Hi, I'm Ellie Anderson.

And I'm David Peña Guzman.

Welcome to Overthink.

The podcast, we're two friends who are also professors, put philosophy and dialogue with the everyday.

Because big ideas are within everyone's reach.

David, one thing I've noticed a lot lately is that everybody is talking about performativity.

I heard this a lot this summer with the term performative allyship, which I take it as basically the idea that a lot of people are trying to

act like allies, say to the black community in the wake of the BLM protests last summer,

but they're not really doing so in an authentic way. Have you noticed this?

Well, there was also that moment when the term was also used a lot in social media to talk about

performative environmentalism when we were having that debate about whether or not we should be

buying and using plastic straws. Oh my god, do I remember as somebody

who lives in L.A., this was everywhere. Yes, yes. Well, and then there were all these startups that

started selling these metal straws that would be like on your keychain or hidden in your pen.

So you could go somewhere and just like, oh, don't mind me, I'm just popping my metal

straw out of my pocket. Honestly, I think those are pretty cool. Well, but the point is that a lot

of people notice a level of hypocrisy in the discourse of those who were calling for a ban on straws,

because as they were calling for a reduction in the consumption

of straws, they didn't mind ordering takeout with like, you know, a thousand plastic boxes,

et cetera.

Oh my God.

And so people were saying this is a kind of performative environmentalism that doesn't actually

...