“Peak Virtue Signalling”

The nice thing about virtue-signaling is that it requires zero actual virtue. Recite the correct incantation, and — presto-chango! — you’re a terrific person of great virtue. And how could you not be when your similarly transmogrified comrades gently finger-snap their assent to your every word? Even if you did crib those words from them and they cribbed them from a Facebook post or one of those overly wordy yard signs?

Here you go. 😀@fancypants_s https://t.co/gOfX0FPvvu

— Auntie Polly (@auntie_polly) January 22, 2026

h/t Auntie Polly

Is this the year that ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ – the charity song written by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure in 1984 to provide relief for the victims of famine in Ethiopia – finally died? The song has been condemned for its broad-brushstrokes lyrics about Africa, and it feels increasingly like the work of a naïve and distant past. But the truth is that it has always been better music than critics would like us to think. The question that matters most though is the hard one: did Band Aid improve the world?

Urging the public to ‘feed the world’, Band Aid created the modern association between fame and philanthropy and sparked a global movement culminating in the Live Aid concert the following summer. In combination, the song and the concert raised over £100 million in today’s money for the famine, and placed Africa on the Western agenda. Geldof’s lyrics call for thought for the ‘world outside your window’, but they were inspired by the world as it appeared on the TV. Geldof watched BBC coverage of the famine on a Friday night in November, as his fame in the Boomtown Rats dwindled.

Modern compassion is loud, immediate, and collective. It is expressed in slogans, hashtags, yard signs, and ritual affirmations that signal moral alignment at scale. What it is less often is personal, costly, or binding. We have become very good at expressing care, but very bad at assuming responsibility.

The danger here is not insincerity. Most people who participate in these displays mean well. The danger is structural. When compassion is industrialized — centralized, abstracted, and detached from consequence — it begins to drift. It no longer asks what can realistically be done, who must pay the cost, or where responsibility lies. Instead, it satisfies the moral needs of the compassionate while leaving the suffering largely untouched.

Two stories — one associated with the political left, one with the right — reveal this problem with uncomfortable clarity.