@Narlepoax III
But most people are empty. They are shallow bowls of bland putty that mold themselves into whatever façade gets them easy comfort and pleasure.

Spraying on a thin coat of bright colours to appear interesting and deep at a distance to hide the inch deep pool of beige blandness beneath.

None of these people have much going on beyond being ‘the trans one’, put that aside and they watch popular TV, work a boring job and repeat opinions they heard without being able to explain or expand them like everyone else.

@aasha
It’s bad because it’s performative. You’re not making art because you actually want to say something or genuinely enjoy it. You just want to show everyone around you that you’re a good person.

It’s empty, shallow, pretentious bullshit.

That is virtue signalling, bro. What are you talking about?

@RavenandWritingDesk
Oh, I’m aware of all of that, and it’s a fucking problem.

I don’t care what kind of identity someone has, just as long as it’s genuine.

Identity should never be boiled down to an empty fashion statement. That kind of behavior is reductive to the point of it being insulting.

@RavenandWritingDesk
Except, this isn’t an organicly grown subculture. It’s the result of aggressive political indoctrination by loony communists in the education system and universities with funding from billionaires and corporations that want to subvert or destroy society for their own benefit.
It is also an ideology centered around a deep and irrational hatred of a group defined by their sexual orientation (straight), race (white) and sex (male), in the name of (according to them) opposing sexism, racism and sexual liberation. Make of that what you will.
In practice, this kind of art is as politically neutral as depicting the character with a swastika.

@Narlepoax III
What your not getting is zoomers have highjacked some rather niche sexual orientations as self expression aesthetics, they wear non-binary the same way you wore Metallica.

The same way loads of people in America adopt a Christian aesthetic to perform their right of centre opinions while not actually going to church and sinning all the time.

You are correct it’s a virtue signal, but their not doing it because they actually give a shit about gays and minorities or actually replacing white people in any meaningful way, but because they want to look cool to their friends and get social validation.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be bait or virtue signaling every time. Sometimes it’s just another case of a Twitter/Tumblr artist imposing shitty woke headcanons on characters they’re currently obsessing over; they do this as a defense tactic against criticism of their artwork (from the ‘wrong’ sorts of people, at least). Crazy, but that’s how it goes.

As long as virtue signalling doesn’t consist of hating something I see absolutely no problem.

@aasha
Alright, so lemme ask you something: Why, exactly, did the artist choose to portray each of the mane 6 as non-cishet and non-white?

I think we both know why. It’s for the sake of diversity points.

AKA: It’s literally textbook virtue signalling.

This is neither. This is simply an expression of art inspired by their subculture.
A simple drawing of a picture because they think it’d be cool if Applejack was a lesbian human.

Not everything is bait; sometimes it’s just an innocent picture.

@Anonymous #D2BA
It’s not bait. It’s worse…

Virtue signalling.