Virtually signalling they don’t care  

03 Nov Virtually signalling they don’t care  

A rancid phrase has entered the Twittersphere in recent times to demean anyone who dares to care about their fellow man – virtue signalling.

Sadly, the people who use this silly expression – with footballer Marcus Rashford being the latest to be accused of ‘celebrity’ virtue signalling for promoting his campaign to extend the provision of free school meals into school holiday times in a bid to end child food poverty and his wider support for the charity FareShare – reveal their own ignorance, fears and narrow-mindedness.

Worse still, an orchestrated campaign was waged on Twitter with bots aplenty aimed against the 23-year-old England and Manchester United player, accusing him of all sorts of things including being some sort of front for the Labour Party (no shred of evidence for this, mind).

The clue in the words. The linguistic alternative to being a do gooder (you can usually add a ‘bloody’ in front of this for added invective effect) is, of course, to ‘do bad’ and to signal no virtues, values, ethics or morals.

In other words, to do down, denigrate, denounce, depress and dampen down and ultimately, most tellingly, do nothing. In fact, be good for nothing and never present a positive vision, provide answers or solutions – to anything.

Social media has given such doom-mongers and naysayers a platform to pollute with their negativity.

But, you know what? The best thing to do is to turn down their volume or turn them off completely. Let them take their mock morally outraged emojis and GIFs with them.

In fact, signal the end to anyone you see accusing others of virtue signalling. Remove them from your social media feeds and deny them their mean spiritedness, poisonous keyword warrior access to others.

You won’t change their minds – you CAN’T change minds already made up – but you can focus on a brighter, more generous spirited side of life. After all, you have virtue on your side.

© Chris Green