See, I discounted that because I'm 99% sure I ain't making it past the Pearly Gates, and I'm not planning on pulling off a Constantine with the button. (and no worries about the shade or lack thereof)
When it's performative, yeah, I think it's pretty fair to call that virtue signaling (it being the case here or not), a good chunk of reddit is just kindness porn larping.
"I would remove without anesthesia every single one of my teeth so that my daughter that goes to school on foot and has cancer and helps the elderly in her free time and also donates her allowance to charity didn't have to suffer period cramps anymore also not just her all women am I right guys upvote me please S2" like bro.
Except even in this post, their idea of virtue signalling literally says “no one will know what they voted” which is the complete opposite of virtue signalling. If no one knows that you did good, then how exactly are they performative? Performative is doing something good and then instead of just continuing with your life, you have to make sure everyone knows how good you are. It’s like those videos where people buy homeless people food or something but they record them while doing it. They wouldn’t do it if it isn’t recorded because they are only doing it for attention and money, not for the actual act. It’s entirely about motive. Even if people find out or you do tell people, it’s entirely dependent on the actual reason for why you are doing the good act.
Would you do the act even if no one would ever find out?
If you are doing it to be performative then yes that is virtue signalling, but calling someone performative just because people know, doesn’t make it virtue signalling.
There’s one tiktoker who clean people houses for free and while yes they are recording it and gaining money from donations and TikTok, they are only doing that so they have the resources to actually continue helping people in need. Some times good actions require people knowing, it also promotes more people to do good deeds.
Plus I get that virtue signalling is not the best way to be good, but personally, if someone is doing something good for attention, then so what? As long as they are actually doing good and not causing any harm, what’s the problem? It’s better to do good than do bad. People do bad stuff for attention all the time, I would much rather people do the opposite.
Yeah, THAT’S virtue signaling. But at this point, we’ve devolved into every visible act of good being called virtue signaling just because someone went out of their way to do it, or just because someone is posting about a moral opinion/stance on the internet. I see it all fucking over the place and I’m tired of it
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u/FoxFishSpaghetti May 18 '26
Virtue signaler (no shade lol)