Your example is a bit facile. A cardboard car does not function as a car does. It sounds almost like you are saying something but you never explain exactly what’s wrong with performative virtue.

But you have to define what is virtuous before you can claim that performative virtue is “fake”. The young people of today are no less virtuous than their elders, despite the fact that their elders (like virtually every generation before them) complain that they are immoral.

But "performative virtue" is--definitionally--fake. If it were real, it would just be "virtue". (And similarly, "political correctness" is something not quite correct--otherwise it would just be "correctness"!)

It's an actor "performing" as a character for a few hours, and then reverting back to their original personality.

> But you have to define what is virtuous before you can claim that performative virtue is “fake”.

No, strictly speaking you don't have to define anything. Whatever virtue is, it's consistently that. "Performative virtue" is inconsistent, often hypocritical, and therefore inauthentic.

> The young people of today are no less virtuous than their elders...

I can't speak to virtue in general, but with regards to duplicity it does seem like there's increasingly more of it:

1) young people still have access to whatever methods of duplicity old generations had, and can additionally virtue signal on social media on an unprecedented scale.

2) it seems like it's simply becoming acceptable to lie. Politicians will directly contradict their own video evidence, multiple times a day, and everyone shrugs and moves on. We've given up on norms of discourse and civility. To be clear, I'm not surprised that lies are being told; I'm surprised that there appears to be zero interest or any repercussions.

3) objective truth itself is under attack. It's becoming normalized that anyone can say whatever they feel at that moment and that they have "their truth" and I have "my truth". This is incredibly dangerous.

> A cardboard car does not function as a car does.

That's exactly the point. It is contrasting the appearance of the thing vs the structural & functional organization (logos) of the thing. Without the second, it is not the thing. One cannot establish an identity relationship just based on appearances. That is why you can't equivocate the appearance of a virtue with being virtuous.

> It sounds almost like you are saying something but you never explain exactly what’s wrong with performative virtue.

"Performative" virtue, a more accurate designation would be "demonstrative virtue", is an oxymoron. You cannot be virtuous without conforming to the structural & functional organization of the thing, i.e. without really being virtuous. Real virtue is a participatory endeavor. A display of virtuosity is like the cardboard car, it doesn't function as a virtue. Making people take down content for narcissistic reasons does not make the world a better place, because it is devoid of at least two core properties that is rationality and proportionality.

> But you have to define what is virtuous before you can claim that performative virtue is “fake”.

This topic is systematically discussed since Aristotle, and you would appreciate the absurdity of trying to give an exhaustive definition in this forum. But I've given you two properties of it that narcissistic censoring violates.