Signalling is how mating works which leads to procreation that repeats the same process. If you don't signal your worthiness by winning contests, looking good, showing money, earning respect or in any other meaningful way, you are less likely to find a good matching spouse that will lead to more copies of you down the road.
Would you then expect rich people to be the only one able to reproduce, or at least that as a group they would reproduce more than poor people? Because the exact opposite is true in the US, the poorer you are, the higher your birth rate: https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
Fortunately, we have the option to aspire to something better. I’m not saying such signalling etc doesn’t exist, just that in the same way as I choose not to assault or murder people when I’m angry at them, I also choose to present myself and choose my partners based on personal qualities rather than superficial crap.
Seems I’m generally speaking a lot more fulfilled, content, and happy in life than those who choose to live like chimps.
You have definitely signaled to your partner, even if you're not aware.
And not everything you signaled was profound and you might not have even realized your partner chose you for the shallow parts, even if they'd never admit it directly.
If you buy a jpg for 300k while you could have bought a nice house with that amount of money, you are honestly unfuckable and being unfuckable and gullible is all that you are signalling.
Besides, it's women who do the signaling, that's because they can't approach to save their lives.
NFT crowd should grow some balls, approach, get rejected and repeat until success...like real men do, instead of buying monkey jpg to "signal mating"