Not everything is "performative"

You can read in a café, it's okay.

A boy walks into a café. He is 5’9 with fluffy hair. Wired headphones connect his ears to a phone that’s tucked into the back pocket of his oversized jorts. He’s listening to Laufey. A fluffy animal keychain dangles from his belt loop, but not a Labubu because that’s too mainstream. A tote bag is slung over his shoulder. He holds a copy of The Bell Jar open in one hand. Chapter 1 because he’s barely read any. He orders an iced matcha to go. His name is The Performative Male, and he’s getting attention in the media at the moment (ELLE, Lifestyle Asia).

His existence isn’t a lie - he is out there. But internet users love to learn new words and overuse them until the criticism of a trend becomes a trend itself. The latest victim is the term ‘performative’ and its use of describing hobbies as ingenuine.

The part that bothers me the most is the fact that books and intellectualism has been roped into this. The other day, I was reading in a cafe and had a strange thought about looking like I must be trying too hard, coming all the way to a cafe in a busy shopping centre just to sit alone and read my book (I was actually on a lunchbreak for an hour and so reading in a cafe nearby). I then realised how insane that thought was, and that it really does not matter.

Sure, if The Performative Male was just holding unread feminist literature as a sort of beacon to attract women that he’ll mistreat anyway, then it’s a performance. However, the idea of reading in public in general has become subject to online criticism. If you’re sitting alone and reading a book in public, you must be putting on a performance. You need everyone to know that you’re clever. It couldn’t possibly because you like just like reading.

But say that it was performative, and that reading has just become a trend and a performative indicator of who you are as a person… is that a really bad thing? Reading should be mainstream and widely enjoyed and normal to see. If it isn’t, then it should be, and if it becomes cool and trendy because of a few performative individuals then does it really matter if it means more people read? Also, is everything not a performance to some extent? Especially online, where you chose exactly how to present yourself to perform for viewers.

Some comment section debates (I think they all have points).

Also, it seems these ‘performative’ allegations are targeted primarily at young people. If you saw an man in his forties drinking a matcha latte, you could assume he just likes the drink, or maybe is trying out a new trend and aww isn’t that lovely for him. If you saw an old woman using wired headphones you’d assume she simply prefers them, maybe because she finds new tech confusing. If an old man listens to Clairo, the internet would think it’s the most precious thing on earth. This obsession with attacking ‘performative’ behaviour seems to be a way for young people to criticise each other.

At it’s root, I think the idea of being performative stems from gatekeepers. People want to gatekeep their interests, to be the only true enjoyers of a book genre or musician. This, in my opinion, is what’s really performative. Gatekeepers put on the performance of being intellectually superior, of having better taste, of being different and simply on another level to the average consumer. These people don’t see older people as a threat or someone they have to gatekeep from, but they don’t want to share their spot in the fanbase with other teens or young people.

Teenagers and young people should be allowed to try on different looks and identities whilst they are still finding themselves. If that means putting on a certain performance whilst they learn what they really enjoy and become proud of their interests, then so be it.

There are real performative people out there, but the mathca-drinking boys are not the biggest issue. We should focus our criticism on the internet’s real performative behaviour: people who posted a black square with #BlackOutTuesday in 2020 but make racist jokes with their friends; mean girls who repost slideshows of innocent baby deer captioned “me”; people who write hateful comments on other people’s videos but have a Bible verse in their bio; people on Substack who plagiarise and use AI to perform the image of being a writer.

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