Everybody who is anybody is jumping onto social media, a podcast or in front of the nearest TV camera to showcase their bold, courageous stand on the most important social issue of our time… or at least what’s trending this month.

While watching the parade of declarations, I can’t help but notice how easy it is to appear noble and principled without the tedium and risk required to actually BE principled.  If you can check the following boxes, you too can look like a paragon of social justice.

• Is it free to jump on this bandwagon?

It’s harder to take a stand when your position might actually cost you something.  Make sure there are no real financial/career/social/intellectual consequences at stake so you have nothing to risk.

   Example: “I’m not coming to work today in protest (as long as I get paid and still have my job).

• Am I immune from criticism?

If you can get an angry mob spun up, let them work for you.  It helps if your position has no identifiable opponents to debate.

Example:   “Anyone who questions or challenges anything I say is an evil, hateful person who    must be banned from the conversation.”

• Can I avoid offering any tangible solutions for the problem I claim is so deeply important?

This becomes a thinly veiled variation on the universal message ‘I stand for more good and less bad’.  Everyone has to nod their head to that.  By offering no solutions – or even suggesting where to start – you don’t have to acknowledge any costs or consequences. In fact, you don’t really have to define the problem in any specific terms.   Nothing sticks to you.

Example:   “We stand against injustice and support equality, freedom and safety.”

•  Can I get credit for ‘raising awareness’?

This allows you to self-aggrandize while absolving you of any actual responsibilities.  Look up “Ice Bucket Challenge”.  Tens of thousands of people found temporary fame on YouTube while doing absolutely nothing to help people with ALS.  The magical terms ‘raising awareness’ or ‘sparking change’ shift all the responsibility to unnamed grownups in unnamed locations who will do the unnamed work of actually making things better, whatever that is.

This is the definition of virtue signaling. Seems to be as much an epidemic as Covid these days. Unfortunately, it does nothing to make lives any better.