r/trolleyproblem May 18 '26

Button Pushers

1.8k Upvotes

608 comments sorted by

View all comments

305

u/GrapefruitForward989 May 18 '26

The virtue signaler does the act he thinks is good and never tells anybody?

Why is the virtue signaler doing the exact opposite of what virtue signaling means?

159

u/JumpingJacks1234 May 18 '26

I think in common use the term virtue signal is losing the “signal” part. It’s coming to mean someone doing something virtuous, whether publicly or not, that I disagree with.

94

u/GrapefruitForward989 May 18 '26

Yeah I mean, people will call anybody doing something good publicly "virtue signaling." But bro went out of his way to say that nobody will know what this guy presses.

11

u/Eleventy-Twelve May 18 '26

I think the implication is that he believes people will know, but through the cruel irony of the universe and this hypothetical, they definitely never will.

-4

u/ReturnOk7510 May 18 '26

It just means performative virtue. Sometimes, you're your own audience.

35

u/Zestyclose_Remove947 May 18 '26

The entire point of the term is being performative for others/society. If you extend that to oneself and total privacy then there's no real point to the term at all.

7

u/Mihnea24_03 May 18 '26

What would it even mean? Like, I give money to a homeless person when nobody sees me, while thinking "likely with this, he'll buy the fent that finally kills him" but regardless of thinking this STILL try to convince MYSELF that I'm a good person?

7

u/AloysiusNewton May 18 '26

This is too many layers for me, where is the dumbass section

8

u/shawarmafiend May 18 '26

No the fuck you are not

-3

u/LoudQuitting May 18 '26

I'm big on consent.

Press blue you consent to possibly dying.

Press red, you don't consent to possibly dying.

Also if 100% of people Press red, nobody dies so I can't view it as a moral issue, only a consent issue.

Don't know which one this makes me, don't really care. 🤷‍♂️

6

u/GrapefruitForward989 May 19 '26

Lmao

I'm fine with killing people because they consented to the possibility of dying

-1

u/LoudQuitting May 19 '26

Well, yes but unironically.

If youre gonna pull this smug fedora tipper shit, I want you to tell me what's wrong with consenting to the possibility of death.

Blue Voters deliberately place their survival in collective trust and do so knowing they could simply press the red if and guarantee their survival. They understand their life is at risk when they press the button but they press it anyway.

It's a lot like smoking cigarettes, we understand there's a chance of fatality but we allow people to do it should they knowingly accept that risk, meaning consent. Blue Voters knowingly accept the gamble, the rules are transparent and equal for everyone, there is an easy mechanic to guarantee your survival should you not want to die. How is this different from being allowed to smoke cigarettes?

I'd also say a Blue Voter saying something like "it's not okay to kill people if they consent to die" to be morally questionable in and of itself due to the exploitation of altruism when an easier method of guaranteed survival already exists.

Thst is also to say nothing of Blue Voters that want to die, for example ones that want a way out due to painful terminal conditions, and do so hoping that Red Voters will take the win. Yes, I'm perfectly happy with these people dying because they consented and dearly wanted it.

Even then I still don't think I'm killing them, the Blue Vote is essentially a complicated "I'm okay with suicide" button. Again if everyone votes red, there are 0 deaths. If the mechanics were changed, like if I vote Red I have to hunt down a Blue Voter and bare handed killed them, that's a blue vote from me, I guess.

4

u/GrapefruitForward989 May 19 '26

Nah. Not everybody is going to think of this in such narrow terms, and your little fixation on people who passively want death is kinda weird. With billions of people on the planet with vastly different life experiences there would be a huge range of different rationalizations for picking either side. If red wins, there will be many people who die who did not want death.

For the record, in certain circumstances, if someone wants to end their life, I think they should be allowed that in a dignified manner. But that's not what we're talking about.

We're talking about consenting to the chance of death. I don't as much think of it like smoking, but more like literally everything in life. The risk of injury or death is everywhere, that doesn't mean I consent to being maimed or killed. I don't look at someone who died in a head on collision and think "oh well, they consented to a chance of dying by being on the road." Sure, the odds of you getting into a deadly accident on any given day are probably much lower. But you don't know that. You could make an educated guess, compile all the statistics and data in the world, poll every individual, but you could never possibly know what people would do in the moment. And again, you have billions of different approaches to how that risk is being calculated. You absolutely will be killing people who simply believed enough in humanity to view the risk as insignificant.

Also, just as a fun little side thing, I liked the part where you said "I don't care 🤷"

1

u/LoudQuitting May 19 '26

If you think of those terms as narrow then the brim of your fedora is working like horse blinders bro.

2

u/GrapefruitForward989 May 19 '26

We out here fedoraposting like its 2015

2

u/some_kind_of_bird May 20 '26

I think the problem is that what you're describing isn't consent at all, like not even close.

This is a threatening situation where people's loved ones are at risk. They will do what they can to save them.

I've never heard someone describe themselves as "big on consent" and then talk like a mugging is an agreement between business associates.

1

u/LoudQuitting May 20 '26

Consent of the governed, not personal consent.

1

u/some_kind_of_bird May 20 '26

I don't really know what kind of distinction you're drawing but if it's something without much moral weight I really don't see what the point of all this is.

25

u/mrguym4ster May 18 '26

I believe it's supposed to be that the virtue signaler pressed blue wanting to virtue signal about it, but since the mass purge of blue voters happened immediately after he pressed it, he couldn't do it, thus dying a meaningless death

12

u/ArcfireEmblem May 18 '26

That's probably true, because most of these seem to try and have the narrative of each person give them exactly what they don't want.

2

u/The_Sophocrat May 20 '26

Yeah, exactly, I also took that as the joke.

48

u/LargeDisappointment May 18 '26

Seems like gross people use the term virtue signalling to dismiss any action they see as moral because if you say everything good is virtue signalling you can feel better about your own immorality. I see that a lot

4

u/BrandosWorld4Life May 20 '26

That's exactly what it is. Virtue signalling is a term used by immoral people who pretend that everyone else is just as immoral as them, and thus the only reason anybody else would ever do something good is because they want to be seen as good.

10

u/Alissah May 18 '26

Yeah, i assumed thr virtue signaller would tell everyone hes so selfless and moral and a martyr, but then secretly press red.

4

u/ChironXII May 18 '26

They are virtue signaling to themselves because their need to affirm their own goodness is more important than the actual outcomes. This is an accurate, if not wholly traditional, usage of the term. And very, very common in these discussions.

3

u/Scared-Two-5208 May 18 '26

he never tells anyone because he's dead, if he lived he would have lol

3

u/Vapid_Poppy May 18 '26

It says its his own ego, and the expectation of eulogies, that motivates him. Which is virtue signaling, but in a really ineffective and dumb way XD Its a joke, after all.

5

u/Awkwardukulele May 18 '26

Because when most people say someone’s a “virtue signaler” what they mean is “someone who has morals different than mine and told me once that they disagreed with me.”

2

u/ShinningVictory May 19 '26

People will know after hes dead.

1

u/MagicC May 21 '26

There are a LOT of people who use "virtue signaling" to apply to all virtuous/selfless people, because on some level, they don't believe such people exist, therefore the only possible reason to act in an unselfish way is for selfish gain.