Harbingers’ Magazine is a weekly online current affairs magazine written and edited by teenagers worldwide.
harbinger | noun
har·bin·ger | \ˈhär-bən-jər\
1. one that initiates a major change: a person or thing that originates or helps open up a new activity, method, or technology; pioneer.
2. something that foreshadows a future event : something that gives an anticipatory sign of what is to come.
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13 February 2026
‘Performative reading’ is when a ‘reader’ wants ‘everyone to know’ that they read.
Over the past year, social media has popularised a very specific aesthetic: flannel-clad, matcha-sipping, baggy jeans-wearing men holding feminist literature titles such as The Second Sexby Simone de Beauvoir or My Bodyby Emily Ratajkowski.
Similarly, their female equivalents, often labelled “thought daughters”,are defined by endless introspection, an impressive collection of books and a tendency to overanalyse to the point of exhaustion.
These trends are causing people to doubt authenticity online. This is where a new phrase emerged in the cultural lexicon: “performative reading” – a modern trend where a ‘reader’ wants ‘everyone to know’ that they read, treating books like accessories.
While I believe that criticism of performative activists or performative corporations has merit, applying the same lens to reading raises questions. Does performative reading actually matter? And what does it mean for people who “really” read?
Once reading is framed as performative, a private and reflective habit becomes a public liability.
Readers like me often try to distance ourselves from both offline and online performative reading. Much of this trend plays out on social media communities, such as BookTok and Bookstagram. These spaces, I believe, should be built on genuine enthusiasm, not suspicion.
What unites so-called “thought daughters” and “performative males” is not a taste for popular books or a love of reading, but the accusation of being performative.
@henry_grey_earls Performative reading> (i need gf) #love #nyc ♬ Intervallo II – Ennio Morricone
A driving force behind the rise of the ‘performative males’ trope was a series of viral videos showing men reading classic literature in public. These clips were met with the criticism that the men were merely feigning interestfor attention.
The female equivalent is no exception. What began as a way of teasing seemingly pretentious men has spread to any readers caught with a print book in hand, leaving them subject to internet scorn for the act itself.
While performative reading might seem harmless on the surface, its effects ripple through literary culture in subtle but demanding ways. When reading becomes a spectacle, literature shifts from a pure genuine form of exploration into a performance of taste.
Reading seemingly ‘smart’ books by the likes of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy or Albert Camus is often seen as a way to provoke admiration or validation from others. This act of showcasing intellectualism had led to a sort of condemnation of certain readers – but maybe it shouldn’t.
I have witnessed this first-hand. Surrounded by avid readers, I’ve witnessed friends genuinely engaging with so-called “performative” books – classics and philosophical works that demand time and thought.
Yet many of them express anxiety about reading these books in public (perhaps in school or a library or outdoors), worried that they might be labelled as performative for simply carrying certain titles. One friend even began using a Kindle in public – not for convenience, but to avoid scrutiny.
For many new or hesitant readers, the pressure to read socially ‘acceptable’ books can make reading feel exclusive rather than the inviting community that it is. What should be a personal, accessible activity turns into a culture where people read less freely – if it all. It’s disheartening to see them hesitate to fully embrace their interests because of how they might be perceived.
Such judgements hinge on exclusion and confine readers to an unofficial syllabus they may have no interest in.
Performative reading may have started as a joke, but its ripple effects have reached far beyond a few viral TikToks. When readers are trained to second-guess their choices – when Simone de Beauvoir or Fyodor Dostoyevsky begin to look like a costume rather than a curiosity – books stop being a bridge and become a source of anxiety.
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The quiet policing of taste creates invisible rules about who gets to read what and why. It turns reading into something to justify, hide or defend. The real damage isn’t that some people read “the wrong books” for the wrong reason, it’s that others decide not to read at all.
If the goal is to cultivate a culture that values thought and imagination, then discouraging reading in any form is the most damaging outcome of all.
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© 2026 The Oxford School for the Future
