? It seems like you'ld have to have access to their mental state, no?
- echoangle 2y agoVirtue signaling isn’t necessarily lying about your belief, it’s overtly making everyone aware of how virtuous you think you are, and that you’re morally superior. The signaling is just pointing it out to make yourself look better, it doesn’t mean you’re lying.
- kelseyfrog 2y agoIt sounds really weird that critics cannot place themselves in the shoes of the virtue signaler and describe where the virtues or morals are being communicated. I'm repeatedly trying to abide by the site guidelines by getting curious rather than disagreeing. It's like some sort of ideological opposition is causing a mental barrier to empathy. I still don't understand it, but some day I hope to. Thank you.
- CRConrad 2y agoYou're beginning to look very, very, wilfully obtuse.
- echoangle 2y agoYes, I think we’re in Sealioning territory now. Most of these questions would have been answered with a quick skim of the Wikipedia article on virtue signaling.
- smsm42 2y agoPolicing the language to avoid harming oppressed people. This is not a real virtue though as there's no actual harming and the only thing it does is creating animosity, annoyance and pointless arguments and causing people to hate each other needlessly, without helping any oppressed people in any way. > It seems like you'ld have to have access to their mental state, no Of course, absent communication, that would be the only way. Fortunately, communication - such as written text - allows us to let others to witness certain aspects of our mental state, this is one of the points of communication. So, present the communication, we can make certain conclusions about the mental state of the communicator.
- Lendal 2y agoIt's politics. It doesn't have to make any sense. These people have grievances and they want everyone else to hear them. They're pissed off they're being asked to have empathy for others, and much like children they're incapable of it.
- userbinator 2y ago[flagged]
- error_logic 2y agoThe two parties in the US are each half a human, twisted and dying... driven by the effectiveness of negative campaigning and the destruction of competition over reaching consensus, unable to reconcile the merits of self-interest with the understanding of collective responsibility, bringing on the doom that lurks in the wasteland of destroyed trust and mutual respect.
- stackghost 2y agoThe sort of language policing taking place in TFA is a club: a blunt-force social weapon that (predominantly white) leftists use to keep each other down, by emphasizing the recipient's lack of ideological purity, manifested in this context by being insufficiently sensitive to the possibility of hurting someone's feelings. It's also a great way to make oneself look like one supports causes like anti-racism or decolonialism without having to actually do anything that would require effort or material change to one's lifestyle. For example: "spook" was allegedly used at some point as a slur against black people, so if you have ever used the term "spooky" in a Hallowe'en context you have committed the immortal sin of doing a structural racism. To the underemployed university administrative staff who have never experienced real hardships, this sort of thing is a Big Deal(tm), except we can't call it that because it's insensitive to short people. Correction: people experiencing heightlessness.
- motorest 2y ago> The sort of language policing taking place in TFA is a club: a blunt-force social weapon that (predominantly white) leftists use to keep each other down, by emphasizing the recipient's lack of ideological purity, manifested in this context by being insufficiently sensitive to the possibility of hurting someone's feelings. To this, I call out the case of the words Spanish speakers have been using to refer to disabled persons. The word for "disabled person" was at a point in time deemed too insensitive and an outright insult, so around the 1970s the word "subnormal" started showing up even in government acts to appease the virtue signaling crowd. Except that after a few years the word "subnormal" also managed to find itself as a prime example of a gross PC violation, and therefore they coined the term "minusválido" (i.e., "less than valid", a milder form of "invalid") to appease the PC gods. But lo and behold, "minusválido" is now also looked poorly by the PC crowd as being offensive. https://languageacts.org/loaded-meanings/schools-teachers/rise-and-fall-minusv%C3%A1lido/ https://languageacts.org/loaded-meanings/schools-teachers/ri...
- stackghost 2y ago>disabled persons How à propos, because in English "disabled" is no longer acceptable and they now demand that you say "differently-abled".