My meaning is a bit subtler than your interpretation. I was commenting on the practice of virtue signalling.
For example, Seattle rebuilt and renamed the old Key Arena into Climate Pledge Arena. While I am a more ardent environmentalist than most (my virtue signalling duly noted) this name is a local pinnacle of vacuous virtue signalling nonsense.
Just FYI, Virtue Signalling is a pejorative that implicitly marginalizes and accuses someone of abnormal behavior. The GP here is calling that out even if you didn't specifically use the term "virtue signalling" in your original comment - the behavior here is entirely normal.
The phrase's roots come from the alt-right looking for a replacement for SJW accusations not being taken seriously:
I don't think there is anything implicit in this phrase anymore -- it quite explicitly accuses someone of posturing instead of paying the honest price for signaling.
For example, a peacock's tail is a honest fitness signal -- it does take a lot of effort to maintain (in food and vulnerability) so it serves as a good signal for fitness.
Naming an existing place after a virtue you want to pretend to hold is an empty virtue signal.
Rezoning the city to reduce car traffic would be a honest virtue signal for the same virtue.
"Empty" is usually dropped from "empty virtue signaling", because why bother.
Alt-right association or origin don't make the phrase automatically invalid. You could even say pretending that it does is itself a virtue signaling in the derogatory sense.
> it quite explicitly accuses someone of posturing instead of paying the honest price for signaling.
Not really. I see the accusation used almost exclusively to refer to any time someone deliberately associates themselves publicly with any view that is opposed by the viewer. It's literally just a meaningless accusation thrown at someone who disagrees with you about something.
Fist someone presents their leftist point of view as truth on something called 'rational wiki', then someone posts it on HN with 'Just FYI'. I'm missing an 'explanatory reporting' by a 'neutral news outlet' for my culture war bullshit bingo.
All names of professional sports stadiums are arbitrary and vacuous. It's not like there was some "real name" the building had that got surreptitiously erased or covered up by "virtue signalers."
Not really. It was called Key Arena before because Key Bank funded it. It was good advertising for them. The buildings on college campuses are also named after their donors. It acknowledges who paid for it.
Names can also just be for fun, like the Seattle Space Needle. The Emerald City is also the official nickname for Seattle.
Climate Pledge Arena is about as fun as "eat your broccoli, it's good for you."
Key Bank bought the naming rights and named it "Key Arena." Amazon bought the naming rights and called it "Climate Pledge Arena." The only sense in which one of those arbitrary names is "virtue signaling" and the other isn't it that some people just don't like it when anyone mentions climate change in public.
Amazon doing it doesn't make it any less virtue signalling. I'd be much more impressed if Amazon had used the money instead to buy some forest land and turned it into a nature conservancy. I wouldn't be critical of calling that "Climate Pledge Park".
And also, the whole reason Amazon named it that is because they are pledging to make the arena powered by renewable energy. You can certainly argue how significant that is, but it certainly doesn’t seem all that different from buying a park and naming it after climate change.
For example, Seattle rebuilt and renamed the old Key Arena into Climate Pledge Arena. While I am a more ardent environmentalist than most (my virtue signalling duly noted) this name is a local pinnacle of vacuous virtue signalling nonsense.