{"id":1096649,"date":"2025-12-16T12:24:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T09:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1096649"},"modified":"2025-12-16T12:24:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T09:24:00","slug":"when-did-everything-and-everyone-become-so-performative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1096649","title":{"rendered":"When did everything (and everyone) become so \u2018performative\u2019?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

To exist on social media is to engage in performance art. Mouthing to your favourite song? That\u2019s lip-syncing. Sharing a story about your day? That\u2019s narrative storytelling. Posting a photo dump on Instagram? That\u2019s curating. Engaging with popular \u201cskits\u201d on TikTok? That\u2019s miming. The internet has made performing parts of ourselves, and our lives, not only socially acceptable but encouraged and rewarded through clicks, views and comments. Why, then, are we still surprised to turn away from our screens and see others engaged in the performance?<\/span><\/p>\n

The word \u201cperformative\u201d has been thrown around in 2025, mostly to describe the \u201cperformative male\u201d. The archetype of a performative male is a tote-bag-carrying, matcha-drinking, <\/span>All About Love<\/span><\/em>-reading man who curates his behaviours to attract women, using more \u201cfeminine\u201d interests to lure them into a false sense of security. Appearing to look \u201cnot like other guys\u201d while simultaneously acting <\/span>exactly<\/span><\/em> like other guys is an unfortunately common occurrence in heterosexual dating. Online, the idea of performative men took on a life of its own \u2013 there are <\/span>performative male final boss starter packs<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>videos of men \u201cperformatively\u201d reading<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>even performative male lookalike contests<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But it goes beyond men. There are now (apparently) \u201cperformative\u201d reposters<\/a>, weird girls<\/a>, interests<\/a>, hobbies<\/a>, accessories and even makeup<\/a>. Everything from someone\u2019s music taste<\/a> and Letterboxd films<\/a> to nipple piercings<\/a> and having a full bush<\/a> is under the microscope for not being reflective of someone\u2019s \u201ctrue spirit\u201d. This is largely a result of the homogenisation of consumer culture. \u201cBecause a lot of our dominant social platforms, like TikTok and Instagram, also double as e-commerce spaces, we\u2019re now seeing pretty significant shifts in consumer behaviour, whether it\u2019s weird girl shoe haul videos or cool guy gift guide infographics,\u201d says Dr Jess Rauchberg<\/a>, assistant professor at Seton Hall University.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

To understand how everything and everyone became \u201cperformative\u201d, let us first track the emergence of the performative man. Dr Rauchberg says the performative male trend was a splintering of last year\u2019s celebrity look-alike contests. Most of these look-alike contests centred around male celebrities, like <\/span>Timothee Chalamet<\/span><\/a>. As these contests grew in popularity and were replicated, they sparked a larger conversation around how masculinity is enacted. She calls performative men the \u201cGen Z hipsters\u201d, sipping matcha lattes and reading dog-eared feminist paperbacks instead of falling into the violent confines of the manosphere. <\/span>\u201cWhen the only media representations you see either fault you (men are bad!) or push you into warped misogyny, the performative male is an ironic, playful response that pushes back at weaponised misogyny in media,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Being accused of performativity has, of course, existed long before the internet. Partaking in polite, adult society had always been somewhat of a performance. <\/span>As Christine Tran<\/a>, assistant professor at the Alberta University of the Arts, puts it: \u201cFor centuries, it has been women who were the default fakes: fake gamer girls, \u2018pick me\u2019 girls and the myriads of women we accuse of just liking things for \u2018male attention\u2019.\u201d The fact that men can now be called performative could be considered what Tran calls <\/span>\u201ca revenge micro-fantasy\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n

For centuries, it has been women who were the default fakes: fake gamer girls, \u2018pick me\u2019 girls and the myriads of women we accuse of just liking things for \u2018male attention\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cThe performative male reflects very present anxieties about the entanglement of gender and \u2018authentication\u2019 at the forefront of the war on free gender expression,\u201d continues Tran. \u201cIt is a safe, comedic space to fool with the idea of how we all \u2018perform\u2019 our gender.\u201d It was Judith Butler who famously described gender as \u201ca performance<\/a>\u201d \u2013 though, as trans writer Asa Seresin<\/a> warns, that doesn\u2019t mean that it\u2019s fake. \u201cIn Gender Trouble<\/em>, Butler emphasises that gender is iterative, meaning it is something you construct every day through repetition,\u201d says Seresin. \u201cBeing constructed does not mean it\u2019s fake \u2013 it\u2019s real, it gradually accrues reality over time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

To Seresin, the performative male is a reinscription of gender essentialism. \u201cPerformative reading is one of the dumbest ideas I\u2019ve ever heard; we<\/span> are in a literacy crisis; anyone reading anything at all feels like a miracle, and the idea that men fake liking women writers in order to sleep with women is extremely insulting to everyone involved,\u201d says <\/span>Seresin<\/span>. \u201cMy entire reading life has been shaped by tracking down my crushes\u2019 favourite books, borrowing books from people I\u2019m sleeping with and taking recommendations from people I admire.\u201d <\/span>The reality is, it\u2019s fun to share and enjoy things that are popular.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a popular <\/span>expression across social media<\/span><\/a> right now: \u201cImagine hating me and I\u2019m just [insert activity here]\u201d. It speaks to a growing tendency to picture someone watching us \u2013 judging, envying, or obsessing \u2013 as we go about and document our everyday lives. But there\u2019s something unsettling about this impulse. The poster is imagining someone else imagining them \u2013 <\/em>when, in reality, no one thinks about us more than we do ourselves.<\/span>\u00a0\u201c<\/span>I think we have all internalised an imagined audience of fans and haters while forgetting that we are not celebrities,\u201d says Seresin. <\/span>\u201cW<\/span>hen people are policing each other for not being authentic, it\u2019s really about projection; we feel aware that our sense of self has been crafted by corporate consumerism, so we accuse other people of it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

Still, the paranoia isn\u2019t entirely baseless. The urge to watch others \u2013 whether for defence or entertainment \u2013 is a direct consequence of living under surveillance. \u201cGen Z was born when panopticons \u2013 that Foucauldian prison structure where you don\u2019t even need a guard because prisoners watch each other \u2013 are especially taken for granted,\u201d says Tran. <\/span>They<\/span> add that \u201cperformance\u201d has become a survival tactic in a very precarious digital economy, where we are all being watched and scrutinised by everyone, from brands to potential bosses. \u201cSurveillance that is specific to social media is always a reflection of these larger structures that have told young people, \u2018You are the capital to be watched, so you may as well make fun and funds from it,\u2019\u201d they say. This helps explain why people feel entitled to film strangers on the subway for content, or to set up tripods in public gyms.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Another offline precursor to the performification of everything, says t<\/span>ech and culture journalist <\/span>Taylor Lorenz<\/span><\/a>, is when people would simply call each other \u201cposers\u201d. \u201cWhen I was a kid, people would say you are a poser if you bought a CD but didn\u2019t really listen to it,\u201d she says. \u201cI think there will always be attempts to gatekeep taste, so the idea of a performative male won\u2019t go away, but we\u2019ve reached its peak and are leaving him behind in 2025.\u201d But a seemingly inescapable surveillance culture, brought by the trickling down of influencer culture, will linger. So too will the algorithmically fuelled obsession to put ourselves and others into neatly defined content categories.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe incentive structure of the internet is to feed tropes that sort into algorithmic boxes, so when people say they want authenticity, they want it within these specific bounds,\u201d says Lorenz. \u201cWe are looking around at the world as almost a stage; everyone has a personal brand to uphold, and everyone is using each other for social clout and attention, as well.\u201d It\u2019s only once we accept the performer within ourselves \u2013 they who throw the first \u201cperformative\u201d stone \u2013 that we can truly sit back and enjoy the show.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Source URL: https:\/\/www.dazeddigital.com\/life-culture\/article\/69296\/1\/everything-everyone-become-performative-male-2025-authentic-social-media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To exist on social media is to engage in performance art. Mouthing to your favourite song? That\u2019s lip-syncing. Sharing a story about your day? That\u2019s narrative storytelling. Posting a photo dump on Instagram? That\u2019s curating. Engaging with popular \u201cskits\u201d on TikTok? That\u2019s miming. The internet has made performing parts of ourselves, and our lives, not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1096650,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[76],"class_list":["post-1096649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-dazeddigital-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1096649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1096650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1096649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1096649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1096649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}