Why Vice Signal?

Many people engage in "Vice Signalling", where they will intentionally do actions which are considered to be bad according to some social norm or morality system.

Recently this has become a bit more common on the right of the political spectrum and more people have been calling it out, and saying they don't really understand why you would do it. Examples might be people saying callously that they don't care if refugees die on the way to a rich country, or if the elderly are impoverished by some tax change, or if a homeless person freezes to death on the street over winter.

Some people find this confusing. Why would you say such mean things? Do you want to be perceived as evil? Others (above) are more cynical - the performative evil is the point, people want to appear vicious and strong so that they can acquire power (political or otherwise).

I think vice signalling is better understood as a rejection of certain systems of morality.

The above examples I gave were quite right coded, but there are left-coded vice signals. The rejection of religion was one that was more common in the past. People (including me) are often rude about or contemptuous of religion, deliberately flouting its moral rules. Sexual morality is another common area for vice signalling - people will deliberately flaunt their rejection of monogamy, heterosexuality, desire for children etc. They thumb their nose at traditional moral rules.

In these cases, readers will perhaps be more sympathetic. What people are saying is:

• These moral rules are wrong and unjustified, I reject their whole framing
• Join me in not following them

People do not view the things they're doing as "vice", they simply reject the moral system that declares them "vice" and they want to make that clear, in the hopes that others will join them, and the power of that moral system in general culture will be lessened.

In the right-leaning examples above, people may be rejecting the claim that we should care about refugees, or that we're responsible for the elderly or the homeless. They might be rejecting or at least pushing back on certain types of universal compassion or systems of morality that they consider too demanding or unjustified, in favour of more partial or even selfish moral system.

In general I think we shouldn't assume people are evil, know they're evil and are deliberately practicing evil by their own lights. On their moral system, what they're saying isn't particularly evil. They are being deliberately shocking, but that's mostly to raise salience and really rub in that they don't believe in the moral system in question.