Alamo Square thronged with hundreds of young, identically dressed men on Friday night, Labubus hanging from their belt loops and feminist literature in their tote bags. Passersby might have wondered if there was a concert or strangely popular poetry reading happening. But no: this was a meme-inspired contest to crown the city’s most performative man.
I should have won.
The meme is newly viral, but the archetype is age-old. Early in human history, I assume, men figured out that they could woo women by adopting their interests. It’s not hard to imagine that a caveman enamored by a painter would dip his own hairy finger in the paint bucket, or a Roman might spend a little extra time at the temple of Minerva to impress a religious crush.
The performative male reads Jane Austen and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, listens to Clairo, drinks matcha, and prefers analog media. He is sensitive, stylish, and bespectacled. He is also willing to do anything — become anyone — to get laid.
This kind of guy might have been called a poser or a hipster in earlier eras. They are try-hards, trendsters cloaked in the signifiers of “nice guys.” As the persona has solidified in internet memes over the past few months, men in their early 20s have embraced them, entering contests to determine the most performative in cities like New York, Seattle, and Toronto.
When SF’s performative male contest was finally announced last Friday, I knew the only way to understand the craze was to enter it myself. I prepared carefully. My City Lights tote was laden with an anthology of 19th century women’s rhetoric, a Joan Baez record, a film camera, two borrowed Labubus, wired earbuds, a matcha latte, and a separate bucket of matcha powder. I was sure I would return to the office with trophy in hand.
But when I arrived at Alamo Square, it was clear the competition was stiffer than I ever could have imagined.
I looked left and saw a T-shirt that said, “The future is female.” Then a hoodie with a hand-drawn, taped-on slogan: “I HATE PERIODS.” I cursed under my breath. One guy had three Labubus and a bell hooks paperback. Another had his nose buried in the Michelle Obama memoir. I started to sweat. My only hope was that my sheer volume of accoutrements would save me.
The first of three rounds was judged by an artificial intelligence model developed specifically for the event by engineer Blaire Pang, 21. Pang trained the model to recognize certain items (matcha lattes and Labubus, for instance) and assign each contestant a score. I submitted a hasty iPhone photo of my regalia and held my breath. After a minute, my score appeared in green: 70.59 out of 100. I exhaled.
Organizer Kake Jin, 20, said she had helped coach a friend on how to win Toronto’s performative male contest earlier this month. She told him what to wear, which accessories to display, and even recommended he bring an easel and pretend to paint en plein air. But, in true performative male style, he let her down: he had to work and couldn’t make it. She was so disappointed that she decided to host her own contest.
Jin and her cohosts — three other women between 19 and 24 who work in tech — came up with the AI judging to give their event a little SF flavor. Only those who passed the robot’s judgment moved onto the second round, where they received feedback from a panel of local influencers (among them the twins who made the infamous Tech and the City video earlier this summer).
But I never got to hear what the influencers thought of my getup. Before I knew it, the crowd had formed a circle around 10 contestants. One had scored 100 on the AI test, someone whispered in awe. Was this part of the plan? I had no idea. Someone was trying to slowly ride a motorbike through the crowd. The hosts sent out a text blast to those who had RSVP’d: “Park Capacity reached — we are starting to turn people away.”
Amid the chaos, the picture soon became clear: the guys in the circle were the finalists, and I was not among them.
Disappointment turned to relief when I witnessed the judging process. “Name a Clairo album!” one judge demanded of a boy with a mandolin. “Quote a passage of feminist literature!” another cried. One contestant tried to recall Audre Lorde’s quote about the master’s tools and what they might or might not do to the master’s house, but couldn’t quite get it out.
The judges asked a meek-looking chap why he should win.
“I wish men had periods,” he responded with surprising force. The crowd went insane.
A tiny dog trembled in the arms of finalist Justin Quan, 24, who wore a sleeveless, seafoam green sweater. Quan said he was a “consumer AI founder.”
I began to get disoriented. In the fading light, the concentric circles of spectators started to spin, and the crowd’s baggy denim seemed to converge into a curtain blocking the ground from view. I found myself lost in thought, wondering if there wasn’t some downside to making a joke out of listening to women, or reading their writing, or engaging with their music. Is this driving young men away from authentic feminism? And where does this meme leave boys who earnestly like Adrienne Rich and Mitski? Are they now perceived as posers by default?
The sight of a fishing pole hovering over the crowd snapped me out of my reverie, a Labubu affixed to the end of its line. Somebody was fishing for a girlfriend.
The judges were now assigning star ratings to each finalist. A boy with a BRAT T-shirt, two pairs of headphones, and a MIDI keyboard controller said the instrument was “the soundtrack to my healing.”
“He’s an audiophile!” cried a spectator.
Soon, the judges eliminated all but five of the finalists, and it was the crowd’s turn to cheer for its favorite. SF native James Bennett, 24, clad in a Kangol hat and animal-print tie, emerged victorious and accepted a gold trophy.
“Since I have the platform: free Palestine and fuck ICE!” Bennett said. He added that his mom gave him his Labubu.
Her voice hoarse from yelling, Jin thanked her sponsors, which include an AI startup and a matcha company.
Quan took his loss well.
“I was just walking home from the reading club when I saw this,” he joked. He added that the “performative male” meme had a grain of truth.
“It is ironic, but doing things out of irony is a veil,” he said. “Maybe someone will find a cute girl in the audience.”
Bennett, the winner, was surrounded by so many adoring fans that he asked them to form a line. How did it feel to be crowned San Francisco’s most performative man?
“I hate it and I love it,” said Bennett, who works in private security. “This is probably the worst thing I could have done, but it’s a beautiful memory.”
Tufts University student Hazel Hersh, 19, called the event a “third space” and said she knew she had to go as soon as she saw an Instagram reel about it last week. She believes the “performative male” trend has positive potential.
“It’s a joke but it’s also not a joke,” Hersh said. “It would be nice if men were more involved in traditionally female hobbies like reading.”
Perhaps exposure to the meme could spark genuine interest in literature, music, and women’s thoughts. Might the performative male eradicate toxic masculinity?
“Hopefully,” Hersh said.
Whether it wipes out misogyny or not, the meme spawned quite the party. Groups of young people lingered after dark, mingling and making plans to eat dumplings. Bennett obliged a seemingly endless stream of photo requests. Part of his prize, Jin explained, would be a gift of his choosing. A novel, perhaps, or a record.
“Damn,” Bennett said, glowing. “I don’t even have a freaking vinyl player.”