[acituan]

> Like there’s an evil genius(es) with ulterior motives behind it all.

In a sense, I think there is. Instead of a cabal, it is just our collective intelligence getting lost in attractive pockets of irrationality.

I think virtue signaling could be as old as humans, because there are social and psychological benefits to being seen virtuous, without paying the costs of being virtuous.

The more it is demonstrated that people can get away with it, the more we are trained to consider that as an alternative, that we can get away with it too, and collectively we converge to a pit of empty appearances.

That said calling out something as virtue signaling also has failure modes; it is ultimately an accusation of duplicitousness and we can't really be sure of people's intentions. It can also have a chilling effect on genuine enactments of virtue.