I disagree. Metaphorically speaking, online discussion is full of literal butt-heads and having the term butt-head is valuable to have in the toolbox even if some people call everyone they don't agree with a butt-head because it's easy and they're lazy. I don't really care if we call them butt-heads or ass-hats as long as there's a more or less agreed upon word for it.

Virtue signaling or whatever you want to call that sort of in-group circle jerk is fundamentally unproductive and self-rewarding because it's just a reiteration of existing group beliefs that basically everyone already knows and has. There's no term you can use to describe that behavior that will not make people uncomfortable when you call it out because at the end of the day you're calling the behavior unproductive and selfish.

For example, someone goes on Reddit and asks "should I put economy tire A or economy tire B on my 20yo, $2k car, also I have $250 to spend". The most popular answers will be invariably be "you should have dedicated summer and winter tires" and "you should use jack stands when you change tires" and many duplicates thereof many of which will suggest that anyone who does not do these things is not someone of good character, deserves to rot in hell, is a burden upon society, etc, etc. Neither of these sideshows are productive discussion. Both of them serve purely to signal to the in-group that the signaler believes something the in-group already believes. Of course everybody wants the greatest tires and nobody wants a car on them but the former is not in the scope for budgetary reasons and the latter is not a concern when simply changing tires never-mind that installing tires usually adds no cost over having them put on rims. The people circle jerking it to jack stands and fancy tires are negatively affecting the discussion for anyone who cared about economy tires. Virtue signaling takes legitimate relevant content and displaces it with low quality junk. I'm more technical than I am cultured but I see this kind of behavior across multiple topics and I'm sure that any serious amateur film critic, book critic, etc. probably could come up with a similar example from their niche.

While that example is hypothetical you can see similar ones play out across a multitude of topics and I think this does legitimate damage to civil discourse. It's like how searching for a service manual for an appliance on the internet to yield results but now it yields a million sites that don't have what you're looking for but will try and sell you something. I see virtue signaling as having a similar quality degradation affect but on legitimate discussion. We can no-longer have detailed discussions about complex issues, regardless of subject because they all get derailed, bogged down and diluted by people showing up to signal their virtue on a higher level issue. Take for example the recent discussion about police. Many on the left and right have a litany of small points on which they agree. Any public discussion about common ground, like fewer MRAPs in the hands of suburban police departments, gets drowned out by riff raff showing up to tell the world which team they're on. At scale this is damaging to civil discourse.

In conclusion, I think that having a nice, short, two-word, pop culture word to describe that behavior is useful because makes it easier for those who may not be articulate enough to otherwise do a good job call it out when they see it. Of course some people are gonna abuse it but I think that's just the nature of it being a negative thing since all negative things become a name you can call someone or their actions.