Performance In The Panopticon
Memes, Surveillance and Cultural Phenomena
I find the whole ‘performative man’ idea to be an odd one. For one thing, the online furor around it is odd because the concept - or maybe archetype is the correct word here - is hardly a new one. We used to call them ‘soft boys’ not six or seven years ago if I recall correctly, but that was in the pre-TikTok era when their existence was largely seen as being limited to a handful of arts and humanities students who hung around Grogan’s with painted nails and Doc Martens.
They also would read some classic works of literature outside with a coffee or a pint, and they too were also accused of leaving the women they dated on read and using what is now known as ‘therapy-speak’ to excuse said behaviour.
Much like then, I’ve to question the extent to which said men are in fact being performative and faking being ‘deep’ or trying to signal that they’ve a greater degree of emotional intelligence than the average man. This isn’t me saying that none of these men aren’t using their public reading of Sylvia Plath to try and signal to women that they’re ‘not like other boys’1, but there’s something about the discourse surrounding their existence that rubs me the wrong way.
My feeling is that, as with much of the memes or trends or indeed discourse that occurs on TikTok2, what was once something of a meme-slash-commentary on the way some heterosexual3 men will pull every trick out of the bag to try and sleep with women has now become a sort of licence to some to film and photograph strangers just minding their business.
We’ve been here before too. Remember the ‘West Elm Caleb’4 thing from the lockdown years? Or the ‘you’re not a vibe, bro’ meme from around the same time? I don’t know lads, it seems a lot of folks are once again doing that thing where, for whatever reason, once a meme reaches a level of public consciousness, they become comfortable filming and speculating about a stranger and their morality5.
I’m not saying there's nothing to the whole ‘performative’ thing here. I spent many an hour in and around Grogans to know the predecessors to ‘this version’ of these men fairly well6, and a fair few of them exhibited the behaviour that many of the women complaining about their successors have done7. Women are definitely still being left on read, and (some of) these men are probably dodging commitment and excusing behaviour by hiding behind a veneer built around creased paperbacks and wired headphones.
But should said behaviour (or rather, the supposedly solid indicators of it) warrant being surveilled? Of course, you’ve the right to take film and photographs in public spaces, but people also have the right to object to being in said photographs should they want to8. Why does the existence of a meme/archetype suddenly make people feel comfortable to film strangers?
Also, what if these men9 genuinely like all this stuff? Clairo’s a great musician. Matcha is an acquired taste if you ask me but I’m sure some people do genuinely like it. The Trader Joes tote bag is actually really useful and made fairly well for the price. If you like Sylvia Plath, you’re obviously going to read her books and said reading may occur in a coffee shop sometimes. Indeed, one could argue that the memes about the men who do all of the above only because they’re peforming have themselves become performative.
I don’t know lads, I just don’t know. Yes, a lot of men are realizing certain cultural and social signals and objects may be valued by some women and are going to exploit that. But again, does that warrant filming strangers and putting it on the internet?
We’re all performing or signalling lads, it’s in our nature. We’re also all guilty participants in the panopticon to a certain degree. I guess the question we’ve to ask ourselves is this: to what extent (if any) would we want it’s lens turned on us?
In the ‘soft boys at the bar’ days, Plath and Davis were replaced by Camus, Dostoevsky and Joyce (who are all good authors to be fair)
You could also insert Instagram and maybe Twitter here too but I don’t think they’ve the same pull or reach.
This is something else that bothers me about this - are all these supposedly performative men being surveilled straight? How many fashion and cultural trends are started by gay or bisexual men and then appropriated by straight men to the point the line between who started it and who’s just hopping on the bandwagon ends becomes blurred? (a lot, unsurprisingly)
There’s a great video by the YouTuber Sarah Z on this that springs to mind.
I grant you that this has become generally more common but still.
I do take a certain degree of pride in not having been one of said men but I’ve to wonder whether that was because I’d finished up college at that point. Or maybe it’s that I wasn’t an NCAD student, who knows.
I will say, despite the above footnote, I’m not removing myself entirely from the guilty party here. I wasn’t above using the whole ‘I really like film photography and vinyls’ line in either the bar or at house parties. It didn’t really work mind you.
I believe that, in the UK for example, photographers can assert an artistic right of sorts that allows them to say ‘look, I understand your objection but this is for artistic purposes’ or something along those lines.
Another thing to consider here is what this all says about how we view the idea of manhood/masculinity, both in terms of the actions of (some of) these men and in terms of the attitudes of those filming them.