The Performance of Caring

Recently, teens all around the world, most notably in the United States, have been struck by a trend that hits suspiciously close to home. Emerging originally from TikTok, the idea of Labubu-holding, matcha-drinking, feminist-literature-reading, and Clairo-listening "performative males” have made their debut. And while at first glance, these seemingly harmless behaviors might come off as quirky or even progressive, beneath the surface, they reveal a larger cultural issue that we simply can’t ignore.

First, it is important to recognize what a "performative male” exactly is, in the literal sense. Unfortunately, no dictionaries have adopted a concrete definition quite yet, but it can best be colloquially explained as a man who adopts hyper specific hobbies, personality traits, and physical adaptations that are often seen as feminine. Ideally, this is done to attract women, luring them in with the guise of somebody a woman would have plenty in common with, when in reality, it’s all for show. 

But performative males, as odd as their sentiment may be, are not actually the most concerning version of performative individuals that the world currently has to offer. They’re somewhat of a symptom of a much larger and looming issue: performative activism. Similarly to the Labubu-wielding teenage boys of today, performative activists promote and act as if they stand for a cause that in reality, they don’t genuinely support or care deeply for. 

Truth be told, we’ve seen performative activism play out time and time again. Half a decade ago, during the Black Lives Matter movement, profile pictures on Instagram, Twitter and TikTok were filled with black squares. These squares were meant to represent an individual’s undying support of the BLM movement. But soon enough, people slowly started changing their profile pictures back to what they were before the movement, and then proceeding to not say a word about the horrific hate crimes and attacks on black individuals which were rapidly worsening. I must make it abundantly clear that the issue with this situation was by no means the fact that people changed their profile images– after all, our social media profiles are places where every person should feel free to express themselves and their beliefs in whichever way they would like. The act of removing a profile picture in support of the BLM movement never meant that somebody was a performative activist, but often, their actions afterwards did. It was as if when black screens fell, so did the support of what they stood for, even amidst a media which gave clear updates on multitudinous wrongdoing against people of color.

This pattern of how our society tends to express activism regarding real world issues is extremely concerning, yet it reveals something extremely prevalent in the world today. Everybody wants to be able to say they were part of a movement or change, but very few want to spend their time leading it and ensuring its success. Social media being so popular has most definitely contributed to, if not caused, this issue by offering an easy way out: you can “raise awareness” while simultaneously doing nothing to help the situation.

And that’s the paradox of performative activism. It makes people who participate in it look like genuinely good people with positive intentions, which sometimes they are, while in reality they simply have to lift their finger once to click a repost button online. It creates a culture where aesthetics are sorely mistaken for ethics, and where caring publicly holds far more value than caring purposefully.

Admittedly, it is quite easy to fall victim to performative activism. After all, there are only so many hours in a day, and helping out every cause you see and want to aid is rarely something doable, especially alongside the myriad of things the average person is expected to complete around the clock. Sleeping, eating, drinking, working, and being a good family member and friend on its own is difficult, so adding things to that cycle often ends up being impossible. The point is that you aren't expected to participate in every campaign with a leadership position, attend every protest out there, and turn your social media feed into an informational haven about all the world's current events. We should all merely remain aware of what we post, but more importantly, why we are posting it. 

So, next time you post a headline on your Instagram story, think about whether or not you plan to even follow up on what happens with that situation. If you do, then good on you! If you don’t, just remember: that action gives you something in common with some labubu-holding performative male out there, and it can't get much worse than that.

Sources

Wellman, Mariah L. “Black Squares for Black Lives: Performative Allyship as Credibility Maintenance for Social Media Influencers on Instagram.” Social Media + Society, vol. 8, no. 1, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051221077636

Alfonseca, Kiara. “Activists Say ‘Performative’ Social Media Posts Do Not Equate to Real Change.” ABC News, 14 Aug. 2020, https://abcnews.go.com/US/activists-performative-social-media-posts-equate-real-change/story?id=72341970

Roy, Jessica. “The Problem with ‘Performative’ Activism on Social Media.” Los Angeles Times, 4 June 2020, https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/story/2020-06-04/performative-activism-social-media-black-lives-matter