The Rise of Social Media Virtue Signalling
How all sides love to complain... and then do nothing
It’s a common phenomena these days. Liberals complain how ineffective Democrats are. Conservatives complain how useless Republicans are. Libertarians complain how everything would be fixed if someone else would just implement a smaller government.
You have social media posts complaining about and then mourning the loss of children’s lives, as other posters riff on how corrupt politicians are, how criminals are getting away with it all.
What distinctly strikes me about all these kinds of posts is how… lacklusture they all are. They all follow each other in the herd of Current Thing outrage (Liberal or Conservative Editions), repeat the same mantras, complain about the same things, and then… nothing.
Never is there a cry to action, except maybe in the more violent, radical aspects of Antifa spray painting people’s houses and burning down churches, which still doesn’t actually fix any problems, entirely destructive. It is all just people sitting idly about on the internet incessantly complaining and not doing anything.
Pointing out their abject laziness in the face of mass child murders and rampant corruption that destroys their country is often met with the overdone line of…
Well why don’t you do something about it, coward?
What amuses me most about this “retort”, a weak refuge in the ad hominem tu quoque fallacy, is it just reinforces the evidence of their laziness because they’re still demanding someone else deal with the mess for them; the person telling them to get off their butt and do it themselves.
It even arrogantly tries to presume you’re guilty of the same laziness they are, without any evidence as such. When presented with contrary evidence that you are doing your part in the effort, you get called ‘narcissist’ and the lazy virtue signaller storms off to sulk, having learned nothing.
It’s a bit like being at a self-serve all-you-can-eat buffet. You’ve already put food on your plate. Another person complains ‘why is nothing happening?’, why is there no food on their plate.
You gently point out to them they have to act, they have to take actions to put food on their plate. It is a self-serve buffet; nothing happens if you sit at your table complaining all day, whether you complain on the phone or verbally.
You have to eventually get up and go get food, physically pick it up, and put it on your plate, and physically take the plate back to their table. They angrily demand why aren’t you doing anything to put food on their plate? I’m not your damn waiter, do it yourself.
Virtue Signalling Across Politics
Politically, virtue signalling is often a trait attributed to Liberals, where high-horse bragging often comes with unintended consequences, such as allowing criminals to leave jail early to ‘right historic wrongs’, only to result in massive crime waves that produce more historic wrongs than ever existed before.
However, this isn’t solely a trait by Liberals. Conservatives do it as well, but there’s an implicit avoidance to acknowledge the problem as it’s projected as a solely Liberal domain.
They’ll chant mantras - ‘build the wall’, ‘lock her up’, ‘pardon Julian Assange’ - like Liberals virtue signals, well meaning, but utterly lacking any action to back it up.
When asked what have they done to act, they will usually circularly reference that their social media posting is ‘action’, that they are ‘raising awareness’, that they are ‘awakening people’, all terms Liberals use. All token. All meaningless. People already know, it’s why they’re all complaining. Now what?
The left understands the media. The left wields it, and the right sits on the sidelines and complains.
Andrew Breitbart, of Breitbart.com
When someone asks you what actions you have taken, they don’t mean in the shallow virtual (virtue?) sphere of the internet, they mean in the real world. Did you donate any money? Have you attempted to join a Citizens Watch group to report illegal crossings? Do you contribute pro bono free time to litigating corrupt organisations? Work at a food bank? What action have you taken to achieve your goals?
Symptomatic of the Current Technology
Social media can only be partially blamed as the problem. It trains people to seek dopamine rewards in getting more “likes” or “reposts”, to get as many views as possible. It’s designed to be addictive to get people to keep coming back.
It substitutes real world action for virtual pats-on-the-back which give the same misleading dopamine hits. People seek the short-term gains of virtual popularity in virtue signalling, but none of the long-term gains in making real, tangible, changes to society, which take a much longer time to happen and don’t immediately come into effect, and aren’t as easy as typing some nonsense at a computer and calling it a day.
The internet naturally precludes itself to a ‘virtual-only’ platform, where the “only” options you have on offer are to interact virtually with the world, and so those that remain persistently glued to it remain trapped in a vicious cycle of virtual virtue signalling with no real progress and no real actions.
No Analogue to History
In 1776 there was no social media app or website; you had to meet real people in the real world, make real friends - and enemies - and take actual physical actions. You would have gone from place to place talking to people, who would discuss with you actual tangible plans and actions to undertake.
Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
John Stuart Mill
People on the internet have effectively forsaken the real world in favour of the virtual, preferring to talk, scream and shout on it to score imaginary points, but not actually meeting people in person, in the real world to undertake real actions.
This isn’t another ‘tu quoque’ moment either from ‘yet another high-and-mighty internet commentator’, as I’ve often had to speak with people to arrange plans for survival, contingencies, businesses and more. I wouldn’t be suggesting this if I didn’t have both real world experience and history backing me up on effectiveness.
Car Horn Analogy
I had a person tell me a great analogy for driving, one that saved me from a collision:
If you have time to honk your horn, you have time to act.
The adage effectively says, if you have free time to complain, you have free time to physically take action first to rectify the problem in question and act. It “feels good” to complain, but it doesn’t fundamentally address the underlying problem and feels bad long-term.
I had a car recklessly pull out in front of me with very little time to react. I could have tried to honk my horn in that short space of time, trying to either ‘notify them’ of my existence and expressing my anger at how recklessly they pulled out in-front of me moments before crashing. But instead, I chose to act.
I frantically pulled sharp on the steering wheel in one direction to bring me around the car, then pulled sharply in the other direction so I wouldn’t collide with a treeline. I missed the car by mere centimetres, less than half-an-inch. Only after I had taken action and avoided the collision, did I opt to honk to express my frustration.
Could You Be Doing Something Else?
Before complaining, people should really be asking, a long, deep, soul-searching question, if there is any other action they could be undertaking prior to writing a complaint?
And I don’t mean the shallow, defeatist attitude where you think for a split-second and insist whilst flailing your arms and shrugging there is ‘absolutely nothing you can do’ and then immediately going back to complaining, but spending days at a time, deeply researching the topic to actually find productive ways you can help.
No Skills Does Not Mean No Action
Skills can be learned with time, but even if we assume, for whatever reason, you could never, ever learn a skill, this does not mean you can’t act.
If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress
Frederick Douglass
You absolutely definitely can act. If slaves could find ways to free themselves to become freedmen and women, then you, with all the modern conveniences and tools, should have a much easier time.
Money is tight and it is a cliche to say ‘just donate’, especially with rampant corruption within charities leading to profiteering, however you can approach those with the skills, with the knowledge, with the capabilities, and offer to help, and volunteer free time.
Even if this includes just making cups of coffee or tea, it is time you are saving them from mundane tasks so they’re able to freely tackle the big monsters in society. Time spent on trivial tasks is time not spent fighting corruption. Everyone has a role to play, and it isn’t always being the high powered lawyer or the whistleblower.
Set the Precedent
If your particular domain has no pre-existing leadership or groups you can work with, or feel comfortable working with, then you can start forging a path through the jungle.
That means researching the problem, identifying the causes, and finding meaningful solutions for those problems, then finding ways to get those solutions implemented, and no, it doesn’t just involve asking your local politician to fix the grift for you. Sometimes you literally have to do it yourself.
As they say, charity begins at home, and so does action. Complain a little less on social media, act a little more, and become the change you want to see in the world.
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