People Expose 40 Performative Behaviors They Can't Stand, And It Says A Lot About Society

‘Thoughts and prayers’ posts. Just stop it. DO something or just be quiet.

A baby is the most precious thing on earth. Protect the life of every child! Children are a blessing! How could anyone harm a child?

Erm.. clears throat. Votes to take away free school lunch, reduced housing prices, slashes food stamps, cuts funding for transportation leaving children at risk on the way to the bus stop, removes protections for children on state health insurance.

Then they claim they never said they would pay for the child. It is the parent’s responsibility and the burden shouldn’t be on the tax payers. The parent should have considered the life it would receive before conceiving and having said “precious child”.

Performative bullcr*p that makes my blood boil.

Recording any “acts of kindness”.

Gender reveals.

Saying “ Thank you for your service.” to veterans. My veteran spouse cringes every time.

Being pro-life while looking down on single mothers and voting for people who pass bills that hurt the lower class to help the uber rich.

Also, any version of “my best friend (cousin, aunt, boyfriend, wife, etc.) is black (Asian, Native American, queer, etc.).”.

Red hat, USA flag shirt, bumper stickers, eg “these colors don’t run”, shouting “U-S-A!” while charging the capital building in an attempt to overthrow our democracy.

Performative patriotism.

People who post themselves giving stuff to homeless people on SM. It is so exploitative.

Pretending they were close to someone once they die. That performative "she lit up the room and I miss her everyday" when they hadn't spoken in 30 years and only then in passing is 100% BS. They probably bullied them in high school too.

Literally everything related to being an "alpha". Everyone knows they are absolutely, embarrassingly desperate for attention, for affection. They're so deeply alone.

Like 95% of posts on r/advice or r/amitheasshole or r/amioverreacting or any of the other seemingly dozens of similar subs.

“My husband sent d**k pics to another woman and blew our $50,000 savings in gambling last month should I think about divorce ?”

“AITA for calling the cops on my mom after she drank an entire bottle of whiskey and threw it at my head then shot my dog and said ‘you’re next’?”

“I went out on a date with a woman and she asked me for $10,000 to bail her uncle out of a Nigerian prison and I said no. She got upset so I left the date and haven’t texted to her in 12 hours. AIO?”

…you get the point. Much of it is probably made up or heavily exaggerated because people get off on any attention they can get.

Posting gym selfies with just trying to stay healthy in the caption.

Performative SM posts about how wonderful their marriage is. I believe they've actually done studies on this - the more someone posts about their perfect marriage or family, it actually means the relationship is unstable.

Maleficent_Phase_698:

I have a (sad) story!
A girl I went to HS with always posts about her amazing husband and their amazing life with their kids.
Well one day I guess she got fed up and posted the truth and then deleted it 2 minutes later.
Her post was a screenshot of texts that she had sent to her deceased father’s phone. Among the “Dad I miss you” messages she would send “I’m scared of this man. He beats me worse now that you’re gone. He won’t let me get on birth control. He won’t let me work. He says that if I try to leave he’ll k**l the kids and then me. I hate him”. And then poof the post was gone.
She just has their 4th kid a few months ago. She still talks about how perfect her life is. Social media is a lie.

Bowing their head and raising their arms in the sky as they pray. It's not for their soul that they're doing this, it's to show everyone else how pious they are. You can pray silently, without any external shenanigans, but no, they have to make a show of it.

Talk about how much they read or understand the bible. Tons of people do this (be it in person or on media) and it's clearly performative. I am a retired biblical scholar and professor of religious studies and, trust me, most clearly don't know the bible as well as they claim to.

Anything on LinkedIn.

sketchthrowaway999:

LinkedIn is so fake it makes me break out in hives. The cringe is off the charts.

Post about how selfless and charitable they are on social media.

Knobbyknees1983:

Slacktivism. Looking like you’re doing something without actually doing anything.

A lot (not all), but a lot of church going folk are in it for the appearance.

Pretending to be offended by language that was acceptable in the recent past. I'm thinking things like handicapped instead of disabled, homeless instead of unhoused, Black/African American instead of Person of Color (I know that POC encompasses multiple races/identities, but in common use it often just refers to black/AA), and so on.

Making people return to the office.

It is being done solely to present a certain image without adding any real value. That is how I interpret the word “performative.”