The desire for these identity-mongers to insulate themselves from criticism and write only for like-minded others is, indeed, virtue-signaling, as you said, but for many of them, it’s also stemming from a need to get affirmation from others. Think about the kinds of people who derive their sense of self-worth from their identities rather than from their erudition or accomplishments. These are superficial and psychologically brittle people who usually don’t have much else going for them and so have an obsessive need to have the world affirm them exactly as they are and tell them that whatever absurd particular concatenation of identity groups they think they belong to (gay transgender Hispanic Muslim or whatever) is THE best. This is why there’s so much infighting and posturing for preeminence among these identity groups and why the whole notion of intersectionality arose (as in, “yeah, white women, you might have it a little bit tough because you’re women, but you’re still white, and we black women have it a whole lot tougher, cuz we’re oppressed due to possessing two — count them — two marginalized identities”). It’s Nietzschean “slave morality” taken to its logical extreme, where, as many have noted, the more oppressed you can claim to be, the higher your social status and power in the inverted pecking order of this alternative reality that keeps making inroads into our own reality. When these fragile souls are exposed to the oppressive tools of rationality and critique coming from the likes of us, they see the ice under their feet beginning to melt away, and they start to sink back into the waters of a harsh, cold world that doesn’t give a damn about who they are, and they panic and run for cover, whether using the “block” button or just finding warm little shelters, like Medium’s premium channel, in which they can hide out and reconstruct their shattered egos.