Loved the last paragraph, always good to end with ideas for positive action.

>As cathartic as venting one’s outrage can be in the moment, it’s clear that moral grandstanding accomplishes very little beyond the fleeting satisfaction that it brings. Shaming people doesn’t seem to change their behaviour, and invoking mass shooting victims in an argument about hamburgers doesn’t move the needle on gun control. Social change doesn’t come from posting but from purposeful collective action: organizing, voting, protesting. At worst, the catharsis of grandstanding deludes us into thinking that virtuous online posturing is a meaningful form of solidarity and not a fruitless, ego-driven impulse. Tosi and Warmke argue that the purpose of recognizing moral grandstanding isn’t to get other people to knock it off; it’s to stop doing it yourself.

I think the issue goes beyond moral grandstanding. If you read Hacker News, for example, you see plenty of technical grandstanding every day.

I think we humans are simply unprepared for interacting with random strangers online. Our monkey brains did not evolve for that. In most social situations, our opinions are tempered by knowing the other person, or at least being in the same room with them. It's rare that you would say the same thing face-to-face with another person that you would say to them online.

Online, it's often a show where you're playing to an audience, instead of having a one-on-one conversation with another person. You're not actually talking to the person you're talking about. The incentives are to act, to create drama.

I feel this often with peers and at my workplace. If there is something that I don't understand I try to come up with possible explanations. If it's about something that is frowned upon or unpopular then I often feel how people get defensive and think I want to justify the thing or expose them for not knowing something. I don't. I just want to understand and maybe get something helpful out of it, maybe learn something about others or myself in the process. But I feel I'm in a minority with this thinking and it's a great source for all kinds of misunderstandings. I guess we all have our blind spots, otherwise I could understand the persons that I described. Ultimately I think practicing compassion is key.

So if the uptake is "refrain from (non-productive) virtue signalling, especially where that takes the form of criticism or indignation directed at someone else", then considered as a first order comment and suggestion, that in general seems fine.

But:

1. One side of the culture wars really likes to temporarily put on a cloak of neutrality in a way that pretends that only its opposition is making a moral claim. This sort of "remove moral stances from casual conversation" position can similarly position itself as being neutral while actually being a weapon pointed in one direction.

2. If society as a whole is perpetrating some continual harm of some form, saying "don't interrupt our discussion about X to complain about it!" is itself perpetuating that harm, and is an expression of entitlement. If in the 1960s a white person in the south said "don't derail this conversation about hamburgers to rant about how we need to end segregation!" then they were part of the problem. Similarly today, I think it's totally appropriate to mention in that hamburger discussion that (a) beef really does have a large carbon footprint (b) the amazon really is being cut down for meat production for example.

3. We _do_ all form our worldviews in part based on what we see others expressing. No one emerges from a cave having worked out how they view everything from first principles free from the influence of the people around them. All of this public discourse does have an impact. And though large societal changes do also require organized action, they are of course also preceded by discussion, some of it uncomfortable or perceived as "disruptive" by some, which prepares society for that change.

Your clothes and shoes were made by children, your electronics inevitability become toxic e-waste, your food is unhealthy, environmentally unsustainable and picked by exploited labourers, your language is violence and microaggressions, you're probably descended from colonists and if you aren't, you're still benefiting from it's history. Am I missing anything? We can spend all day tearing each other down like crabs in a bucket, if we want to.

Personally, I've found that it's better to define myself by what I'm for, as opposed to what I'm against.

Just helps me to keep my head in a decent place, and helps to avoid the "putting a fire out with gasoline" thing that happens so often, with online communication.

> the term “pregnant people” is somehow degrading to women

She sneaked that one in though didn’t she.

People blamed organized religion for this kind of thing but it’s pretty clear theology not required. The spectrum of pepperpots to moral crusaders is quite present with no religion at all. Quite possibly worse than before.

At least your organized religions tended to have a nontrivial portion of their teachings about being generally nice to each other.

Awhile back someone* here recommended the book "Days of Rage"* about US domestic terrorism/bombings in the late 60s and 70s. Weather Underground and their ilk were entirely a bunch of morally smug bastards fuelled by exactly this sentiment. It is terrifying to see the parallels between today's trends and things literally blowing up in the 70s.

*Thank you. Apologies for not remembering whom. Excellent read. Eye-opening as someone educated in 90s public schools.

*https://www.amazon.com/Days-Rage-Underground-Forgotten-Revol...

I enjoyed this article for the most part until it got to the "LGBTQ2S+" bit and then I just couldn't escape the fact that the author seems unwilling to confront the obvious -

The gluing together of all of these groups under one banner is exactly an attempt to use moral superiority to frame an argument - it removes the ability to actually discuss each case.

/"(This is a shame, because the best way to prepare a burger is a topic worthy of introspection.)"/

The answer, of course, is to stop eating meat because the factory farm industry is morally indefensible. (he said with some trace of irony, "expressing [...] dismay at the vast, cruel machinations of society.")

> Why does every online discussion terminate in ethical grandstanding?

I understand the use of "every" is hyperbole, but that's not the only way online discussions terminate.

Sometimes they end in rational debate where the conflict is a matter of epistemology rather than morality.

This has become so ridiculous that I sometimes scroll through reels just to witness this happening in real time. Is that a video with a joke about some problem in the country? There you go, 27 comments of people cursing and offending the creator because the real life isn’t exactly the way he/she portrayed it (which is, as a funny video should be, exaggerated) or creating drama for something else entirely that has nothing to do with the video. Then someone will eventually make an offensive comment and create an order of magnitude more hateful comments until shortly it becomes people insulting each other.

You see this in all social networks where people with no common ground eventually cross each other. It feels like everything (even mundane routine stuff) will eventually reach someone who’s offended by that action alone.

In fact I feel like this is what killed Facebook and people who check Twitter replies admit they always leave the app feeling angry. At least with TikTok and Reels the comments are hidden by default, so you have to make an explicit action to see the angry comments yelling at each other.

Reddit doesn’t seem to have that problem except in the popular subreddits because the smaller communities settle for an opinion and downvote dissidents.

Having the right opinion as a form of social status.

> we often raise issues of justice and equity not to advance meaningful social causes but to generate positive attention for ourselves by denigrating others.

It's hard to differentiate between someone pretending to be morally outraged or offended and someone who genuinely is. If one really likes to get attention, and light "fires" around them, there is no real downside to pretending to be deeply offended or morally outraged. Who is going to prove it wrong? But look at all excitement and fireworks it can cause.

As someone who spends more time than they should grandstanding on the internet, I understand why people do it. What I don't understand is why people are so keen to eat that up, especially when it comes to politicians. Doesn't it bother people that the top 600 people in the most powerful country in the world are wasting their time delivering hot takes? I find it difficult to blame the politicians themselves because they're doing what their constituents want them to do.