
Study of “moral grandstanding” helps explain why social media is so toxic - hhs
https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/11/14/psychological-study-of-moral-grandstanding-helps-explain-why-social-media-is-so-toxic/
======
grawprog
Watching people argue about politics, or even watching people get into
politics, reminds me of people arguing about their favourite sports teams. It
always comes down to the other team is bad and immoral or whatever, our team
is the best, go chosen sports team, you can do no wrong.

Honestly, the way people have been dehumanizing each other over politics kind
of scares me. It reminds me of the way propaganda dehumanizes 'the enemy' in
war time. It's not a good way to look at other people, especially not over
which political party they voted for.

~~~
zapita
What are examples of political topics you see people arguing about in a
dehumanizing way? What kind of comments do you mean by “dehumanizing”?

I keep hearing this argument that the tone and style of political arguments
are getting more vicious and causing harm to society, but nobody can give me
concrete examples of what they mean.

~~~
jejones3141
I'd say those who claim that speech is violence (and therefore merits a
violent response) would be a really good example.

~~~
zapita
That’s pretty vague, can you be more specific? What issue do you have in mind?
What is an example of someone claiming that “speech merits a violent
response”?

~~~
big_chungus
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/04/opinion/sunday/free-
speec...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/04/opinion/sunday/free-speech-
social-media-violence.html)

[http://c8.nrostatic.com/sites/default/files/NATL%20Undergrad...](http://c8.nrostatic.com/sites/default/files/NATL%20Undergrad%209-27-17%20Presentation%20\(1\).pdf)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/opinion/sunday/when-is-
sp...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/opinion/sunday/when-is-speech-
violence.html)

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/the-
ris...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/the-rise-of-the-
violent-left/534192/)

Those are just a few.

~~~
zapita
All I see is a hodge podge of opinion pieces and the raw results of a survey I
know nothing about.

One opinion piece says that Antifa is too violent. Another argues that threats
of violence can be harmful.

I don’t see any example of someone saying that “speech merits a violent
response”, which is what I was requesting.

~~~
big_chungus
You asked who holds the opinion that speech can constitute violence; I
answered. The answer is that a "hodge podge" of people hold that opinion.

If you don't know anything about the survey, read the survey. I intentionally
linked the results because I didn't want to present a biased synthesis as
fact.

Antifa holds that opinion, and believes violence is justified in return.

From the Atlantic piece previously linked:

> the parade’s organizers received an anonymous email warning that if “Trump
> supporters” and others who promote “hateful rhetoric” marched, “we will have
> two hundred or more people rush into the parade … and drag and push those
> people out.”

> An article in The Nation argued that “to call Trumpism fascist” is to
> realize that it is “not well combated or contained by standard liberal
> appeals to reason.” The radical left, it said, offers “practical and serious
> responses in this political moment.”

> Antifascists call such actions defensive. Hate speech against vulnerable
> minorities, they argue, leads to violence against vulnerable minorities. But
> Trump supporters and white nationalists see antifa’s attacks as an assault
> on their right to freely assemble, which they in turn seek to reassert. The
> result is a level of sustained political street warfare not seen in the U.S.
> since the 1960s. A few weeks after the attacks in San Jose, for instance, a
> white-supremacist leader announced that he would host a march in Sacramento
> to protest the attacks at Trump rallies. Anti-Fascist Action Sacramento
> called for a counterdemonstration; in the end, at least 10 people were
> stabbed.

> A similar cycle has played out at UC Berkeley. In February, masked
> antifascists broke store windows and hurled Molotov cocktails and rocks at
> police during a rally against the planned speech by Yiannopoulos. After the
> university canceled the speech out of what it called “concern for public
> safety,” white nationalists announced a “March on Berkeley” in support of
> “free speech.” At that rally, a 41-year-old man named Kyle Chapman, who was
> wearing a baseball helmet, ski goggles, shin guards, and a mask, smashed an
> antifa activist over the head with a wooden post. Suddenly, Trump supporters
> had a viral video of their own. A far-right crowdfunding site soon raised
> more than $80,000 for Chapman’s legal defense. (In January, the same site
> had offered a substantial reward for the identity of the antifascist who had
> punched Spencer.) A politicized fight culture is emerging, fueled by
> cheerleaders on both sides. As James Anderson, an editor at It’s Going Down,
> told Vice, “This shit is fun.”

Did you read all of those pieces in the eight minutes between my comment and
yours? Your arguments suggest you don't. You can't ask for examples and
dismiss them, refusing to read the things I link.

~~~
zapita
> _You asked who holds the opinion that speech can constitute violence; I
> answered._

I did not.

> _You can 't ask for examples and dismiss them, refusing to read the things I
> link._

If your goal was to answer my question (ignoring the fact that you misread my
question in the first place), then a more effective approach would have been
to write an answer. That answer could have included quotes from your material.
It is customary to include links to the raw material backing up your quotes,
as a footnote.

Instead you just dumped links with no explanation or context. After a few
minutes of skimming your material, a coherent point failed to magically
appear.

So no, sorry, I’m not going to invest an hour of my time doing research on
your own material to produce an answer you couldn’t be bothered to articulate
yourself.

------
mindgam3
Any explanation of why social media is toxic without mentioning the Like
button is incomplete.

All of the status-seeking behaviors the researchers describe existed before
Likes, but by gamifying social status Facebook threw gasoline on the
narcissism fire.

And yes, Facebook didn’t invent the like button (that was Friendfeed) but they
made it a standard.

Also worth noting that a key component of Facebook’s initial positioning was
that it did NOT have any gamified counters, unlike MySpace and Bebo which were
fueled by profile views and friend counts.

Source: was Bebo engineer/exec 2007.

~~~
buboard
indeed , there were forums well before SNs were a thing, and while they were
contentious at times, they weren't constantly at the brink of explosion/tribal
wars. Makes one wonder if we even need likes/upvotes to reward opinions. It's
possible that they were useful to get the social conversation going, but as
the networks grew to huge scale, they ve lost most of their usefulness. I
wonder how twitter would be without likes for a day

~~~
Gene_Parmesan
Likes are 100% never going anywhere. They provide a means for
Google/FB/whoever to categorize you. The instant you click 'like' on a post
about the latest pro-Dems thing, or on a post organizing a pro-life rally, or
on something a band posted, they instantly know a lot about you. (Or more
specifically, the algorithms begin acting as if they know a lot about you.)
Every time you click 'like,' you are fine-tuning the company's profile of you.
Maybe at one point they were about rewarding opinions or something, but in
today's big-data-driven social networks, they are entirely about
categorization for ads.

~~~
reroute1
Wasn't instagram just recently experimenting with not showing the number of
likes?

~~~
Gene_Parmesan
Certainly possible. I do know they have done some small work to de-emphasize
the numbers -- the idea being that seeing a small number next to your own post
makes you sad and less likely to use the service. And I suppose I could see
the possibility of a place like instagram deciding, actually, we can deduce
enough based purely on who you follow, whose stuff you regularly click on.

Who knows, maybe they do actually see the possibility of culture at large
making a hard turn away from SM due to its tendencies to increase depression &
anxiety, increase conflict, etc., as a serious risk to their business.

~~~
louisv
But consider that in Instagram's case, it's most likely just an attempt at
discrediting "influencers" \- which are a big parallel marketplace of ads
occurring on Facebook's property without any return for the main company.

~~~
asdff
sounds like facebook should get into the game and start selling first party
fake follower counts

------
romaaeterna
> Higher scores on prestige-seeking were associated with narcissistic
> extraversion and extraversion more generally, while the dominance aspects
> were strongly associated with narcissistic antagonism (a willingness to
> exploit others for personal gains), and related to lower conscientiousness,
> agreeableness and openness.

This is terribly interesting, especially if you've read Haidt. It means that
every political argument on the internet will naturally split up into left-
associated "virtue signalers" and right-associated "trolls."

~~~
mcguire
Are the trolls not virtue signalling in their own community?

The interesting part is that there is no place for honest beliefs or serious
discussion on any side of any argument on the Internet.

~~~
romaaeterna
I think rather that it's not possible in any large group. Reasonable people
are drowned out by the highly motivated people.

------
40acres
The schadenfreude that occurs when someone tries to 'cancel' another person on
social media, only for them to be 'cancelled' for their own previously
uncovered misdeeds is pretty pleasing. [O]

Unfortunately I think this is reflective of our society. With social media,
there is little room for growth, acknowledgement of mistakes, and understand.
You're either with the crowd or not. It's a big reason why I've removed myself
from social media. Glass houses everywhere.

0:www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/juliareinstein/des-moines-register-iowa-
reporter-fired-aaron-calvin-carson

~~~
l33tbro
Isn't 'cancel culture' vastly overstated? We hear so much about it because
media personalities (mainstream through to podcasters) are the targets of it,
so they're naturally going over-value the threat of it.

~~~
drak0n1c
Cancel culture also affects everyday people who belong to friend groups,
workplaces, schools, and families. We just don't hear about it because the
cases aren't newsworthy. People get suddenly ignored, ostracized, and bullied
for being many things whether its LGBT, religious, atheist, or conservative.

For examples of people getting cut off or ignored by their families and
friends purely based on politics, look up the "WalkAway" group, there are
hundreds of emotional video monologues by regular people. Fair warning - it is
a partisan FB group, but a majority of the uploads specifically name the
cancel culture they experienced as a contributing factor to why they changed
their political beliefs.

Cancel culture affects ordinary people's social lives and career just as much,
perhaps more so than media figures who can rely on the sympathy of like-minded
crowds to bounce back.

------
dilaudibble
What I find odd about this is that I am effectively (I hope) anonymous online,
even on twitter, but I still get totally mad when people trash my ideas. It's
like my ideas are a part of my extended self.

This I think is why moral grandstanding is a more valuable concept than Virtue
Signalling - VS wouldn't make sense in an anonymous context, and apparently
signalling means something different anyway according to this:
[https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/stop-saying-virtue-
signalling](https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/stop-saying-virtue-signalling)

~~~
blix
For many, ideas are a part of identity. I am a good person because I support
good policies and vote for good party. I am smart because I have intelligent
thoughts and ideas.

When the quality of these ideas is challenged, it therefore can be a challenge
to the quality of the person holding them, if they base their identity on
their thoughts. I find this is quite common.

Another effect of this mindset is that changing your mind becomes more
difficult. It's a hard thing to get out of.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Are there people who have a [strong] sense of identity that's somehow not
centred around their ideas? I'm trying to imagine what that looks like?

Maybe "it doesn't matter what I think, I'm $Nationality and that's who I am"?
[But does anyone think like that? And isn't that just an idea that informs
identity?]

~~~
blix
In earlier times, identity was mostly a function of social relationships. This
seemed to be a lot more concrete than abstract concept of identity that is
popular in industrial societies.

Here are some other things that might inform/create identity besides political
opinions shared on twitter: race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender,
occupation, consumption preferences, skills, activities, appearance.

All of these are ideas to some degree, but some are more concrete than others.
But ultimately, identity itself is an idea and I don't think it can be fully
separated from other constructs of the mind.

~~~
im3w1l
If you ask me about my identity the first thing that comes to my mind is the
life I've lived. The things I got to experience, my failures, my
accomplishments, the choices I made.

------
pgcj_poster
This study seems like it was designed to reach the specific conclusion that it
did, based on the way that it defined "moral grandstanding." Here are some
questions they asked to measure it:

13\. When I share my moral/political beliefs, I do so to show people who
disagree with me that I am better than them.

14\. I share my moral/political beliefs to make people who disagree with me
feel bad

28\. Even if expressing my moral/political views does not help anyone, it is
important that I share them.

…and lo and behold, they found that people who answered "yes" to those
questions were also more narcissistic and more concerned with appearance than
substance. Ok. Well, that's not really surprising. But it tells us nothing
about how prevelent these motivations are compared to genuine concern for the
issues at hand.

I'm quite sure Hacker News would have ripped into this sort of study if it
weren't promoting the "politics is sports" narrative that this community is so
fond of, which is sort of ironic given how the study specifically talks about
"echo chambers."

~~~
brailsafe
> But it tells us nothing about how prevelent these motivations are compared
> to genuine concern for the issues at hand.

I found that to be a curious statement, because—and I didn't read the study,
just here for the commentary—it seems like we're talking about how certain
types of behaviour are differentiated from a whole for some reason. In this
case, the effort _seems_ to be toward finding disingenuous grandstanding, but
how do we define genuine concern? When does a political belief that someone
has become genuine and how do others outside this apparent narcissistic group
reflect more noble intention?

My impression for some time has been that genuine concern for any given
political topic is a function of the cost in having, revealing, or defending
it. For example, if you are Brandon Eich, there is a tremendous cost in
upholding his homophobic values; to himself and others. The racist who has
never met whoever they hate, the gay man with anti-abortion values, nor the 17
year old who screams on reddit about Hong Kong and Blizzard but still buys
their games and isn't in the crossfire quite a lot less.

\-- Tried to use contemporary references. Brandon recently did an AMA and
refused to answer any question about that controversy, not building too much
confidence in his product called "Brave"

~~~
pgcj_poster
> I found that to be a curious statement, […] it seems like we're talking
> about how certain types of behaviour are differentiated from a whole for
> some reason.

This study is being used to attack the character of people who make bold
statements about politics online (See: this thread), on the basis that they do
it out of narcissism and power-seeking. I think this study does a very poor
job demonstrating that, because they clearly selected for people who are
narcissistic and power-seeking, which for all we know is small proportion of
people who post about politics online. This is sort of like if I published a
study saying "people who post on tech forums are greedy, immoral capitalists,"
but I selected my group of tech forum-posters by asking "Agree or disagree: I
lie to drive interest in my products."

> When does a political belief that someone has become genuine and how do
> others outside this apparent narcissistic group reflect more noble
> intention?

You seem to be operating from the very strange assumption that by default, all
political statements are made out of narcissism, and that we need some special
reason to think that they're genuine. This contradicts how we tend to think in
pretty much every other area of life. For instance, if I wrote "Java is the
worst language in the world." you would probably assume that I was disliked
Java for some reason. You would probably not assume that I was secretly trying
to make java programmers feel bad, or that I was trying to suck up to C#
programmers, or whatever. Likewise, if someone says "$POLITICIAN is a criminal
who should be in jail," my assumption is that they really believe it. There
doesn't have to be anything noble about it: it's just normal. People say what
they believe.

> My impression for some time has been that genuine concern for any given
> political topic is a function of the cost in having, revealing, or defending
> it.

That suggests that only minority opinions are genuine, and moreover that
broad, genuine agreement throughout the population is impossible. I think
almost the entire United States was genuinely concerned about terrorism the
day after 9/11, even though you would probably not lose anything by speaking
out against terrorism.

~~~
brailsafe
I tend to agree with how you've reframed my points, in fact all of them,
though I could have been a little more careful with my words.

Regarding the last point, I'd say that cost wouldn't designate a belief
genuine or not, and now that I think of it, narcissistic intention doesn't
negate that either. Rather, it's an assessment of how bold a statement is, or
the degree to which it's likely to be shallow or indicative of attention
grabbing for personal gain. More concisely, putting your money where your
mouth is.

After 911, if you were afraid of terrorism, it might come up in conversation
and you'd talk about it, but going to random places on the internet and
discussing it unprompted—especially if you used it as a vehicle for middle
eastern bigotry, which was also common—would signal something else, especially
if you have a figurative grand stand available. Those that have a minority
opinion would be less likely to be doing it for claps—although they might get
them—because their audience is more ambiguous. More about the degree being the
measure. I'm concerned about climate change, but have only personally given up
a bit in the name of it. If I were to be extremely vocal on reddit about that,
it would be for imaginary personal gain. That said, a third case of both being
true definitely exists. Having high cost and an opinion doesn't negate the
possibility that you're moral grandstanding.

I suppose what I was thinking about was more to do with how much you'd need to
have considered a given stance, based on potential conflict with your personal
beliefs or those of most people around you.

------
semiotagonal
On Reddit, several weeks ago, I strongly objected to an author singling out a
presidential candidate with a nickname, while not doing the same for the
others.

It's fair to say I was outraged since I threw an "F" word in there. Although I
didn't do it to seek status, it got something like 2000 upvotes.

Anecdotally, I can see that grandstanding works, if "karma" is what you care
about.

~~~
daenz
People like to pretend that karma/upvotes/likes aren't "real" but they
absolutely are real, if everyone even slightly considers them a symbol of
status online.

~~~
Verdex
Real life is hard to deal with. However, if you look at what other people do,
then you can learn from their mistakes. But there's still too many scenarios
that occur and too few people to watch. So you can listen to the stories that
your peer group tells. You're second hand watching the people your extended
peer group is watching. And bonus points, you can get tribal knowledge where
people remember what others have said long after they're gone.

This makes being a person who people listen to an important aspect of being
part of a society. If you're listened to, then you and your "social lineage"
get to survive to the next generation of how to live. This also means that you
don't have to relearn the lessons of a competing "social lineage" in order to
stay compatible with your peers.

Getting likes is an easy feedback mechanism to know if people are listening to
your ideas. Additionally, some people will listen to people who others listen
to. So getting likes can directly feed into your own social fitness.

Likes are much more real that most other things that people deal with in their
day to day lives.

------
zozbot234
Significantly, from the article:

> Political ideology had no relationship with moral grandstanding scores.

i.e. narcissism is a bipartisan problem. (I mean, we knew that already, didn't
we? "Crooked X", "X belongs in jail" and the like, relating to a well-known
presidential candidate, is not something that the "left" came up with!) OTOH,
it's nice to finally have an actual research paper that clearly links this
sort of hypocritical grandstanding with narcissistic tendencies.

------
dwoozle
The psychological root of “call out culture” is the same as sports brawls,
wartime civilian massacres, and bullying. Vanquishing people is... can we
admit it... fun. That’s why the Olympic gold medalists smile so much. Now,
vanquishing someone with no risk to oneself, with no work required, and in the
safety of a huge mob? It’s like getting to be a war hero with the risk and
effort of playing Call of Duty.

~~~
mcguire
Not just the root of "call out culture"...

------
zebrafish
Pretty fascinating and also sort of "no duh." Thinking about how those with
access to information networks have leveraged the technology throughout
history, it seems like it is always used for the purpose of "moral
grandstanding."

Social media is just the fully fleshed out network. I'm just thinking about
the progression from letters, the pony express, the railroad, the telegraph,
the telephone, radio, movies, television, internet, to now social networks.

Haven't those with access to the information network always used it to express
why their opinion is right or wrong? The toxicity is maybe just a function of
the rapid increase of access. There is now an "infinite" number of those with
access to an "infinite" number of listeners. With TV or radio, the listeners
are still there, but access to dissemination is highly restricted. With
telegraphs or telephones, both access and audience are restricted.

I'm not sure if this problem was ever solved before. Maybe it was just
stifled....

------
rolph
the article speaks about individuals attempting to gain recognition through
grandstanding.

I think the more contemporary issue would be with individuals attempting to
manipulate the 'psychological set" of a large group through a moderated
grandstanding eg your with us, or your with the [insert villain here] ! note
this is simultaneously an assertion of brinksmanship.

------
daenz
>“Collectively, these findings provide support for an account of moral
grandstanding that conceptualises it as a status-seeking behaviour that is
driven by status-seeking motives,” and that could explain some of the problems
with social discourse, especially on social media, the team writes.

It gives me hope to see researchers starting to tackle this social phenomenon.
Now that there is a foothold on some scientific results, maybe we can finally
start to take it seriously and influence behavior. IG's experimenting with
removing likes seems to be a step in that direction. Hopefully there will be
more initiatives like this.

------
12xo
At some point in the last 20 years, politics became a sport.

IMHO its due to the rise of cable news silos and talk radio charlatans taking
on the role once reserved for journalists and experts. By oversimplifying very
complex issues into Us vs Them, they created an environment ripe for
exploitation. And since the currency of media is Attention, the more
sensationalist you become, the more attention and money you receive.

This translates perfectly to social media, where the currency is also
attention and the rewards, a bit more convoluted than just money. Its what
this article describes, the need for attention outweighs the actual results...

~~~
malvosenior
In addition to the causes you list, I'd add that education has become
increasingly politicized (in the extreme). To the point where many new
graduates are either activists or reactionary from having been steeped in that
environment for at least the time they were in higher ed.

~~~
12xo
That's pure speculation based on your own views and experiences. What you
probably noticed, is the visibility into these people's lives that you or
others did not have prior to social media and 24/7 connectivity. Universities
have always skewed towards the left side of the spectrum, it used to be called
liberal arts educated, today the right has successfully renamed it as
indoctrination.

~~~
malvosenior
It's not speculation. "No platforming", "safe spaces", "trigger warnings"...
are all relatively recent inventions. Universities have always been left
leaning, but the "moral grandstanding" mentioned in the original post is a
more recent development.

~~~
watwut
Moral majority, letter campaigns to FCC, christian boycott of immoral
companies, comic code, Hayes code ... civil rights era boycotts.

~~~
malvosenior
I agree that those are all terrible as well! The reason I don't think they
lead to "moral grandstanding" that we see discussed in the OP is because they
were fundamentally outward focused, in that they were meant to accomplish
something (misguided and pointless as they may be). Whereas the items I list
are very much about in-group signaling. Hence "grandstanding".

~~~
watwut
No platforming, safe spaces and trigger warnings are all outwardly focused.
Especially no platforming and trigger warnings.

The dynamic within christian groups that leads to a the things I described all
have considerable in-group signaling component.

Also, some level of that in-group signaling is functional - people don't just
randomly take coordinated actions like that. The signaling component is likely
necessary for the organization to happen.

------
cmdshiftf4
The sheer level of damage and instability social media has done to the West in
the past decade can only lead one to suppose that it has been intentional and
that there has been a powerful hand behind it.

What benefits has it brought about? We know we're increasingly anxious, lonely
and isolated despite it, so what "social" benefits have these "social"
enterprises actually caused?

Because the list of damage is endless, and the list of victims never-ending.

Watching politicized animosity, done for the purpose of the researched
grandstanding, spill over into universities and public life has been
horrifying. Careers and lives ruined for not keeping up with the ever-changing
morals of the online mob, culminating in events such as those at Evergreen
State College, the Christakis furore at Yale, the constant speech policing
because non-adherent political speech now makes others feel "unsafe", etc.
People who were once the leaders of progressive movement turned into right-
wing nazi bigots over publications that were on-narrative, or ahead of it,
when published, now resurrected to be held against them by today's constantly
changing standards.

Even in this thread, a topic on an objective study of the effects of social
media, simply pointing to it has caused an uncontrolled, partisan, shitshow.

None of this ends well. A society full of increasingly anxious and isolated
people, seeking purpose in online identity groups known for electing the most
vitriolic doomsday preachers as leaders, who are increasingly viewing the
"other side" as an enemy, armed with a treasure trove of historical tweets/fb
posts/etc. to dig through for evidence of their crimes, does not end well.

Social media may prove to be the biggest mistake we've ever made.

------
leoc
> This is “moral grandstanding” — publicly opining on morality and politics to
> impress others, and so to seek social status.

Around these parts we used to describe performative, status-seeking wokeness
as 'craw-thumping'.

~~~
flashman
Craw-thumper used to describe pious Roman Catholics, so it's interesting how
it's been repurposed

------
RickJWagner
I'm glad to see this coming from the British Psychological Society. One of the
most active feeds in my news reader is the BBC, and they seem way over-the-top
PC. (I fear this was beginning to shade my perception of the whole UK.) I feel
better about things. God save the Queen!

------
plntd
Doesn't this also explain why traditional media, politics, religion, academia,
etc are all toxic? Is it that social media is toxic or that the toxic world
has now adopted social media? Moral grandstanding has been around for
millennia before social media.

------
jmmcd
> the individual is seeking to gain status

Yes, but the individual _may not know they 're doing that_. (I guess this is
too obvious to the researchers to bother saying.)

------
campfireveteran
A billion-dollar idea: a combination pseudo-outrage, crybully, political
correctness, troll, flaming and keyboard warrior pre-filter. And for 2.0: a
micropayment cost to comment that adjusts based on social reputation and
identity verification (people who give very good, high-signal answers should
get some payment or bonuses periodically and per engagement).

------
xenocyon
As is so often true, the headline is not substantiated by the body of the
article.

------
Izkata
> This is “moral grandstanding” — publicly opining on morality and politics to
> impress others, and so to seek social status.

This is much better known under the name "virtue signaling"...

~~~
daenz
Unfortunately that has become a loaded term because it was only used by "one
side" against "the other side." Often that term is rejected and ignored
outright because of this. But yes, I agree.

~~~
jariel
Virtue Signalling is used by everyone, just in different ways.

The intersectional left however, is generally the group with words and actions
powerful enough for it to be highly visible, at least at the national level.
In local terms, say at the level of school/church/neighbourhood I think,
paradoxically, it's people of very conventional/classical morality that might
have more power via shaming etc..

Whereas at on CNN for example generally one's 'private sex life' is out of
bounds (unless there's something illegal) ... I think that in social circles,
there's a lot of gossip and talk about that kind of stuff.

To me the results of this study are obvious, but it would be interesting to
point out how it may have nothing to do with the validity of the moralisation.
'Virtue signallers' may often be right, but it's the ugly sanctimony and lack
of context that I object to.

------
Data_Junkie
None of this is true. People do not seek better social status by arguing with
unseen, unknown people, they seek social change. The status quo lies to limit
the damage, because when unseen, unknown voices speak truth they cannot stop
the change, which all the unheard voices want.

~~~
dagav
Where's your study? What's wrong with this study? Or is it just that you don't
like the findings?

~~~
Data_Junkie
What's wrong with this study is that what they claim was found is a complete
lie. As in it is not true. What I don't like about it is that it is a lie.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
So show us some data, rather than just claim that it's wrong. "No it's not" is
not a very convincing counterargument.

~~~
Data_Junkie
But it's all I have time for.

