According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, “virtue signaling” is defined as “the act or practice of conspicuously displaying one’s awareness of and attentiveness to political issues, matters of social and racial justice, etc., especially instead of taking effective action.”

The phrase has also been used to describe when people do good deeds but put them on ostentatious public display. I’ve been accused of virtue signaling plenty of times over the course of writing this column.

The thing is, I don’t think virtue signaling is a bad thing. How could “displaying one’s
attentiveness to matters of social and racial justice” be a bad thing? Of course, posting on social media should not be the totality of one’s actions; possessing knowledge of an issue is useless if you don’t actually do anything about it.

Nobody likes hypocrisy or people who do good deeds for the sake of the praise it brings them, rather than the cause itself. Trust me, Matthew Chapter 6 verse 5 lives in my head rent-free: “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.”

That being said, humans are social animals. We adjust our behaviors — sometimes
consciously, sometimes unconsciously — based on what the people around us are doing.

For instance, most adults have been in environments where lots of people may be casually using swear words (like hanging out with friends at a bar), so you might let slip a few blue phrases. But there are other situations where nobody is using four-letter words (for example, a church service), and so you’ll probably adjust your language and behavior based on that. Signaling virtue is good, because it gives those virtues social currency and value.

Virtue signaling is, at most, annoying. It’s not corrosive to society and it’s unlikely to lead to material harms (other than the aforesaid sense of annoyance). But I’ve been noticing the rise of its inverse recently. I call it “vice signaling.”

I would define vice signaling as the act of publicly saying deliberately hurtful or dangerous things — speech you know could lead to violence or other negative consequences for the target — not out of anger or hurt, but for fun, and to show off to other people that you can say those things; to signal that you do not care about other people, especially those less fortunate than yourself, and that you delight in that.

For example, there’s the recent case of the Maine Border Patrol agent who shot a woman in Chicago who allegedly hit his vehicle. It’s bad enough that he shot her five times, but after the incident this agent texted a group of fellow Border Patrol agents “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book, boys.”

Regardless of whether or not the shooting was justified, shooting a human being (or hurting them in general!) is a serious action. Nobody should take glee in shooting another person. Putting aside the question of what the victim did or didn’t do, they are still a human being. They should be treated with respect. This agent showed none, and he made sure others in his social circle knew he felt no respect.

It must be such a delightful vice to be a man who brags about pumping a woman full of lead. (Do you feel safer knowing this guy is working here in Maine? I sure don’t.)

Or take the (highly illegal, murderous) strikes on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that President Trump ordered, alleging that the boats were being operated by drug traffickers. No trial, no public information, just blowing up boats and the people on them. (By the way, drug trafficking isn’t a capital crime.)

Do you know what the vice president of the United States, JD Vance, said about this? “I wouldn’t go fishing right now in that area of the world.” The audience he was speaking to all laughed. Ha ha. Because it’s so funny, fishermen risking getting blown up by the most powerful military on the planet while they’re out trying to make a living and take care of their families.

But even if the government was telling the whole entire truth (since when has that ever happened?) and the boats were full of cartel agents and super mega fentanyl or whatever drug we’re fearmongering about this week, the fact remains that those people who were killed on the boats were still human beings. Human. Beings. Their lives and deaths deserve respect.

Vice signaling indicates that respect isn’t necessary; caring about the well-being of others, even those who might be in opposition to you in some way, is not only unimportant but laughable.

Worst of all, it makes that approach more socially acceptable, especially when coming from our leaders. If we keep this up, we’re heading into dark times as a society.