Vice Signaling

A Facebook friend of yours posts a Ukraine flag as their profile picture. Is there anything wrong with that?

Some possible criticisms:

· It’s insincere, shallow, and hypocritical, and it doesn’t actually do anything to help the cause.

· It’s a form of social status seeking—you’re looking for approval from like-minded individuals.

· It’s performative, rather than actually taking action.

· It’s divisive, in that it creates an environment where people try to outdo each other with meaningless gestures, instead of having skin in the game and fixing the problem.

This is known as virtue signaling and it can take a bunch of different forms—it doesn’t have to be about politics, like, you could be taking selfies with a sick relative in a hospital and posting them to social media. See how good I am? Virtue signaling has been around since time immemorial, but social media has really ramped it up. You can be taking selfies at the pet shelter or the old folks’ home, and post it online, so everyone can see how good you are. Please, never fall into this trap. The Ukraine flags are a very minor form of this, and I have never had a problem with the Ukraine flags, other than that I would never attach myself to a particular cause. As Animal Mother said in Full Metal Jacket, “If I’m going to die for a word, my word is poontang.”

Which brings us to vice signaling. Let me talk about Kid Rock for a second, and before we begin, let me just say that Kid Rock’s music is not really my genre and I find it to be execrable. But of all the things you can say about Kid Rock, you know what is absolutely true? Kid Rock knows who he is. The guy machine-gunned a few cases of Bud Light after the Dylan Mulvaney incident. He may be a transphobe, he may be a racist, he may be a bunch of awful things, but you know what? He knows who he is. My guess is that he is none of these things. My guess is that Kid Rock does bad things publicly and good things privately, which is how you want to conduct your life. Why do you want to do bad things publicly? There is a general principle that you want to get the bad news first and the good news second, rather than the other way around. Let me ask you a question: would you want to be one of the world’s great philanthropists, loved and celebrated, then after your death, everyone finds out that you’re a jerk? Or would you rather be thought of as a jerk, and then after your death, everyone finds out that you were a wonderful human being? Ellen DeGeneres falls into the first category, and Kobe Bryant falls into the second category. Throughout Kobe Bryant’s career, he was going into oncology wards in childrens’ hospitals and meeting with kids—and he did absolutely everything in his power to keep it private. He never wanted anyone to know.

For my part, I do a lot of vice signaling. I wrote what has to be the filthiest book in history, next to American Psycho. I wrote a sexually charged collection of short stories that can be characterized as chauvinistic, if you are being generous. If you are not being generous, you could call it misogynistic. If you look at my social media activities, generally I post my Ws—DJ gigs, book signings—but I never post about the good things I am doing. I do philanthropy—I just don’t talk about it. It doesn’t go on Facebook. This is all by design. In life, on this earth, I want to be known as a bad guy, a black hat, a dissident, a rogue, a controversial figure, but in death, I want to be remembered for all the good things that I did and the legacy I left behind. I wouldn’t be surprised if when Kid Rock dies, we find out that he left $50 million to St. Jude, or something like that. He seems like the type. You know, Kobe had an uneven reputation when he was alive. Was he a bad person? Absolutely not—he was human, capable wonderful and terrible things, as we all are.

But if you go around telling people how good you are, it negates the good. I have an exercise for you. Go take $100 in cash, or $500, and put it in a paper bag, and drive to someone’s house, go up on their front door, leave the bag, hit the doorbell, and run off. Now comes the hard part: don’t tell anyone what you did. You know how freaking hard that is? To do a good deed and not tell anyone about it, including your spouse? You are going to take it to your grave? It’s a lot harder than you think. Maybe don’t leave bags of cash on people’s doorstep, because that’s weird, but maybe leave a $100 tip at a restaurant on a $50 check. And don’t tell anyone. Once you tell someone about it, you completely negate the good deed. Why are you doing it? Are you doing it for approval, or are you genuinely trying to do good in the world? Why can’t you have both? You cannot have both. I am not a big fan of this “donor wall” form of philanthropy. You know what I like to see on the donor wall? Anonymous. Ten cheers to that guy.

I generally am uncomfortable with praise of any kind, including these essays, and including the book I just released, RULE 62, which is a book about how to live a spiritual and successful life. I did put some thought into the book before I wrote it, thinking that it might be construed as a virtue signaling book, but thankfully, it wasn’t. But it would be kind of awkward if I was then caught in a motel with a hooker, which would pretty much be the definition of hypocrisy. You all remember Bill Bennett, former Secretary of Education, who wrote the crazy bestseller The Book of Virtues. I even have a copy. Well, Bill Bennett made $6 million on that book, and he dumped it all into the high-limit slots—gone. So much for virtues. And that was back when $6 million was a lot of money. So yes, the moral of the story is, don’t be Bill Bennett, don’t write a book about virtues and then step on your crank. Nobody ever forgot that one.

Now, I am not using the term “vice signaling” correctly. Vice signaling refers to the phenomenon where you advocate for “bad” or unpopular policies (like Alligator Alcatraz) to build affinity with a certain group. There is a lot of that going on in the Republican party these days, and has nothing to do with my concept of doing bad things publicly and good things privately. Not that this is exclusive to the Republicans, of course—you had an op-ed in the New York Times the other day basically saying that we should overthrow the government and tear up the Constitution—these are all examples of vice signaling, speaking to your tribe. And I am not specifically referring to philanthropy, though yes, this applies to philanthropy. Meg Whitman donated $100 million to Princeton, and her kid got into Princeton. Gross.

As I said, people are complicated, capable of so very good and very bad things. A lot of people think Ayn Rand had no redeeming qualities—she gave a significant amount of her book royalties to cats. And some people are just terrible. And some people are just saints. By the way, if you’re ever in Nashville, go to Kid Rock’s bar. Trust me on this. It has the best music in the entire town, and he handpicks the musicians himself. Every time I have been in there, I have been blown away with how good the music is. This is his contribution to the world.

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Speaking of music, my DJ career has really been taking off lately. I played twice in Vegas, once opening for Zedd. I also recorded my first set in a little while, and it’s the best set I’ve done in five years. I highly recommend you check out Languorous on SoundCloud.