I agree that I was not responding to the main point you were making. I was responding to a peripheral issue that I think also matters. Sometimes when I do that I preface it with something like “Nitpick:” or “I know this is a side issue, but”; this time I didn’t; maybe I should have.
Why didn’t I respond to your main point? Well, honestly, largely because I’m not sure I understand it. When you talk about “weaponizing Good Guy (tm) badges” I get the impression that you expect your intended audience to recognize the exact phenomenon you have in mind, and to know exactly what the “(tm)” and the “badges” are sneering at; apparently I am not part of that intended audience, because I have to puzzle it out by hand.
I am fairly sure you mean something along these lines:
we imagine that there is (or, that there is supposed to be) purely selfless altruism
this somehow makes it possible for fakers to gain social status by looking as if they are being impressively selflessly-altruistic
since social status is zero-sum, by doing that they are hurting everyone else, hence “weaponizing Good Guy (tm) badges” (the badges are worn, unironically, by the fakers, and it’s them that the “(tm)” and “badges” are sneering at)
having seen this happen, people develop an allergy to things that look like “trying to look impressively selfishly-altruistic” and this is one cause of what OP is describing
The last bit certainly seems reasonable; my only objection is that it seems to be basically a restatement of what OP already said, namely that altruistic actions are treated as status-grabs and attacked as such, rather than an explanation.
The first bit puzzles me because it seems to blame the fakery on the “fiction of selfless altruism” and I don’t see how that’s supposed to work. If no one believed in “selfless altruism” then the things fakers would have to do would be a little different—they’d have to put more effort into looking extra-altruistic rather than into looking selfless—but if it’s meant to be obvious that fakery would be much more difficult or more costly in that scenario, I don’t see why.
(“Weaponizing” feels waaay overstated to me, too. Even when apparent altruism is pure fakery and aimed entirely at making the fake-altruist look good, I’m pretty sure it’s almost always for the sake of making them look better rather than of making others look worse, and I think it’s wrong to call something a weapon when its primary use is not harming others. If I earn money I am not “weaponizing cash” even though every penny I have effectively makes everyone else a tiny bit poorer. If I learn things that make me better at my job I am not “weaponizing knowledge” even though improving my own promotion prospects reduces others’ a bit. Even if instead of actually getting better at my job I just get better at flattering my managers, I think “weaponizing” is quite the wrong term. I have similar feelings about the “(tm)” and the “badges” and the “social lever”, though not so strongly. I guess I have a personal trigger that’s somewhat the inverse of yours: I don’t like it when it seems like most of the argument someone’s making is not actually being made but, so to speak, smuggled in in the connotations or presuppositions of their words, and I think this makes me more inclined to pick nits. That’s part of what is happening here.)
I agree that I was not responding to the main point you were making. I was responding to a peripheral issue that I think also matters. Sometimes when I do that I preface it with something like “Nitpick:” or “I know this is a side issue, but”; this time I didn’t; maybe I should have.
Why didn’t I respond to your main point? Well, honestly, largely because I’m not sure I understand it. When you talk about “weaponizing Good Guy (tm) badges” I get the impression that you expect your intended audience to recognize the exact phenomenon you have in mind, and to know exactly what the “(tm)” and the “badges” are sneering at; apparently I am not part of that intended audience, because I have to puzzle it out by hand.
I am fairly sure you mean something along these lines:
we imagine that there is (or, that there is supposed to be) purely selfless altruism
this somehow makes it possible for fakers to gain social status by looking as if they are being impressively selflessly-altruistic
since social status is zero-sum, by doing that they are hurting everyone else, hence “weaponizing Good Guy (tm) badges” (the badges are worn, unironically, by the fakers, and it’s them that the “(tm)” and “badges” are sneering at)
having seen this happen, people develop an allergy to things that look like “trying to look impressively selfishly-altruistic” and this is one cause of what OP is describing
The last bit certainly seems reasonable; my only objection is that it seems to be basically a restatement of what OP already said, namely that altruistic actions are treated as status-grabs and attacked as such, rather than an explanation.
The first bit puzzles me because it seems to blame the fakery on the “fiction of selfless altruism” and I don’t see how that’s supposed to work. If no one believed in “selfless altruism” then the things fakers would have to do would be a little different—they’d have to put more effort into looking extra-altruistic rather than into looking selfless—but if it’s meant to be obvious that fakery would be much more difficult or more costly in that scenario, I don’t see why.
(“Weaponizing” feels waaay overstated to me, too. Even when apparent altruism is pure fakery and aimed entirely at making the fake-altruist look good, I’m pretty sure it’s almost always for the sake of making them look better rather than of making others look worse, and I think it’s wrong to call something a weapon when its primary use is not harming others. If I earn money I am not “weaponizing cash” even though every penny I have effectively makes everyone else a tiny bit poorer. If I learn things that make me better at my job I am not “weaponizing knowledge” even though improving my own promotion prospects reduces others’ a bit. Even if instead of actually getting better at my job I just get better at flattering my managers, I think “weaponizing” is quite the wrong term. I have similar feelings about the “(tm)” and the “badges” and the “social lever”, though not so strongly. I guess I have a personal trigger that’s somewhat the inverse of yours: I don’t like it when it seems like most of the argument someone’s making is not actually being made but, so to speak, smuggled in in the connotations or presuppositions of their words, and I think this makes me more inclined to pick nits. That’s part of what is happening here.)