I wonder when politically inclined people are going to move past revenge-based-moralism towards a more direct and actionable mode of politics. This site leans heavily moralistic so I’m not surprised it’s “Bad Person is Bad and deserves Bad because their a Bad person”. ””bad “” and “”good”” are subjective terms and also ones I try to avoid as it sounds more like a Christian school teacher lecturing their grade 1 class than people actually engaged in political goals.
It never hurts to be specific; ‘i aim to do this because this is the desired outcome’, ‘i support this action because the consequence is materially beneficial for xyz and necessary for zyx‘ instead of Bad meanie did something bad so I will do bad to them to rid the world of this Impure Evil energy and increase my moral status.’ It’s the difference between unproductive never ending circular revenge vs actual desired outcomes.
the term “vice signaling“ has come up. It is basically the opposite of virtue signaling. so instead of saying something with the intent of looking like a virtuous person, you say something with the intent of performing rebelliousness and subversion with out any of the risks involved in actually behaving that way.
think of the people who would say “retweet to assasinate trump”. the intention is to look edgy while actually doing nothing. There is no intent of action here, as op is probably sitting at home on a laptop not plotting an actual scheme. you can communicate not only that you are moral and virtuous, but also countercultural; that you are brave enough to stand up to Power and Authority, ‘the man’ if you will. this goes without saying, but there are those who will use this to rack up likes and retweets from others who want to perform subversion.
There is the argument that vice signalling helps to discourage Good people from doing Bad things, but most people are motivated by their material predisposition and to a lesser extent, ideological beliefs (formed in tandem with their reality), not because of an attempted edgy tweet. it’s actually not as actionable and effective as some claim. it’s akin to the “”raising awareness“” of social activism, at best, a disengenous, self aggrandizing performance of ’rebelliousness‘, at worst.
