According to Merriam-Webster, “virtue signaling” is:
the act or practice of conspicuously displaying one’s awareness of and attentiveness to political issues, matters of social and racial justice, etc., especially instead of taking effective action.
Because it is much easier to signal your virtue than it is to actually be virtuous, the people who virtue signal the loudest also tend to be the ones who have something they’re trying to cover up. This hypocrisy is a big part of what makes virtue signaling so obnoxious.
Time for me to spill a little tea. A couple of years ago, after I wrote “Christopher Columbus: Wildcatter,” I got an acceptance from the editor of Interzone. It wasn’t formalized yet, but he expressed over email that he was interested in purchasing the publishing rights for that story, the sequel, and possibly others after. It got far enough along that we were going back and forth on editorial details, our vision for the stories, etc.
Then the time came for him to send me a contract. Aaand… he ghosted me. Flat out ghosted me. A month went by without any correspondence at all. I didn’t want to seem too forward, but I also was starting to get a little concerned. So I sent out a brief follow-up email, asking about the contract… and I got a response that read like something copy-pasted from a form rejection.
Now, as far as literary transgressions go, that’s kind of tame. It’s not like the editor owed me money and refused to pay. And as far as I know, Interzone is prompt with all of their payments and pays all of their authors in full. After all, everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt.
But that sort of unprofessionalism really wasn’t cool, either. In fact, it was enough that I stopped sending Interzone any submissions. After all, if the editor saw nothing wrong with yanking my chain around before he published me, that’s kind of a yellow flag. Not to mention that it left a very sour taste in my mouth.
So when I saw this story from Jon Del Arroz, with the editor of Interzone accusing Asimov’s of using AI art, and using that as a pretext to blacklist all of their authors, I immediately recognized that sort of behavior for what it is: virtue signaling. Which made me wonder: how much of the anti-AI vitriol that’s ubiquitous in online writing communities these days really just a new form of virtue signaling?
Think about it. It explains so much about the insane anti-AI faux controversies that have been blowing up around 2025 WorldCon. For more than a decade now, the people chasing the Hugo Award have been among the worst offenders of gratuitous virtue signaling (especially Scalzi). It also explains why so much of the anti-AI content on YouTube is less about presenting well-reasoned arguments, and more about sighing dramatically or making snide, sarcastic remarks. Virtue signaling always appeals to pathos before it appeals to reason.
I expect this phenomenon is going to get a lot worse in the next few years, at least until AI-assisted art and writing become normalized (which is going to happen eventually, it’s just a matter of time and degree). So the next time you see someone publicly posting about how horrible it is for creatives to use AI, take a good, hard look at the person leveling the accusations. Chances are, they’re just virtue signaling.
