At Seattle contest, social media is obsessed with ‘performative men’

Last week in Seattle, at the conclusion of a rowdy contest held in a public park on Capitol Hill, a young man named Marcus Jennings emerged victorious at one of the most TikToked events in recent memory: “The number one most performative male in Seattle,” as he put it in a follow-up video on TikTok.

I’d really love to explain this to you. But first let’s just set the scene:

The contestants at the “Performative Male Contest,” dozens of young men, milled around the park conspicuously but nonchalantly, waiting to be noticed and judged by an audience of several hundred onlookers.

To encourage this attention, they donned T-shirts with feminist slogans, baggy jeans and pink Nikes. They buried their noses in the first few pages of noticeably uncreased copies of “Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom”