A.I. is detecting San Francisco’s ‘performative males’

What does a “performative male” look like? That’s what hundreds of attendees crowded into Alamo Square Park on Friday evening sought to answer.

And according to the gathered masses, performative males are all too often roaming the streets of San Francisco. 

A performative male is “a man that dresses for the female gaze, projecting feminine energy to get women,” said attendees AJ and Mayliah. “They’re probably from L.A., because they ran through all the women there.” 

A “performative male” is not performing masculinity but, rather, performing femininity to manipulate women into thinking they aren’t like other guys. They drink matcha or are a coffee snob. They collect analog media like vinyl, CDs or cassettes, and they wear thrifted cardigans. 

You can find them at your local small coffee shop, virtue signaling with their choice of feminist literature: Is that Jane Austen or Jane Eyre? They are hyper-trendy and yet don’t claim their eight-plus hour screentime — and they’ve become the internet’s newest punching bag. 

Propped in front of the Painted Ladies, a crowd exceeding the 1,600 RSVPs gathered to determine, along with an AI model and a panel of women, San Francisco’s most “performative male.”  

With the attendees dressed in their first-date best, you’d think Clairo was putting on a private show at the park. It was too crowded to see the panel of judges or the actual contest, but you really didn’t need to.

Everywhere you looked there were hundreds of canvas tote bags, CD collections on display, Labubus, Miffys and speakers blasting Charli XCX — performativity at its finest.

The contest was the brainchild of young women Alisa Wu, Kake Jin, Jia Chen, Morgan Hoong, Blair Pang and twins Jenny and Chrissy S. — some San Francisco tech transplants and others summer interns. 

“It’s our gift to the city before we leave,” said Wu, who will be returning to the University of Waterloo in Canada in the coming weeks. 

What sets this contest apart? Its preliminary AI detection round with a custom-built model, an aspect that is as inherently San Francisco as male performativity. 

The AI model was fed data of Labubus, matcha lattes, platform shoes, flared pants, headphones, feminist literature like Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex” and female empowerment Instagram story content. 

All contestants uploaded photos of themselves to performative.lol where the model weeded out the poser from the performative — or anybody who showed up with a Labubu or book. 

The contest promised free matcha and, while there was no fountain of green tea in this performative promised land, all contestants received gift cards from Kiss of Matcha. 

“You’re so performative, dude, you’re for sure winning,” a young guy told his performatively dressed friend, hyping him up for the contest to come. “I’ve seen Mitski live; this is not a performance,” said the contestant, anxiously awaiting the panel to come. 

Some contestants defined male performativity as simply “hating period cramps,” while others monologued about their outfits and subsequent style — which was not at all performative. 

While the majority of contestants interpreted “performative male” as the meme archetype of a poser indie boy, another dressed up in an Anime-style maid costume with a blue wig, serving his own matcha (of course). 

“If the idea of the performative male is to go against the Sigma-Alpha male, then what’s more performative than a pre-second wave image of the woman itself?” said the male wife. 

While waiting for their turn, some contestants attempted backflips out of boredom while others taped “Future is Female” onto their T-shirts. Some were chatting up the girls who came as spectators, while others brought a fishing line with a Labubu hooked to the end, bobbing it up and down over the crowd to fish out the strongest suitors. 

After the weak links were eliminated from the performativity pool, the contest hosts acted as the judging panel, bringing contestants up one by one and rating their performativity, a la the Roblox game “Dress to Impress,” with a star rating system. 

Look-alike contests have been popular across the country for the past year, starting with a Timothee Chalamet look-alike contest in New York and making its way to San Francisco just last year with the city’s search for its own Dev Patel.

“Performative male” contests are making their way along the West Coast, too, with preceding contests in Seattle and Silverlake, Los Angeles.

The winning “performative male” was none other than James Bennett, a San Francisco native and University of California, Berkeley, graduate. Bennett was sporting his usual look: Baggy jeans down to the ground, a tote bag, a thrifted cardigan, yellow Onitsuka Tigers shoes from Japan and a matcha in hand.

The costumed pieces? A Kangol hat, cropped Uniqlo button-up, wired headphones draped over his ears and a Labubu he borrowed from his mom. 

“It’s ecstatic and overwhelming,” said Bennett, swarmed by adoring fans pleading for photos. 

“We shouldn’t villainize men enjoying feminine things,” said Bennett. 

“At the end of the day, if they actually read that [feminist literature], it’s overall a net positive,” continued Bennett, a former philosophy major, which he agreed — like Big from “Sex and the City” — was “absofuckinglutely” performative.