Nicholas
Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to
literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree
or disagree with him.
VIRTUE
SIGNALLING
People are killed in what could be a
lone-wolf terrorist attack on Westminster Bridge near the Houses of Parliament.
A total of five people die. This includes the man who drove his car into
pedestrians and attacked a police officer with a knife before police shot him
dead. Of course the whole event is placed at the top of the TV news. Understandably
– especially when there is a moving tribute in the House of Commons from an MP
who was a personal friend of the policeman who was killed. Who would not be
moved by the detail of the woman jumping into the Thames to escape the
terrorist’s attack? And yes, it was sad that among the victims were a mother on
her way to pick up her kids and an American couple who were in London to
celebrate their wedding anniversary.
But then the
funny stuff begins on Facebook.
There are one or
two dissenters, adopting the line that these events are inflated by our news
media only because they happened in a European capital. “What about the hundreds dying in Syria every day?” say the
dissenters.
But they are a
tiny minority on the monster that is social media.
Overwhelmingly
on social media the horrible phenomenon of “virtue signalling” begins.
“We Stand with London 22/03/2017. PLEASE
SHARE”, says one bold post, with a stark black-and-white image of the main
sights of London. So viewers are invited to pass the message on to show that
they are considerate and compassionate people. Pictures are posted of
Westminster Bridge, with remembrance candles on it. Facebookers hurry to add
messages about how heart-stricken they are, how they were on Westminster Bridge
just a few days before the attack, how their hearts go out to Londoners.
But what is the point
of this? Is it a way of cuing us to feel sorrow or repugnance, just in case we
don’t feel these things on hearing the news reports anyway? Is it really like
laugh tracks in old sitcoms, inciting audiences to respond to jokes in case
they didn’t realize they were jokes in the first place? Is it mentally pinching
ourselves to register that some things are morally wrong?
This is “virtue
signalling”.
The essential
fact about Facebook and other social media is that they are lived in the public
eye. To post something on Facebook is a way of saying “Me! Me! Look at me!” It is
self-advertisement.
I refuse to be
hypocritical about this. I frequently use Facebook for self-advertisement –
drawing attention to this blog, for example, or posting photos of trips and
family events.
But virtue
signalling is a more insidious beast. It is is a way of saying to the broad
public “Me! Me! Look at me! Look at at
how compassionate I am! See how virtuous I am!”
A law of
diminishing returns is inevitably attached to the phenomenon. Remember when there
were terrorist attacks in Paris a few years ago? Everybody poured out with “Je suis Charlie Hebdo” and other slogans
on Facebook, or urged us to cover our site ID photos with a tricolour. Who
remembers it now? How long did this deep-felt compassion last? If compassion is
a matter of hitting a “Like” button on Facebook or “sharing”, then it’s not
compassion at all and it quickly evaporates.
Once upon a
time, people in distress over public events would have attended memorial
services or said prayers for the dead. This at least took some sort of
commitment. Now, in the absence of widespread religious observance, we are left
with Facebook. And with visiting pop stars (there was one in Auckland at the
time of the London attack) stopping their concert for a few moments to say how
sad they were about the London event, to the audience’s great approval and to
the boosting of the pop star’s profile as a compassionate person.