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Is your comment just anti-virtue signaling then? Sometimes people just want to share their opinions, and they actually feel those feelings. Sometimes those fee

• aaronbrethorst 5y ago
  Claiming 'virtue signaling' always feels like a presumption of bad faith by the claimant.
  • mcguire 5y ago
    That's because it is. The question to ask, of any argument, is "so what?": what do you want to do about it. The "so what" for an accusation of "virtue signalling" is to dismiss the original statement without any further consideration.
  • sangnoir 5y ago
    In recursive irony, those who use the phrase "virtue signaling" are also virtue signaling, and the it is, in itself a shibboleth for people of a certain political persuasion.
    • vmarva 5y ago
      Calling out virtue signalling is useful to make people realize that judging a situation or person without having all the facts is damaging to society all around the world. This contributes a lot to the hipocrisy we see in the west nowadays which influences the entire world because of technology. The outrage generated by all the mass media is not good as far as I'm concerned and it's good to remind people of that.
• acituan 5y ago
  Feelings alone do not make a rational standpoint. This ex-pressing (pressing outwards) of our feelings was the problem of romanticism, and it has to be balanced with what the reality tells back at us. In other words, people don't seem to be saying they shouldn't have shared their feelings, but when they did they should have been ready to receive the criticism especially on logical results of their reasoning. Not using products you've already purchased and enjoyed is most likely not an act of virtue, it probably changes nothing materially in the world to make it a better place. However, it is a display of purity in protest, which might inspire others to take action to the extent they are impressed by it, but it mostly feels egosyntonic for the person who does this demonstration. Hence the criticism of virtue signaling; it is not the virtue bit, it is the signaling bit, divorced from the essence of being virtuous.
  • mcguire 5y ago
    From a rational standpoint, buying and playing games is a waste of time and money.
    • Apocryphon 5y ago
      As is participating in a comments thread discussion such as this. Rationality is too often overrated.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • PeterisP 5y ago
      Definitely not - rationality is about a realistic view on the world and effective, perhaps even optimal, acts to achieve your goals, but it's completely, absolutely orthogonal to the nature of these goals. The goals, or perhaps "utility function" in formal terminology are essentially arbitrary from the perspective of rationality; it's generally rational to better understanding of your goals is very useful to effectively meet them, but a key principle is that "the utility function is not up for grabs", rationality is about effectiveness in obtaining what you want, but it does not and cannot constrain what is it that you want. So IMHO games are a really good example - buying and playing games is a rational allocation of time and money if and only if the outcome (or, to be accurate, the sum of outcomes over long term) of playing games is more fulfilling than the alternatives; and it seems quite plausible that the enjoyment gaining from playing games may be very different for two completely rational actors and thus even from a completely rational standpoint they should make different decisions on whether playing games is a waste of time and money or a great use of them.
      • mcguire 5y ago
        Exactly my point: if the current behavior of a company reduces the enjoyment you get from products that you previously bought from that company, you are both justified and rational not to want to use those products, and even to say "I do not want to use these products anymore." No rational argument can change the original non-rational utility function. And no, there's no "virtue signalling" involved.