Mocking virtue while celebrating vice is not scepticism. It is a linguistic inversion that makes righteousness embarrassing and degeneracy respectable.
The phrase “virtue signalling” entered mainstream use after British journalist James Bartholomew deployed it in a 2015 Spectator article, describing people who publicly declare morally approved positions not to advance a cause but to establish their own social credentials. The Oxford English Dictionary added the term in 2021, noting its frequency at roughly 0.5 uses per million words in modern English. Philosophers Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke formalised the academic critique in 2016 as “moral grandstanding,” arguing that self-promotional moral speech degrades public discourse by substituting status competition for genuine ethical reasoning.
The original critique has merit. Performative moral displays that serve the speaker rather than the cause are real, and the term identified a genuine pattern. But the term has metastasised far beyond its original target. It now functions as a universal dismissive: any public moral statement, regardless of sincerity or substance, can be neutralised by labelling it virtue signalling. The accusation shifts attention from the moral claim to the person making it, and once that shift happens, the claim itself never gets evaluated.
The deeper problem is asymmetry. “Virtue signalling” has no structural counterpart. There is no widely recognised term for the public display of vice, no equivalent accusation deployed against someone flaunting drunken nights, hookup culture, or material excess. The absence is not accidental. A society that has normalised vice does not need a term to police it, because vice has already been relabelled as authenticity, freedom, or self-expression. The language has been flipped: speaking about halal and haram invites the “virtue signalling” charge, while celebrating degeneracy is met with approval. Righteousness becomes cringe. Vice becomes brave.