That's because it is. The question to ask, of any argument, is "so what?": what do you want to do about it. The "so what" for an accusation of "virtue signalling" is to dismiss the original statement without any further consideration.
In recursive irony, those who use the phrase "virtue signaling" are also virtue signaling, and the it is, in itself a shibboleth for people of a certain political persuasion.
Calling out virtue signalling is useful to make people realize that judging a situation or person without having all the facts is damaging to society all around the world. This contributes a lot to the hipocrisy we see in the west nowadays which influences the entire world because of technology.
The outrage generated by all the mass media is not good as far as I'm concerned and it's good to remind people of that.