alt Hacker News> I'm simply tired of this hindsight virtue signaling.
Virtue signalling is a funny term. What, exactly, does it mean here? In what way is reminiscing about a venture that lasted 15 years of your life "virtue signalling"? It seems to be that word is trotted out as a meaningless cliche, something in the sense of "I don't like this thing, but I'll sound more sophisticated if I accuse it of this nebulous bad thing rather than just saying I don't like it".
The man is allowed to write a blog post about the final conclusion of a huge phase of his life. You don't have to give him your sympathy, but there's nothing wrong with writing about it.
Replies
“Virtue signaling” has become a thought-terminating cliche.
All it really amounts to is an accusation of insincerity motivated by vanity, which is a two-for-one ad hominem attack that allows the accuser to avoid responding to the actual point.
[dead]
The "virtue signaling" is signaling being a scrappy creative type who regrets/disliked the path he followed when he actually sold out to a big conglomerate at the first possible opportunity. The virtues being signaled are things like independence and grit.