Linda Johnston, once a prolific virtue signaling aficionado on the social media platform Twitter, has encountered a crisis in their occupation. “There was a time when I could freely critique people for not being as holy and blameless as I without any worry of dissidents. If someone was less enlightened than I, I could show my disagreement by doxing them, informing their employer of their unacceptable views, and encouraging my followers to mass-report their tweet. Overnight, I lost everything. I woke up to see that 41 of the accounts I reported the previous night for promoting violent extremism (they disagreed with me, one even called me “obj*ctively wr*ng”) had been deemed invalid grounds for bans! I thought to myself, this is just like George Orwell’s book, 1984, where people cruelly tyrannize with their open discussions! It doesn’t feel like the world has a place for a tone police officer like me anymore…”
When asked what they would do next, Linda was quoted as saying, “Since my ideas are so correct and pure, the lowly beasts, I mean, those less educated don’t deserve to be graced with my words. If they can’t embrace them at face value, they’re just ignorant sheep! Obviously, I left the site for good! The problem now is, I am experiencing withdrawal symptoms from my moral high… I haven’t had the chance to let nearly anyone know how much smarter I am than they are! I’ve started to have these weird urges to do good and embody virtue in the real world, rather than tell everyone online how good and virtuous I am. At first, signing online petitions like “Sign to ban volcanos from emitting CO2” and “Sign to tell Putin to cut it out, buster!” gave me the high I missed so much, but the withdrawal symptoms began to return. I even put a few more stickers on my car like “end homeless people” and “haven’t women suffraged enough?” On my drive from my local, sustainable, ethically sourced, labor-equitable coffee shop (Starbucks), I spotted a kitchen offering free meals that had a “volunteers needed” sign out front. I felt this strange urge to help and do physical good. I turned into the parking lot and nearly went in to volunteer, but I remembered that nobody rich, famous, or popular would see how good I am, not to mention, needy people kind of gross me out. Thankfully I came to my senses and thought, ‘What could I criticize about how these people run their organization?’. First, I noticed that this kitchen was in a church, gross, forcing their religion!?! Then I saw that the food they were giving them wasn’t organic, vegan, or local, like, are they trying to poison these people? What really did it for me was they were accepting donations. They were clearly another corrupt megachurch manipulating people for money and playing the tax code to buy private jets. Sense of moral superiority restored, I logged into Myspace to let everyone know of this outrageous coterie!”