It is easy to get carried away while doomscrolling on Instagram, repeatedly encountering videos discussing the same viral trends. Do you use girl math to justify spending because you’re “just a girl”? Have you labelled your male friend who drinks matcha and listens to Beabadoobee as “performative”? How many videos have encouraged you to “embrace your femininity”?
Content like this is undeniably funny, which explains its widespread popularity and how seamlessly it seeps into everyday vocabulary. However, when stripped of nuance, such humour can become dangerous as it subtly reinforces an ‘us-versus-them’ form of polarisation, often assumed to be confined to politics, revealing how popular culture plays a crucial role in shaping social identity. When viewed through this lens, social media trends take on greater significance; Stuart Hall (1997) argues that popular culture functions as a site where meaning is produced, circulated, and contested. Trends such as Girl Math or the Performative Male are therefore not merely entertainment; they operate as cultural texts that encode ideas about gender, consumption, and belonging.
Take the Performative Male trend for instance. The term is often used to describe men who engage with interests traditionally coded as feminine- reading feminist literature, drinking iced matcha lattes, wearing “aesthetic” clothing, or listening to indie music by female artists— and implies that these behaviours are motivated by a desire for female approval rather than genuine interest. Through humour, the trend reinforces the idea that men should remain within rigid boundaries of acceptable masculinity, as it implicitly mocks those who are ‘performative’.
Tajfel and Turner’s (1979) theory of social identity provides crucial insights into understanding this; they state that one’s identity that is based on group membership, i.e. their social identity, has major implications on one’s behaviour, for there are either unsaid or said norms that prescribe and evaluate who the ideal member” of a group is. It also makes a clear distinction between the in-group and the outgroup, which leads an individual to make judgements where the in-group is positively appraised, while the out-group is viewed in a negative light (Hogg, 2016). Further, contemporary polarisation, as suggested by Iyengar and Krupenkin (2018) is found to be more affective, meaning that the liking of the in-group is based on a sense of emotional attachment rather than logicality.
It is clear that this trend is drawing a distinction between “performative” men and “authentic” men, and even this basic categorisation is sufficient to facilitate bias. Research on norm transmission demonstrates that repeated exposure to behavioural framings, even in humorous contexts, shapes perceptions of what is typical and acceptable (Cialdini et al., 1990). The Performative Male label thus functions as a low-stakes identity cue, inviting audiences to view men who deviate from masculine norms with scepticism or ridicule. By framing this judgement as a joke, the trend reinforces patriarchal expectations while maintaining plausible deniability.
Humour also encourages stereotype activation, as stereotypes can be activated automatically, even when people explicitly reject them (Devine 1989). Gender-specific humour is particularly useful in this sense since it reduces cognitive barriers. Thus, even individuals who are against stereotypical gender norms, end up participating in such trends, reflecting Gbadegesin’s (2019) examination of social media memes which demonstrated that satire frequently reproduces gender ideology precisely because audiences believe it is harmless. The end consequence is subtle cognitive priming, rather than overt belief change. Further, digital platforms intensify these effects through heuristic processing. Individuals tend to rely on mental shortcuts when processing low-effort, high-volume information (Kahneman 2011). Social media demands exactly this: fast, affective responses rather than reflective evaluation, making it easy to reinforce identity-coded heuristics such as “men who act this way are merely performative.”
Thus, as discussed, understanding polarisation requires attention not only to political discourse, but also to the everyday cognitive processes through which group identity, and ultimately micropolarisation is conceived. Cultural trends reveal how humour, repetition, and digital amplification can quietly reshape social perception. Polarisation, in this sense, is not simply argued into existence; it is learned, rehearsed, and normalised through ordinary interaction.
References
- Cialdini, R. B., Reno, R. R., & Kallgren, C. A. (1990). A focus theory of normative conduct: Recycling the concept of norms to reduce littering in public places. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58(6), 1015-1026.https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.58.6.1015
- Devine, P. G. (1989). Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56(1), 5-18. https://doi.org/10.1037/00223514.56.1.5
- Gbadegesin, V. O. (2019). Gender ideology and identity in humorous social media memes. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities. https://doi.org/10.1093/lIc/fqz039 • Hall, S. (1997). Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. SAGE Publications Limited.
- Hogg, M. A. (2016). Social Identity Theory. In McKeown, S., Haji, R. & Ferguson, N. (Eds) Peace psychology book series (pp. 3-17). Springer.
- Iyengar, S., & Krupenkin, M. (2018). Partisanship as social identity; Implications for the study of Party Polarization. The Forum, 16(1), 23-45. https://doi.org/10.1515/for-2018-0003
- Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In Austin, W. G.& Worchel, S. (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations. (pp. 33-37).
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