Virtue signalling is the act of expressing opinions or stances that align with popular moral values, often through social media, with the intent of demonstrating one's good character.
Critics argue that virtue signalling is often meant to gain social approval without taking meaningful action, such as in greenwashing, where companies exaggerate their environmental commitments.
This has led to the coining of a related concept, vice signalling, which refers to the public promotion of negative or controversial views to appear tough, pragmatic, or rebellious, often for political or social capital.
[5][7] Some sustainability advocates have suggested ecological virtue signaling by corporations is not necessarily negative, as long as it is accompanied by taking responsibility for past environmental harms.
[12] Nassim Nicholas Taleb cites Matthew 6:1–4 as an example of "virtue signalling" being condemned as a vice in antiquity ("Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven").
He will rush on to social media to denounce as a 'snowflake' any woman who objects to receiving rape threats, or any minority unhappy at a racist joke...Vice-signallers have understood that there is money to be made in the outrage economy by playing the villain.
to refer either to "show[ing] you are tough, hard-headed, a dealer in uncomfortable truths, and, above all, that you live in 'the real world'", in a way that goes beyond what actual pragmatism requires,[25] or to "a public display of immorality, intended to create a community based on cruelty and disregard for others, which is proud of it at the same time".