I recently wrote a piece for Fast Company about performative masculinity in the workplace. The crux of the piece is how many men—driven by a deep societal insecurity surrounding living up to traditional standards of masculinity and a fear of being perceived as deviating from the norm—perform what they think it means to “be a man.”
Deep down, many of these men are not the alpha-male types they wish to portray—and the inspiration for the piece was how many men betray this with their actions—yet many of them have realized that there’s merit to this performance: it nets them respect, could help with promotions, and gives them a platform from which to perch themselves above less manly men.
One section of the piece zooms in on the performative nature of the “tech bro” archetype that dominates the C-Suite (and headlines) in Silicon Valley. The subtitle of that section is, “The Tech Bro: Our Loudest Archetype,” and in it, I wrote, “at the moment, few industries capture the celebrated absurdity of masculinity’s narrowest view more than Big Tech,” (and I have to give a shoutout to Zoe Bernard’s 2023 Vox piece, “Silicon Valley’s very masculine year” for the inspiration here), which sums up that section’s thesis: in their quest to telegraph a very specific form of masculinity (and in turn, transform themselves from geeky, hoodie wearing stereotypes to bow-hunting, MMA-fighting, perm-getting, beheamoths of manhood), these guys have actually become—to the discerning viewer, at least—the poster boys for performance over substance.
Still, I pointed out “discerning viewer,” deliberately here, because to those who might be more concerned with style over substance (and in telegraphing success vs. achieving it…or it could be argued with actual success, because as easy as it is to make fun of the Mark Zuckerbergs, Jeff Bezoses, and Elon Musks, of the world, it can’t be argued that these men have never been more rich or powerful), depending on what field they’re working in, performative tech-broness, might be slightly more advantageous to them than simply performing a broader masculinity (for better or worse, I think there is real validity to faking it till you make it).
I encountered this performative tech-broness recently at my beloved Sauna House. While this could’ve easily just been the latest entry into Overheard at the Asheville Saunas, I thought this one warranted its own analysis.
I went to the Sauna House alone on a Wednesday night about three weeks back, which—if we’re really analyzing this, especially from anything close to a scientific way—is a real deviation from my norm. Usually, I go on Mondays, and I typically go with a friend (so often I’m not as attuned to the conversations around me unless they’re super wild).
For the first hour, the crowd was perfectly unremarkable, but around the second hour a pair of gentleman arrived who I could not stop listening to (and it’s worth mentioning that I didn’t need to eavesdrop here: they were talking loudly, like they wanted people to hear them—one could argue that the volume of their conversation had a performative quality).
It’s also worth noting—and this might seem shallow, but I assure you, in the world of performative masculinity, how you look matters—that physically, these men didn’t telegraph, let’s go with, sophistication. Like, sometimes people carry themselves with an air that says, “I’m rich and successful and don’t need to brag about it.” Some people carry themselves a bit more meekly—while their conversations were full of bravado, but these men moved as if they were more comfortable observing from the sidelines.
I first noticed their conversation because—of course, in addition to the fact that they were talking so loudly to one another that it was pretty hard to ignore them—they were essentially playing corporate buzzword bingo, and I find few things more amusing than corporate yogababble (performative corporate yogababble is a whole other conversation—I’m half convinced it exists solely so people could boost their own self esteems and seem more in the know when the bust out a new buzzword and then have to gently explain its meaning to other, less informed peons).
They talked about hitting KPIs (and how one unfortunate colleague never managed to meet the required goals)! They spoke of DISRUPTION! They talked about synchronicity, synergy, and alignment (I wish I were making this up; I’m not)!
Then, they started talking about all the “tech summits” they’ve seen in their days. They talked about which “provided value” and which were dead. They talked about how “wild” the “after parties” got, and when describing a man one of them met at a “tech summit” in Charlotte (you might see now, why I put this particular “tech summit” in quotes…), one of them actually said the words “he’s a real titan of industry” out loud; I thought that was just something people wrote in like, Inc. profiles, but not something real people in the real world said with their mouths.
Here was my favorite exchange between them (paraphrasing because I had to wait till after my sauna house session to transcribe this):
Performative Tech Bro 1: “You catching the red eye there?”
Performative Tech Bro 2: “No red eye directly from Asheville to Dubai.” Editor’s Note: No shit.
Performative Tech Bro 1: “Sucks, man.”
Performative Tech Bro 2: “Gotta take an early morning flight to Charlotte, then go Charlotte to New York, then fly through Saudi first.” Editor’s Note: Saudi!
Performative Tech Bro 1: “You been to the Saudi summit, man?”
Performative Tech Bro 2: “No, but I’d love to go.”
Performative Tech Bro 1: “It’s awesome! It’s like fucking Darvo in the desert.” Editor’s Note: I know this is a verbatim quote because I’ll never forget it as long as I live.
Performative Tech Bro 2: “It’s sick. Those guys party. And they have such an innovative stance on crypto.” Editor’s Note: I also know this is a verbatim quote because I’ll never forget it as long as I live.
Performative Tech Bro 1: “I basically live in the Delta Lounge these days.”
Performative Tech Bro 2: “Same, it’s like my second home.”
Now, this is where I actually have a provable reason to question just how worldly and connected these two are. Delta doesn’t have a lounge in the Asheville airport (you can fly Delta out of Asheville, but there are no lounges for any airport here; it’s a regional airport in the biggest sense of the word). Charlotte, the closest large airport to Asheville, probably has a Delta Lounge, but it’s an American Hub. If your job necessitated flying Delta constantly, and you had the choice to live anywhere, it probably wouldn’t be in North Carolina.
During a subsequent exchange, Performative Tech Bro 2 gave another significant indication that the wordliness these two were attempting to showcase was just that: a showcase, because no cosmopolitan tech bro who spent “tons of time” doing “business in the big apple” would ever refer to Midtown Manhattan the way he did.
They were talking about NYC morning sauna raves, which I, too, have heard about, because I read things on the internet.
Performative Tech Bro 2: You in New York often? Editor’s Note: I couldn’t tell whether they were longtime friends or had just met.
Performative Tech Bro 1: I get there enough for work.
Performative Tech Bro 2: I should basically live there. I’m there constantly. It’s so good to go there and just like, soak in all the ideas people have up there.
Performative Tech Bro 1: New York is the center of the universe, man.
Performative Tech Bro 2: I basically live there. Like, I might as well just get a condo in MidCity with all the time I’m there.
I texted this to one of my friends who’s a native New Yorker. Her response? “Wait, does he mean Midtown? I’m dying.”
The older—and wiser?—I get, the more jarringly obvious it is how many people are performing who they’d like to be in their day-to-day life. I get that we all do it to some extent, whether consciously or unconsciously, and at least with the male performances, so much of that is derived from just how strong a currency being perceived as masculine is in American culture.
What’s funny—and the succinct thesis, if you will, of this very meandering post—is this performative tech-bro ness, shows we’ve basically reached a meta version of performative masculinity, where the performance—in this case, the performative tech bro-ness—is of something that itself is indicative, and almost a parody of, the smoke and mirrors often necessary to be the man.
AshevilleExplorer 
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