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this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2026
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This is all going to be very specific stereotypes, but what I understood is that there were a lot of men of a particular archetype sporting that haircut and getting overly represented in social media. The archetypes being someone who spends a lot of time around beaches, liked to do yoga in public and post pictures of themselves on Instagram doing it with quotes from Asian philosophers they haven't read, greeted people with 'namaste' and liked to roleplay as a spiritually enlightened person no matter how toxic they may or may not actually have been in relationships. Most of the time pretty chill in demeanor, but without any authenticity.
They make fun of it a little in the Boy Boy video about the North Korean haircuts, pointing out how many people they interviewed had the same hairstyle.
I can definitely tell you I met some of the people I described and didn't especially like them, but I have also met people with the haircut who are cool, just like any other hairstyle. I can see how it might have became something of a red flag for women though, beyond just longer hair being feminine if they lived in an area with an abundance of that type of guy. Like some places around California. I think the pony that Erika3sis posted about is kind of the reflection of that.
I also remember the manbun thing being about that granolla faux-spiritualism where I live. I also remember some tinge of people in other places using it in a homophobic way with me thinking "wait your problem is that they're gay????"
I think it was definitely all over the place like you're saying.
When people have a hair-trigger on bigotry (no pun intended lol), the smallest thing can unleash it. I don’t doubt there were some guys with man-buns who were annoying, but it seems exaggerated, yknow? In a Freudian, subconscious way:
People were uncomfortable (more or less consciously) with a man being beautiful, so when that man does something wrong which is acceptable to criticize, then all of that frustration becomes fixated on the haircut, as if the haircut precipitated the entire thing. Similar story in the workplace: woman managers are called misogynistic slurs and “bossy” because people have unchecked misogyny which vents out disproportionately on the smallest wrongs. Or a black man shoplifts, then every suburbanite gets kirked up about black people in general, resulting from the suburbanite’s alienation but channeled through their latent racism.
I can't say there wasn't an element of what you're talking about to it. I just didn't personally experience it or see it. Most people I know just had the association of the behavior I was talking about with that kind of hairstyle. It wasn't really the hair itself and might well have been dudes who shaved their heads bald like monks acting the same way. Which I don't think is entirely wrong depending on the context, because I have a similar red flag reaction to anyone sporting Hitler-youth looking hair like Thomas Shelby. Sometimes it's a deliberate choice for someone to be perceived a certain way or fit into a crowd/trend and lean into whatever stereotype is associated with that hairstyle or dress.
Yeah, because the "man bun" hairstyle was influenced by topknots historically or presently worn by men in South and East Asia, right? So it figures that the "man bun" hair style would have a lot of overlap with that whole yoga and pop Asian philosophy crowd.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: