From the gym bro to the performative male, there is always a new social media aesthetic for men to ascribe to. In recent weeks, the emerging, sometimes-satirical performative male has entered the social media limelight. The aesthetic features men insincerely adopting interests that are perceived as progressive: they sip matcha while buying Labubus, listen to Clairo, and proudly wear their painted nails. In other words, they perform a caricature of a “woke” or socially aware man, exaggerating certain habits and tastes to fit into a curated online persona rather than expressing genuine beliefs or individuality. Even though it’s meant to be a lighthearted joke, the performative male trend misrepresents actual feminism by undermining genuine feminists and reduces individualistic activities to curated tropes, demanding conformity and increasing pressure for men to conform to a specific social archetype.
Misrepresenting Actual Feminism
In October 2021, Tiktok user Justin Foster posted a video captioned “Spent All Night Crying About The Wage Gap (I’m 6 ‘3 BTW),” gaining 1.3 million views in two days. The video sparked the popular trend where social media users satirically caption their videos with not so subtle references to feminism and their height, with captions like “I read feminist literature (6’5” btw)” or “I get so angry thinking about period cramps! (6’5” feminist btw).” The trend satirized men who pretended to be feminists for the sake of appearing attractive to women, sparking the archetype of the “performative male feminist” that defines the performative male trend today.
The performative male was originally a parody of men who portray themselves as feminist or adopt qualities they think women will like, such as drinking matcha or listening to the indie artist Clairo, solely for the sake of landing a date. However, the trope has become so widespread and ubiquitous in social media trends that it no longer serves as witty satire. Instead, it normalizes the idea that men are only feminists when they have an ulterior motive to appeal to women, rather than when they have a genuine concern towards feminist issues.
Additionally, when performative men discuss feminist issues such as period cramps and claim to “fight period cramps” for women, they ignore actual concerns relating to menstrual inequity and treat women’s health as yet another easy way to calculatingly appeal to the female gaze. These videos often shifted the discourse away from women’s lived experiences and perspectives, instead championing the men who simply posted TikTok videos about period cramps. Ultimately, the trend embodies another form of wokefishing, which is a deceptive dating technique in which a person pretends to hold more progressive views to attract potential partners. The performative male masquerades as a person promoting and valuing feministic ideas to attract women, even though carrying around feminist literature books and claiming to hate period cramps online contributes little to the actual feminist movement.
Additionally, in August, performative male lookalike contests popped up around the world in cities such as in Seattle, New York City, and San Francisco. As a community event, participants dressed up and acted with stereotypical performative male characteristics. Although the competitions themselves were intended to be a joke, they inadvertently made it more accessible and socially popular for people to be praised for engaging with feminism performatively instead of actually addressing feminist issues through advocacy and compassion. “A lot of the time, [the competitors] don’t know what they’re talking about,” Lanna Rain, the host of a performative male contest, said of the idea of performative men. “It’s just an aesthetic for them.”
Conflict in Culture
Although it started mainly as a satire and critique of men whose entire identities were carefully curated, constructed, and performed, the performative male trend quickly blew up, blurring the lines between satire and reality. Its popularity can be attributed to influencers like SexyIshaan, the Bay Area based content creator known for his skit videos. He often roleplays as a performative male, posting a video in August eating matcha ice cream with a matcha drink in hand captioned “Performed too hard Now I’m in Japan drinking matcha.” Although these videos are often meant to parody the trend, the parodies themselves are the trend itself as non-satirical performative videos did not exist in the first place; this means that audiences of satirical videos of the trend actively normalize a confusion of satire and seriousness — where serious topics like feminism are confounded with patriarchal-tainted satire.
The same phenomenon occurs offline, such as at San Francisco’s “performative male” contest in Alamo Square Park, where men competed by flaunting tote bags, feminist books, and matcha lattes. Though the contest’s purpose was to parody the trend, its sheer popularity achieved the opposite of dismantling it, instead cementing it by disturbing the notion of performative males to thousands of people — normalizing the act in general. By presenting the trend as satire, the truth of the performative acts — like feminism — are lost and intertwined with jokes, proliferating the trend as a whole. Once these ideas enter the popular culture, they eventually lose their context and nuance behind the irony evaporates, leaving behind an obtuse stereotype.
The performative male represents a broader issue of how internet cultures deflate individuality. The trend has become less a playful critique and more of an expectation. This dynamic clearly demonstrates the suffocating nature of social media identities, where sincerity and performance collapse into one another and are dictated by viral jokes. In a video that garnered over 1.5 million views, TikTok user spamdy_ocampo blamed the trend for ruining matcha: “I can’t drink matcha anymore without being called performative.” This is the danger of the performative pandemic, which suggests that everything — from music to beverages to feminist literature — is consumed with an ulterior motive. Rather than satirizing men who do consume with an ulterior motive, performing just for the sake of seeming attractive to women, the trend’s popularity has turned performance into the norm. Now, men are not only expected to perform, but are assumed to always be performing. Whether drinking matcha lattes or learning about Audre Lorde, the expectation is not only that there is always an ulterior motive, but that it’s not possible for men to have a genuine motive in the first place.
The focus on performative behaviors disproportionately targets men who engage in “softer” or aesthetic-coded interests, things women continually embrace without judgment. Mocking men for liking indie music or matcha subtly reinforces traditional masculinity, suggesting that emotional vulnerability or aesthetic tastes are suspect when embodied by men but acceptable by women. At the same time, it trivializes women’s interests by casting them as unserious or inherently feminine, reducing their choices to stereotypes rather than genuine expression. In doing so, this humor polices identity on both sides, preserving outdated norms under the guise of satire and pressuring men and women alike to conform to narrower, more restrictive forms of authenticity. This is especially fatal to feminism as it prevents men from genuinely engaging in it.
Curating identities
In the satirical caricatures of the performative man, users commodify genuine interests like reading the “right” books, sipping matcha, carrying a plushie, and package them into a cultural shorthand that undermines the actual expression of one’s identity. Once personal preferences like reading certain literature become satirical meme templates, true individuality gets lost amid curated kitsch. With the profound use of social media, the performative personality highlights how curated appearances become popular. However, it doesn’t accurately represent genuine interest in these behaviors; rather, they are suppressed into yet another strange cultural microtrend.
Core trends like the performative male trend tend to minimize the specific connotations of items, like the cultural significance of matcha in Japan or the intellectual history of feminist literature, in favor of generalizing them into a standardized sentiment, which is then attached to a social trend. In the case of the performative trend, unrelated items like Labubus are arrogated into a mish-mash of feminist literature — both of which do not produce satisfying cohesion, yet get lumped together into a single trend. The result, unfortunately, is not just the loss of meaning behind Labubus and matcha, but also losing the true spirit of reading feminist literature to cringeness and satire.
Ultimately, social media rewards conformity to meme archetypes — like that of the performative male — rather than supporting genuine selfhood. Although it may have started as an internet-wide inside joke, satirizing how ridiculous it is to listen to Laufey or drink matcha just for the aesthetics, it now simply mocks men who choose to engage in “soft” or “feminine” activities, whether genuinely or not.
Today, it feels as though people are living through a social media script, moving from trend to the next with little room for individuality. On platforms where likes or comments stand in for genuine conversation, honest opinions often collapse into silent agreement with the current popularity. The performative pandemic erases complexity, pushing people toward sameness rather than uniquity.
Breaking the script is still possible: originality online can mean showcasing the full range of one’s personality instead of chasing aesthetics, resisting the urge to dismiss certain artists or interests as mere archetypes and treating personal tastes, whether mainstream or not, with respect. It also means shifting focus toward meaningful issues, such as engaging with real feminist conversations rather than surface-level satire.
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