Here’s a thought that may ruffle some feathers, and, by the sheer audacity of it all, an unpopular take, but here it goes:
Calling everything performative does not make you an intellectual.
There, I said it. Round of applause, I take a bow, the world ends, kaboom—I move on from my own attempt at being a performative intellectual myself because of this cynical nihilism.
Calling everything performative – including anything that is authentic to a person – somehow became the default when something is deemed novel, uncomfortable, or cumbersome. Performative reading this, performative style that, performative lifestyle, and life is a performance all over the place… please, excuse the language, but get over yourself. Calling everything performative does not remotely make you an intellectual, genuine, or someone perched upon a high throne of moral and intellectual superiority over everyone else .
If you have been a chronically online lurker like myself, then you would have encountered the word “performative” plastered on your FYP, permeating your carefully structured algorithm, or, strangely enough, written in your mother’s Snapchat and Instagram bio for no apparent reason. God forbid it lands in your TikTok comments after you post your highlighted notes and annotated hardbound Emily Brontë while boarding a bus to Kvadraturen
The internet has turned “performative” into a thought-terminating cliché, a buzzword deployed to dismiss anything that makes us slightly uncomfortable. Read a book in public? Performative. Drink matcha? Performative. Express an interest in feminist theory? Definitely performative. The irony is that this relentless accusation has become its own kind of performance – a way to signal that you are the one who sees through the facade, that you are the true intellectual who cannot be fooled. But calling everything performative does not make you an intellectual. If anything, it makes you lazy. It substitutes easy cynicism for genuine critique, and in doing so, actually discourages the very intellectual curiosity it aims to defend .
It started in the summer of 2025 with the archetype of the “performative male”—a man who reads feminist literature, drinks matcha, and carries a tote bag. Now it’s stamped onto almost everything, making young people hesitate to genuinely enjoy what they’re doing or pursue the hobbies they love for fear of, heaven forbid, being called cringe. Consequently, the word “performative” has lost all meaning. Sahana Mira, in her article “Why is everything called ‘performative’ on the internet now?”, expresses concern that people have grown way too comfortable throwing the word around. It latches onto even the most ordinary act, from simply doing your hair a certain way on a random Tuesday to Oscar Bobb quoting Dostoevsky – as if Norway’s World Cup campaign must never cross into the realm of classic Russian literature. Someone snaps a photo of you eating sushi with a face mask, and internet virality lumps you into the same category as a faker who does it all for attention because, duh, Hailey Bieber did it first. Mira further notes the word’s correlation with things that are considered intellectually sophisticated or that deviate from the status quo. And once the label “performative” is stuck to someone, you may as well render everything they consume and create invalid .
This is not intellectualism. This is intellectual gatekeeping—a way of declaring, “I am the arbiter of what is authentic, and you are definitely not.”
Interestingly, the most delicious and eye-opening irony is that the person calling someone “performative” is usually performing their own intellectual superiority. They accuse others of being fake to signal, “I am the one who sees through the performance. I am therefore the real intellectual.” In Phil H. ‘s Substack essay on the Fridman Paradox, he writes: “A discourse that prides itself on rejecting superficiality has, in its fixation on form over substance, become its own kind of shallow.” In this regard, intellectual aesthetics—the performance of deep thinking—can actually obscure a lack of genuine intellectual substance. Take, for example, that one classmate who sits in the front row, casually drops Foucault into every conversation, and then stares blankly when asked to explain what he really means. The accusation of performance has become an end in itself rather than a marker of rigorous inquiry. It creates the illusion of deep thought without upholding the standards of critical analysis or epistemic accountability that true intellectualism demands.
A real intellectual does not dismiss; they engage.
Instead of asking, “Is this person really reading?”, try asking what they are reading. Instead of mocking the person with the flared patched jeans, neon hair, and purple makeup, talk to them about their art. Critique of performance is valid, but it must be critique, not dismissal. It must engage with substance, not just sneer at style. In Miguel Moreno’s “Brains as Brand: The Cultural Economy of Intellect under Competitive Authoritarianism,” performative intellectualism and anti-intellectualism are not framed as opposites separated by a vast threshold; they are “correlative expressions of a single transformation.” Both avoid the hard work of genuine thought
So when this plays out during your weekend trip to the gym, where you see “The Pilates Girl” with her post-workout matcha and Albert Camus in hand, pause before keeping “performative” in your vocabulary repertoire. What if she is just as engaged? Excited? Trying to figure out who she is and what she believes? The cynicism of calling everything performative is the enemy of the intellectual community. It creates a culture of suspicion where no one feels safe to be curious, to try out ideas, or to perform intellectualism until it becomes real.
So pick a side.
You cannot simultaneously complain about anti-intellectualism and mock people for their intellectual curiosity. Calling everything performative is the easy way out. It requires no thought, no engagement, no curiosity. It is a performance of intellectual superiority that is itself shallow and anti-intellectual. If you want to be a real intellectual, do the work. Read the book. Engage with the ideas.
