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Comment by helen___keller | Hacker News Reader

> A lot of the newly popular ideologies start to make sense when you consider:

> 1. Peer pressure / virtue signalling / peacockery

Shouldn't this be less true in a world where we all have anonymous or pseudo-anonymous online personas? I don't need to virtue signal on HN or reddit, I upvote, downvote, and post according to what I actually feel.

This compared to 50 years ago where ostensibly if I advocated something controversial I would have to say it to others' face.

> 2. Replacement guilt/shame hitching a ride on the decline of Christian values

I don't know what this means. Are you suggesting all people have some inherent level of guilt and without Christianity it funnels into other beliefs?

> 3. Disassociation from reality, either due to physical distance (money) or mental distance (tech enabled social bubble)

Agreed on this

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1. No, because influence and decision making aren't evenly distributed between online/offline personas. Even if they were, it doesn't change human nature, (most) people need a sense of belonging, a group identity. If anything, virtue signalling appears to be amplified online for likes / follows / etc.

2. Centralized religion may be in decline across much of the world, but that doesn't mean all the ingrained beliefs and associated behaviors are linearly declining along with it. What I see are people adopting new systems of beliefs that replace their religious foundations while keeping many of the associated behaviors intact.

For example, a core aspect of most of the practices of Abrahamic religions is sin followed by guilt, shame, forgiveness and, sometimes, atonement. This process doesn't just disappear, it has inertia that often survives apostasy. I pointed out this process is open to ideological 'hijacking' and replacement by new ideologies which keep the process in place but alter the individual's conscious rationalization for that process's existence.

1. That’s what I’m saying. So-called “virtue signaling” appears strongest online, where it is least relevant, large pseudo-anonymous shout boxes like twitter and FB comments and news article comments. As you mention, most people need group identity. If I have group identity with leftists or whatever then of course I’m going to assert their values even on twitter where nobody is reading my tweets because I’m not famous. So it’s not virtue signaling to a nonexistent reader, it’s asserting a genuinely held belief (vis a vis their believed “membership” as a leftist).

By the virtue signaling thesis, you should see “signaling” most commonly in-person, over email, over text, etc. after all, if virtue signaling isn’t done with your identity, to others who know you, then it’s accomplishing nothing.

my lived experience is exactly the opposite of the virtue signaling thesis, with the exception of corporations (“pride” ads and such, marketing built to signal to popular sentiment)

2. Sorry I really have no idea. As a person in the younger generation without faith, I wasn’t raised going to church, so I can’t really relate. For me there is no “replaced” valued; faith was never present

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