to get a bit irritated with all the virtue signalling on MN

[OTheHugeManatee]

Virtue signalling = going on really loudly about how much you hate something that's considered right-on to hate (eg UKIP, the Daily Mail) in order to tell the world how kind, compassionate and generally virtuous you are.

I see it all the time on MN. It's the moral equivalent of stealth boasting. Instead of saying 'Look at how much more kind and compassionate I am than most other people' virtue signallers claim really loudly to hate something 'bad', thereby hinting at their superior niceness rather than bragging about it out loud.

As well as being thoroughly in bad faith it creates a climate where sometimes quite difficult and nuanced issues can't be discussed, because any attempt to weigh different sides is drowned out by people using that issue to signal their own virtue.

I'm averagely right-on, averagely selfish/kind/whatever, generally fairly normal I suppose in my ethical views. But I find all this posturing hypocritical and very irritating. The internet seems to be making it worse. AIBU to wish it would stop?

"If I ever say stay at home mothers damage chidlren and children benefit froma working mother a similar hail of arrows"

The only other person I've ever come across with this view is the much-missed Xenia (missed for her comedy value, not anything else). Surely she hasn't returned under a pseudonym?

Ahem, hackmum You need only scroll up a tad for that !

Very interesting that some former kipperatti, including Mumsnetters, are now equally fanatical about Jeremy Corbyn (but he may yet find them as embarassing as Hamas)
I suspect some folk just like excitement and clarity in their politics.

So some Mumsnetters that were being rather rude to each other are now enjoying a lovefest

Hackmum, yes it's Xenia.

Hackmum I heard a rumour that Xenia was last heard coming back from Xenia Island on a two-woman submarine with ScottishMummy.

It ran aground a few miles down and because neither of them would listen to each other's advice - let alone the coastguard - I believe they're still there, subsisting on water and porridge.

But they able to make intermittent contact with the outside world

I was just about to link The Spectator article too. It talks about how VS has replaced actually getting off your arse and being nice to someone by deed.

I think Virtual Signalling is just a redirection of energy from Political Correctness which has fallen out of fashion. Someone under the article commented that it is a form of narcism. Perhaps they are right.

The most thing I have ever read on here was not about politics. It was a post by a woman whose DH had had an affair with someone really young and there was a baby involved. I can't remember the post fully but the gist of it was that many people on here were telling the wife to take the child and raise it as it was her DH's child and that is what they would do as it was the right thing. I was like - screw that, LTB and let him look after his own baby.

I hate The Spectator.

I read that Virtual Signalling article on there today and then something by Rod Liddle on refugees that was just telling it like it is on refugees. And I think there was a frothing rant about that Feminazi lawyer with the fringe.

Luckily I have reached a certain age and the menopause or incipient Alzheimer's wiped the distressing bleatings of entitled middle-aged men from my mind - which was never that mighty to start with.

That does dimly remind me of back-patting threads condemning smoking in hospital doorways/racism/child abuse/public hangings in a football stadium from a crane that always make me think: yes, I know there are people who are going to be in favour of that, but would they bother to start a thread on MN?

It ran aground a few miles down and because neither of them would listen to each other's advice - let alone the coastguard - I believe they're still there, subsisting on water and porridge.

What I don't quite understand is the number of people professing to hate the Daily Mail when they apparently don't read it . Some discrepancy here, methinks. The Daily Mail has celebrity gossip, articles, things to get steamed up about, dubious health innovations and weird diets, strange double-standard attitude towards women... BUT - I know the Daily Mail's faults because I read it.

I know nothing about The Daily Mirror, or The Racing Post or indeed Carp Fishing Monthly because I have never read any of those publications. I can't possibly say I hate them. I have little idea what's in them.

Then there's the opposite side of the coin in that now people are saying they hate The Spectator. Based on a couple of linked articles. The Spectator is quite an expensive magazine so I doubt if many people are regular readers.

I get the Mail on Saturdays for their excellent TV guide but don't read anything else. Mostly. Honest.

I do genuinely hate The Spectator and base that view on rather more than a cursory glance.

But I do keep being drawn back to the online versions of both like a fly to shit.

Does that clear it up for you?

I am genuinely interested in what is the objection to my comment. I simply statd a fact - he's a left wing postman and I work a lot harder than he does. Why is there anything wrong with my comment? I am not lying.

Can anyone help JanetBlyton?

Anyone?

I'm thinking of starting some kind of crowdfunding venture.

I think I'm going to say Yabu op. I am hardly aware of this "virtue signalling" of which you speak.

And also what Samcro said.

Interesting thread; I'm just placemarking to read it properly tomorrow.

So far, however - Manatee, a lot of what you say resonates with me, but tbh more of your later posts than your actual OP. I'm going to bed thinking about what you've posted about 'the context-free way facilitated by the internet', 'ideological echo chambers' and the role of the 24-hour news cycle as well as the internet more broadly.

While also instinctively agreeing with a lot of what I've read posted here by HomeHelp. Clearly the points raised by the two of you aren't mutually exclusive, of course.

Ohh, is that Spectator article what sparked this thread? It's a very interesting thread (semiotics fan) but I couldn't understand why such universal behaviour was being posited as a new thing, or a leftwing thing.

Virtue signalling has been winding people up for 2000 years (just a touch before Twitter or the Labour party):

1 "Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

2 "So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.
...
5 "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others."
Matthew 6:1-2,5

Mind you, that's just before the verses about not bothering to labour or spin because god will look after you.

The idea that The Spectator is challenging is as eccentric as they are.