Five Tips for Managing Virtue Signaling

Virtue signaling is a newish term for moralizing, getting on our high horse, and claiming we’re more moral than other people, the low-life people out there who we gossip and snark about. Moralizing is to being moral what rationalizing is to being rational. It’s posing as caring about something you don’t care about.

Virtue signaling doesn’t mean doing virtuous things that signal in ways people might notice. Rather, it’s acting like you’re being virtuous when you’re not, seeming instead of being virtuous. Rationalizing is insisting you know what’s true when you don’t care what’s true. Virtue signaling is insisting you know what’s moral when you don’t care what’s moral.

And I have to admit, virtue signaling or moralizing is fun. I virtue signal and moralize. I’ll get on my moral high horse and play the hero of virtue, just like I played hero when I was a kid. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t virtue signal, at least occasionally, and I can see why. Life is stressful. We get tossed, yanked, humiliated, and jerked around, sometimes leaving us with a sinking feeling that we’re not good enough. We virtue-signal to lift ourselves back up.

If no one else is around to praise us, we’ll volunteer for the job, singing our own praises and sneering at the fools who aren’t as good as we are. If someone like-minded is around, we’ll enjoy virtue-signaling together. We’re the good guys. We’re moral, not like those immoral people.

As adults, we still need to play hero. We love escapist fiction the way we love virtue-signaling. Watching videos or playing video games, we imagine that we’d be brave enough to do what the heroes do, not that we necessarily would be. It’s mood-elevating and stress-relieving to play hero fighting villains, congratulating ourselves on our virtue, and scorning others with sweeping condemnation. And we can do it without caring at all about what’s moral. Caring about what’s moral will only hamstring us. It’s easier to stay on our high horse if we don’t have morality tugging us down.

I have to admit that I’m similar to the people I moralize about. We aren’t all equally moral, but we are all equally human. We’re all tempted to boost ourselves off each other’s backs. Some people virtue signal that they’re better than me. My mood elevator might be their mood plunger. Their mood elevator might be my mood plunger.

You see where that gets us. Reality tolerates only so much rationalizing and moralizing, only so much bullshitting and virtue signaling. And they’re addictive. People will pick up some resonant sound of virtue signaling that makes them feel like genius saints. They’ll copy it, get hooked, and if they let it go to their heads, forget all about reality. Pretty soon, like heroin addicts, they can’t be weaned because they’ve got nothing to fall back on. If enough of us do that, reality will kick humankind to the curb. We’d quiver there, jonesing for a virtue-signaling fix, babbling about how right and righteous we are as we waste away. A delusional death spiral toward our extinction.

Funny thing though: The people who accuse others of virtue signaling are usually virtue signaling. They put others down while pretending they would never stoop to putting others down. They moralize against moralizing without ever noticing that that’s what they’re doing.

So how should we deal with virtue signaling? Here are a few suggestions.

Admit: Own your mood-elevating virtue-signaling. Don’t virtue-signal that it’s beneath you, because it isn’t. We all like to get on our high horses. It’s a healthy form of self-pleasuring so long as it doesn’t go to our heads. Humor: Indulge people.

Tolerate people’s virtue signaling within limits. Let them riff about the fools out there and what swell folks they are. It’s good for their souls, a mojo pit stop we all need.

Tease: When it starts to get to be too much, humbly humble them with some self-effacing humor. See if they can take—not just dish out—their high-horse criticism. Say things like, “Look, I love a good smug fest. You’ve seen me do it too. And I’d love to sit here all day together self-pleasuring about how we’re the genius saints, and anyone who isn’t with us is dumb and immoral, but I’ve got to zip up and get back to reality.”

Relationships Essential Reads

Married to Two People: The Romantic Life of Widows

How to Tell If a Friend or Partner Is a Leaf, Tree, or Root

Hassle: Give a hard time to people who can’t be teased about their virtue-signaling without taking umbrage. These folks are dangerous. They’ll play God all day if they can get away with it. Don’t let them.

Exit: Of course, there are people you can’t afford to hassle. Know your limits and, if it comes to it, plan your getaway.