Let's Talk About Virtue Signalling
Sometimes I catch myself reverting to quite frankly unhelpful ways of thinking about how I see other people. I’m referring to a time in my life (around twelve/thirteen) when I wore far too much waterline eyeliner, was miserably bored because I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere and compensated by trying (and failing) to read Dante’s Inferno, and I got angry every time I saw someone wearing a Nirvana t-shirt from H&M because I thought they couldn’t truly understand the awesomeness of a tortured soul like Kurt Cobain. At least not like I could.
And all of that was utterly, utterly, pathetic.
Yet, sometimes I catch myself feeling the same way when I see my fellow peers share a hashtag or raise an on-trend issue about something I have never heard them once refer to up until that moment or in IRL. And thus for a brief moment, pre-teen Clara returns and she’s judging you. Hard. Much to my disappointment and despite our ageing and all the wonders of technology, it turns everyone’s still a god damn poser.
I’m referring to virtue signalling, which broadly speaking, is the act of pretending to be virtuous (i.e. give a damn) rather than having a genuine passion for an issue. It’s also usually associated with the idea that people indicate their outrage at something on behalf of a cause or demographic they have no direct association to, whilst also placing themselves on the moral high ground in relation to a social issue to which they are referring.
An example commonly witnessed by myself is the one where a guy tries to chat up a girl in a pub with the “I’m a feminist spiel” - you know the one ladies. A more large scale example is ethical capitalism - like when Starbucks support gay pride but won’t pay taxes. This sort of thing.
Social awareness sometimes feels like a trend and it makes me feel uncomfortable. At best, virtue signalling arguably shows an awareness of an issue, but ultimately is a vapid and even a hypocritical practice. The recent online coverage of the BLM movement and more specifically ‘Blackout Tuesday’, may feel like a bit of a case study on this, but as ever, the answer is not straightforward.
I felt inauthentic being part of an echo chamber, sharing hashtags and stories with my followers that I already know are very socially liberal. I thought a lot of what I was seeing online was just a whole bunch of virtue signalling. I also felt uncomfortable seeing influencers using aesthetically matching BLM posts to match their page. But when I look at the bigger picture, all of that seems pretty trivial in comparison to the real conversations and actions that have successfully come about since it all happened.
It’s easy to get wrapped up in your own world and head about what you think is the right way to go about things. Having spoken to some friends who had been sharing BLM content I originally thought in the early days of the movement might have meant very little and perhaps even performative, some friends told me they had been either losing ‘followers’ who we forget are people we actually know in real life, or starting conversations with people they may have always followed but never actually spoken to. Expressions of moral outrage (online or offline) may sometimes feel inauthentic to you, but you never know where the conversation may lead. And in the case of BLM and racial equality (amongst other social justice issues), these are desperately needed conversations. So if a hashtag is where your education needs to start from then so be it, but follow it up in real life too.
Here’s a key problem with virtue signalling, and more generally the discourses we have around social justice issues, especially online. Pointing out virtue signalling in others is to question the authenticity of their statement, which usually you would judge by keeping track of said person’s actions, right? But if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? How do you prove you care? And if you showed it, couldn’t you be accused of virtue signalling too?
Many people feel overwhelmed and alienated from social justice conversations. They know they care because they’re human and their heart bleeds but don’t really know how to get stuck in or are afraid of being met with “cancel culture” for saying the wrong thing. But we’ve all got faults - just reread the first paragraph of this article!
Some people are more militant (I’d say activist) about their beliefs than others, and I genuinely don’t blame them, and I’m sure given the stares and comments I’ve been confronted with throughout my life I’m probably seen as sometimes being on that side of the scale too. But you know what’s equally problematic, if not more harmful, than virtue signalling? Gatekeeping. Change can’t come from keeping information to yourself just as much as claiming you’re the sole point of authority about the issue at hand and then judging others for not making a “bigger” effort than you do. It’s also historically a massive issue for ‘the left’.
Yes virtue signalling is vapid, but can you quantify authenticity, and can you always tell? I think it’s much easier to judge if high-profile figures like politicians or corporations are virtue signalling because their track records should be public. Sometimes it’s so blatant it makes me cringe.
In our everyday lives, by all means, if you see someone using a social movement for clout, call it out or question them, but do that knowing that you need to engage in a conversation. People who discredit or don’t believe social justice movements will use the faux pass’ of ‘poser liberals’ to discredit a whole movement. But we should always seek to engage with these conversations, sometimes with patience, to make sure that statements on social justice aren’t mislabelled as a virtue signalling moment, and are in fact an opportunity to reflect on something much deeper.
Written by Clara Martinelli
Hi, I’m Clara. I’m an International Relations and Politics graduate currently doing volunteer work in London and looking to make my corner of the world a better place one step at a time. When I’m taking a break from being existential you can find me on the sofa watching police dramas and eating stupid amounts of pasta.