Things I spend too long thinking about

Or if you were “elaborating” with Shady…

A yovnoc?

I think it's a Ukrainian brand of schnapps but their factory is currently closed due to the war.

If you put Spiderman in a bath, will he get stuck in there until someone lifts him out?

The kind of people who squeal about virtue signaling are the exact same people who get furious about others not wearing poppies. So yes, I agree. Most of the pejoratives beloved of the right don't take much thinking about to realise that they are things that we should be lauding and pursuing. "Political correctness" - yes, being correct is good, politically and otherwise. "Woke" - meaning alert, eyes open, aware of your surroundings, as opposed to asleep and ignorant of everything happening around you, IMO "woke" seems like an altogether preferable state of affairs.

I got told I was; "one of those do gooders" at the weekend because I didn't agree with some racist comments. I took it as a compliment. Yes, I want to do good.

I feel like when ‘virtue signalling’ first arose as a pejorative there was something there to be said. It was referring to people signalling in lieu of actually doing anything. So, for example, Tony Blair, a war criminal, wearing a poppy.. that’s virtue signalling. Indeed, literally every red-faced Tory wannabe-imperialist who wears a poppy is the worst kind of virtue signaller. When the signal is meaningless and in direct conflict with the words and actions, it’s a bad signal and worth calling out.

I used to wear an AIDS ribbon. I didn’t know anything about AIDS except it existed. I didn’t donate any money, I didn’t read about it, I didn’t talk about it.. I just wanted other people to think I was the sort of guy who did. It was a selfish act. I mean… I was 19, so I’m not ragging on me for it.. realising what I was doing was a very ordinary part of growing up.

So it’s not like Woke and Politically Correct and SJW, which are all describing broadly positive things. As people seem to like to throw new terms they learn around with careless abandon, doubtless ‘virtue signalling’ now gets applied to anyone suggesting something about the world could be better… but there is a real thing that, whilst usually being harmless, is worthy of a name.

Yeah, I think that is fair enough.. at least where we at least recognise that our signal is little more than that, and respect the work of those who are doing more. But still.. we have to ask ourselves who the signal is for.

Where the signals become a problem is when the words and actions are the opposite of the signal (again, see poppies) or where there is not even the slightest desire to bring about the change that the signal purports to support.

With or without those little sausages?

It does which a whisky chaser