Imagine it's about nine in the evening, on any given weeknight. You've settled down with a cup of coffee, tea, or whatever it is you drink at night. The kids are in bed, your spouse is doing their thing in the other room, and there's some show you're not really interested in on the TV. You sit down at the computer and go to your favorite discussion board.
After a few minutes of looking at funny cat pictures and unfunny memes, you come across a post about a story in the news. It looks like a black person has had the police called on them for doing something that millions of ordinary people do around the country on a daily basis with no issue. In this case no one was hurt, but that's not the point. You decide to chime in with your thoughts concerning this particular event. You say your peace and post, and think nothing of it.
A few minutes later the little red icon appears in your notifications. Someone has responded to your post.
"Shut up you virtue signaling cuck. No one here gives a fuck, you sjw faggot."
I'm sure this is a true story for many of you reading this. Maybe they also throw in some shit about the Jews.
So, what the fuck is "Virtue Signaling," you may be asking yourself. It's when somebody loudly and visibly expresses certain opinions, positions, or values, that the person may not particularly live by or care for, expressly for the reason of making other people think they do. So said people may do things like post supporting messages all over social media, but then never really contribute any time or money to the cause they're posting about. A good example of this was the Kony 2012 "movement" to expose Ugandan cult and militia leader Joesph Kony. Suddenly we had thousands of people posting "Stop Kony" all over Facebook and elsewhere, when in real life none of these people had even heard of this guy or really gave two shits about forced child soldiers, or for that matter any of the problems people in Africa face at all. In this sense it's related to the phenomena of "dog-whistling," except instead of using symbols and coded language to signal your support you loudly proclaim it for all to hear.
Then of course the alt-right got a hold of it, and fucked it all up.
Long story short, when used by the Alt-right, virtue-signaling has become a way of attempting to shut-down someone's argument or criticism without having to actually engage. It's basically a more insulting way of saying "shut up!" with the added sting of projected hypocrisy behind it. One of the go-to platitudes of the alt-right is their belief that everyone holds similar positions on racism, sexism, and immigration that they do, but are simply too afraid to express it. Thus when someone stands up to them and publicly disagrees with their positions, that must then mean said person is merely virtue-signaling. They don't really believe what they say, they're only saying it because they want people to think that's what they believe. It's a great way of projecting one's own insecurities onto one's enemies while simultaneously deflecting their criticisms. It allows one to bullshit themselves into thinking they're somehow more ideologically more consistent, when in real life it's just another form of denial.
So when you're out there in the depths of social media, fighting it out in the shittier parts of Reddit, debating politics or culture with people you only vaguely know on Facebook, or god forbid braving the cancer that is the Youtube comments section, and someone hits you with this virtue signaling malarkey, the best thing to do is attack. Press forward and double down. The virtue signaling-gambit is a big red flag that says "I don't know what the hell I'm talking about."
