A neighbor in Atlanta told me my new electric mower was 'just a virtue signal'

I was mowing my lawn last spring with a battery-powered mower I'd saved up for, and my neighbor Frank leaned over the fence. He said, 'That thing's cute, but you're just burning coal at the power plant instead of gas here. It's a virtue signal.' He was so sure he'd caught me in some 'gotcha' moment. I had to explain that our local grid mix is over 40% nuclear and solar, which I'd actually looked up. It stuck with me because he wasn't trying to be rude, he just repeated something he'd heard without checking. Anyone else run into this specific 'power plant' argument?

3 comments

3 Comments

keith1164mo ago

Ugh, that's everywhere now. People hear a clever sounding line and just run with it, like it's a fact check. It's less about the mower and more about not wanting to think.

richard_ramirez4mo ago

Back in 2011, I saw this exact thing happen with a political meme about gas prices. It wasn't even correct, but it spread because it felt true and shut down debate. Keith116 is right that it's a comfort thing, not a logic thing. People grab that clever line like a security blanket so they don't have to sit with the messy, uncomfortable details. It's lazy, but it makes them feel smart for a second without doing any real work.

shah.shane2mo ago

The "security blanket" thing nails it. I see the same pattern at work when someone drops a finance buzzword like "synergy" or "leverage" and everyone nods along like it means something. Nobody asks what it actually means because that would break the spell. Or at a cookout last summer, a guy shut down a whole conversation about local politics by saying "both sides are the same anyway." Total non-statement, but it landed like a mic drop because it felt slick and effortless. It's like we'd rather have a neat, empty answer than admit we don't know the messy one.