In an interview with Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson relays his transition to a pure “carnivore diet” (Rogan 00:30). Peterson attributes his predominantly meat-based diet to resolving his bodily ailments and allowing him to go about his day “better now than [he’s] ever been in [his] life” (09:45), and, crucially, frames his diet as allowing him to become intellectually “his best” (11:08). This personal improvement experienced by Peterson allows him to feel he is performing his intellectual labour at peak productivity and also has the physical strength to care for his family. These characteristics are constituted and structured in the most fundamental way as the 1950s man—one that is part social fact and part fantasy where he believed himself respected and valued for his labour in both social and the economic sphere, as head of the household and breadwinner, who was rational, strong, and in control. In this respect, Peterson idealizes a return to the past which has ignored how 1950s men were enmeshed in networks of social security. Instead, Peterson seeks to return to these coded material realities where contemporary men are no longer victims to a precarious social reality that once preserved their existence. This figure of the contemporary man is presented against everyone else who Peterson calls “fat and stupid” (Rogan 12:47). This secondary category has been made weak and victim to a social reality which no longer preserves their existence. However, men who have accepted Peterson’s narrative and adopt his practices for themselves serve all the more as representations of a masculinity coded by the precarity of the socioeconomic landscape. Located at this intersection of transgressive culture and neoliberal precarity, I set out to track the emergence of a figure I call “Keto Man”.
Keto Man is a “type” in the same way that one identifies themselves as being “punk” or a “hippie”: they are sets of conformities that inform individual behaviour and practices under contemporary conditions (a “genre” of being). The anxiety of failing within the ideologically bound identity of Keto Man isolates him from becoming his most authentic self; this means that the Keto Man discourse is characterized internally by tensions, anxieties, and contradictions. The person who finds themselves on keto wants to invest in themselves to contrast the precarity that they face in a neoliberal society. They no longer want to find themselves victimized to the inauthentic lifestyle characterized by a feminine culture. Keto Man draws on ideas of caveman autonomy and primitiveness that free the individual from contemporary cultural constructions. As well, Keto Man draws on the hegemonic masculinity associated with the figure of Superman, situating the discourse as linked to patriarchal forms of power. To explore the identity of Keto Man in greater detail, I examine the Youtuber Aaron Marino, known on his channel as “AlphaM”. As an influencer, Marino outlines the practices and behaviours which make up his life and creates a cultural image that other men can identify with and mimic. The practices he promotes become identifiable with a particular genre of being: encompassing figures like Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, and Jacob Chansley (also known as the QAnon Shaman).
The materially real practice of a meat-based diet, for Keto Man, is used with the aim to reawaken fantasies which are deeply rooted in constructions of hegemonic masculinity. His identity is a set of predetermined performances which even the working-class man feels he can relate to. On the bodily level, the dreams of recreating the strength of bodybuilding men are unattainable. But in the psyche, he reproduces images of power: over labour and over himself. This access to power, reinforced by keto discourse and culture, reinforces the belief Keto Man holds that he is a sovereign individual, where all values appear arbitrary in contrast to the immediacy of his desires. Yet keto is reproduced within contemporary food cultures like Instagram—a media ecology popularly known as “foodstagram”—not only as it offers itself as an extension of value of the individual, but, at the same time, becomes a form of currency being circulated in competition with others. As the individual shares images of their food, they aim not only to show the food’s quality but also suggest they are eating better than others. But more deeply connected to the individual’s identity is the adoption of a diet as it reflects meanings attached to foods often bordering on fully formed philosophy. The specificity of the discourse equates moral values, personal projects of health, and wider cultural beliefs. Keto, in this instance, emphasizes a narrative of personal strength.
It is precisely in this respect that this analysis of Keto Man is contextualized by the tradition of discourse analysis established by the Frankfurt School. Keto’s practices and discourse are a type of “text” reproducing ideological thought. This critique of Keto Man is a “project emerging out of a specific image of time. It is this that separates the project from critique envisioned as mere disagreement… [but] designates time as the point of contact between two (or more) states of being … [that] separates one future from another” (“Frankfurt” 7). A person on keto relates to, interprets, and acts within contemporary culture through the lens of the very specific and regimented ideology of keto. Here, keto frames itself as a solution to contemporary ails. Yet, beyond simply masking present social conditions (ideology as a false consciousness), keto points to a real critique within society. Keto’s rejection of carbs—processed breads and pastries that are draped in decadence and fantasies of luxury—still registers a real problem in capitalist economies: the motivation of profit incentivizes food culture that is unhealthy in its large quantities. This approach, one that looks at both the inner logic of an ideology and subtly or unknowingly critiques the present order, derives from Fredric Jameson’s conception of the political unconscious, which ultimately examines the embedded political context within a text. Though keto discourse acts as a utopian project of the self, aiming to separate itself from mainstream practices, it is both created from and unconsciously reproduces a capitalist system. Finally, I explore the discourse utilized by Keto Man through Roland Barthes use of semiotics.
What follows is a preliminary historicization of Keto Man. After unpacking the conditions which have brought about the emergence of Keto Man, I examine three distinct, yet interdependent forms of his identity. The first section presents a reading of the smart and savvy entrepreneur Keto Man imagines himself as within the neoliberal economy. This figure is grounded in a socioeconomic logic that maximizes productivity for its greatest return. In the second section, I examine how Keto Man frames his return to caveman practices as a restoration of what he believes makes up human essence. Finally, in the third section I confront the gendered nature of Keto Man; I examine his avowed return to traditional masculinity in contrast to the feminization of the world (and of men) he sees taking place. Tracked across all three sections are the relations of meat consumption to the configuration of stability characterized by Keto Man. This line of inquiry aims to examine how keto responds to gaps within contemporary culture that go unmet by present economic and social systems.
Emerging from the Discourse
The keto diet is best understood through the primary consumption of animal-based protein and low-carb meals: classic meals like steak and potatoes are reimagined as complete with just steak. This combination is fantasized by many as a cure-all diet: from obesity to epilepsy to cancer (Wheless 4). The rhetoric of the keto (ketogenic) diet is mutually implicated in living a healthy life. But its success as a diet was based on producing physical results: its most compelling result remains rapid weight loss. This dieting subject wants to believe they have found a system in which they can establish a secure identity: one speaks of being keto rather than just being on the keto diet. While there is an established medical discourse surrounding the keto diet that legitimates its practices, I examine keto within the contemporary cultural context. Unlike the traditional understanding of keto which demands a strict and unwavering adherence—excluding pantry staples like breads and pastas, traditionally high in carbs, as well as vegetables and legumes—I broaden this working definition of keto to encompass variations of the diet like its more extreme version the carnivore diet and the paleo diet. Both streams reproduce the same narrative as keto through a focus on the naturalness of meat consumption but are narrated under a different name. Keto points towards a set of behaviours associated with copious consumption of meat. I suggest that the set of beliefs engendered by the keto discourse can be tracked against anyone’s overreliance on meat as a primary form of sustenance.
It is, then, keto’s restrictive habits which aim to define a person’s consumption around the needs of their individual body. On keto, the body is sent into ketosis, which is considered by its adherents the most productive, physical state. No longer burning excess carbs as a source of energy, the body targets fat. As fat is naturally produced in the body and found in sufficient quantities in meat, keto is framed as reacting to the body’s deepest and most primordial needs. The “good fats” from the meat are framed as powerful inducers to performance enhancement, with adherents to the diet claiming improved levels of energy, mental clarity, and developing otherwise unreachable levels of strength.1 Though its excessive consumption is traditionally linked to the fear of clogging one’s arteries, meat is framed by those on keto as the primary cause of substantial personal transformation. This diet comes to be recognized, paradoxically, as a kind of cleanse. The body’s shift into ketosis purges the inadequacy of carbs and rebuilds itself through the pure, naturalness of meat. This total body experience comes in the form of a “keto flu,” a short-term sickness that commonly occurs in the shift of metabolic function. While its symptoms become comparable to weaning off of a drug addiction, the flu functions as a form of ritual rebirth with religious associations. Having passed through this rite, the body is now considered ready to face the harsh realities of neoliberal society. Keto is, thus, framed as a salvation – somewhere between diet and religion – that suggests it is capable of crafting one’s body (and soul) into its most ideal form.
Keto Man maintains control over his consumption right from the beginning: earning the money to buy the cut of meat right through to its preparation. But whoever follows this diet in no way escapes the logic of the market. Jennfier M. Silva’s text Coming Up Short—a sociology of working class peoples—explores people who have been unable to establish this security and become victims of the neoliberal system through economic precarity and a broad sense of purposelessness. Her text highlights how they first “experienced a steep decline in employment, job security, compensation, access to pensions, and employer-subsidized health insurance” and were displaced “to the service economy … where [they are] poorly paid, vulnerable to layoffs, and much more likely to be female” (14-15). The neoliberal subject is “individually negotiated and continually reinvented” (19) in an often-futile attempt to determine one’s social existence. As the working class male attempts to navigate the harsh realities of the neoliberal economy, he is often nostalgic for the idealized American Dream life of the 1950s and 1960s when the “welfare state …guarantee[d] basic standards of living to all, and [directed] the economy towards socially desirable ends” (Gerbaudo 19). The neoliberal subject’s nostalgia towards his parents’ generation focuses on men as they were independent. These men were enmeshed in social networks of welfare state programs, allowing them to live more dignified lives. They were not victims to the “coercion, restriction, and discrimination” (Silva 15) that presently plagues their existence.
The identity of Keto Man did not emerge solely as a response to the market conditions but, in part, arose as a reactionary movement to a growing feminist culture. At a time when the alt-right narrative was only beginning to gain mainstream traction, Donald Trump’s campaign and Presidency split the Republican party between those who “may eventually go down the road of outright fascism”, legitimating the movement and its concerns, and those who have a “greater resemblance to nineteenth-century rabid conservative nationalism” (Gerbaudo 28). These men who identify with the culturally transgressive movement—which is at the same time preoccupied with rebuilding a society based on white masculine ideals—follows from a long tradition of meninist discourse. Meninism is a male-chauvinistic discourse that emphasizes a perceived innate superiority and privilege of the male sex. Symbols of this meninist participation come from cultural touchstones like the film Fight Club. Men are depicted within the film as utilizing the rawness of their bodies for savage fighting against other men to demonstrate their strength and power. Fight Club is a reclamation of masculinity in a consumerist, post-industrial culture seen as having transformed men into lazy (feminized) office workers. This gendered essentialism calls for a return to traditional binary gender roles when men held absolute social power.
The meninist subcategory of the alt-right established itself within a new form of online society. The transgressive space that Keto Man participates in is outlined by Angela Nagle’s text Kill All Normies where she tracks how men utilize the alt-right narrative and rhetoric to offer themselves a greater sense of domination and power. These men move away from a society they see as perverted from its natural state of male superiority and long to reestablish society through a community of men who claim to see reality for what it truly is: a prison-like, feminized society. The meninist discourse attempts to reveal how sociocultural behaviours have become unfair for men as feminist practices are suggested to pervasively control individual actions. These men have constructed, in turn, a networked culture termed the “manosphere” (Nagle 86) which encourages men to utilize a perceived intrinsic power to create a reality based around a desired sovereignty to become a “real man.” The power they conceive within this system is based on performing their masculinity for other men; they want to impress men on a near-homoerotic level where other men desire to be like them, in character and physicality. While men are simultaneously in competition against and empowered by other men to completely restore traditional codes of masculinity into their daily lives, they are driven by a social misandry to which they feel victimized against the feminist wave. This bitterness and resentment of their personal struggle fills these online spaces and creates subcultures that are free of the “feminized networks [as men actively and] aggressively seek to defend the[ir] borders” (Nagle 112).
In 2008, Aaron Marino uploaded his first men’s advice video to his YouTube channel “AlphaMConsulting.” His platform would become an empire that celebrated men “looking and feeling their best” (Marino “I Am Alpha M”) through fitness, eating for physical optimization, and behaving like an alpha male. Further, the transformation of diet and lifestyle would ensure that men attain sexual conquests and economic success. The content of the channel centres on demonstrating to others how to be a “real man.” Marino’s YouTube channel, presently, has traffic of over 1 billion views and over 6 million YouTube subscribers. Though influencers like Marino exist primarily in online spaces, social media has become a prominent way of meeting and engaging with others, opening avenues to transform their online beliefs into physical experiences and expectations. Populist figures like Trump have capitalized on these communities to promote his own agenda while continually being emboldened by the increasing number of his followers.
Marino’s behaviours can be read as reproducing a hegemonic masculine identity. As both an entrepreneur and fitness influencer, his identity is based on both a notion of individuality and reproducing a traditional image of masculinity. The hair products he sells and physical fitness routines he expounds contribute to ideas of physical optimization which construct notions of hegemonic masculinity. Further, Marino’s identity is based on his diet. Marino’s physique, a defined six pack and muscular arms that he brags about creating through his diet, is interpreted as a sign of masculinity. R.W. Connell delineates this practice of reading the body as a text as body-reflexive practices, bodies as “both objects and agents of practice” (61). Marino’s diet is also linked to notions of rugged individualism and self-reliance which literally shape his body into a hyper-masculine appearance. Marino prioritizes protein consumption through meat and the exclusion of processed foods, but he frames these keto-like behaviors as self-customization, a narrative that will be examined in greater detail in the following sections. These dietary practices are described as exclusively suited to his body, yet when the diet is broken down it mimics the regimented keto diet. Like the broader influence network he is a part of, his success is based on being a reproducible figure. I suggest that Marino, but especially his AlphaM brand, while promoting a loose version of keto, is nevertheless a paradigmatic expression of the Keto Man narrative. In what follows, I examine how Marino’s diet and behaviours are constituted through “social relations and symbolism” (Connell 64) to form the social reality of Keto Man.
Keto Man: “a very regimented dude”:2 The Rational Neoliberal Subject
From William Whyte’s The Organization Man, the man who vows all parts of himself to institutions, using the language of individualism to “stave off the thought that he himself is in a collective” (5), to the contemporary apparatus of Silicon Valley and the entrepreneurs who imagine themselves as non-conformists and creating new practices, Keto Man idealizes the entrepreneur as the height of neoliberal success. The entrepreneur does not see his obedience to the neoliberal system as a form of control over him, but rather sees himself rising to the top and dominating the system itself. The entrepreneur “perform[s his] identity on the edge of convention” (“Sovereigns of Risk” 595), allowing him to push the acceptability of the system while still appearing bound by the neoliberal order. The entrepreneur works without questioning the legitimacy of the capitalist state. His ability to master the conditions of the neoliberal state for his own benefit frame him as the most worthy of success. Keto Man creates a distinction between the smartness of the entrepreneur and the run-of-the-mill white-collar worker. A tension arises in the discourse as Keto Man rejects the capitalist participation of the white-collar worker. The white-collar worker is framed within the discourse as being no more than a cog in a machine: a faceless paper pusher. He is resented by Keto Man for reproducing an ostensibly stagnant life and allowing socioeconomic conditions to direct and shape him. He is nothing but an effect of a larger system: he lacks self-directedness and creativity. Although the entrepreneur often begins as a nerdy office worker, the white-collar labourer is regarded as being a lesser type of man until he discovers a niche product that drives him to fantastic success. Keto Man sees the entrepreneur’s rise to the top as possible for anyone as he is not born into the entrepreneurial power, but rather must carve his own path.
The brutality of making it to the top of the economic system is less physical than it is an entrepreneurial drive to risk everything for innovation. Keto Man wants to be seen as equally a natural and powerful force within the knowledgeable, invisible hands of the market. What makes Keto Man’s entrepreneurial drive so distinctive is his belief that a meat-induced power has procured his financial success rather than the mechanics of the market. Anything less than the high quality of the meat would devastate the performance of the entrepreneur. Thus, the average man believes himself also capable of attaining economic and social freedom through his consumption of meat. The economic independence necessary for Keto Man to be able to afford meat in such large quantities becomes analogous to gaining personal freedom. To be on such an expensive diet like keto would appear reserved for the upper working class, or middle-class citizens. Yet, it is often the working-class man who finds himself drawn to keto. As meat is targeted toward and consumed by “wealthy markets” (Otero 10), it becomes a part of a refined sense of taste and from here, offers the consumer symbolic capital. I suspect that the working-class male in these contexts desires to imitate the middle-class lifestyle promised by keto to reap its elevating social benefits. It is not just a promise to make one capable of appearing to be a part of the upper classes by augmenting the subject’s appearance; the actual cost itself of being on keto suggests that the subject is already there.
It is through the self-disciplinary behaviors crafted through the restrictiveness of keto that Keto Man imagines meat as a form of rational individualized control within the neoliberal system. Yet, he remains fearful of being misperceived solely as a meathead. Contemporary culture defines the meathead as the guy who spends all day in the gym and does nothing but gorge on burgers. Thus, Keto Man actively seeks to expand his identity beyond just being perceived as simply healthy, strong, and physically attractive; he further imagines himself as resourceful, clever, and a successful neoliberal agent. He recognizes that just being physically fit is no longer a means to getting what he wants in this world. This reimagined self constructs his life through the controlled behaviours engendered by keto. It is through these behaviours that he sees himself as becoming prepared to face the unstable conditions of neoliberal reality. Keto Man mimics the productivity ketosis has on the body within his labour production. He aims to be constantly maximizing and expanding his output. His view towards constant production offers him status in return for his productivity. Adhering to regimented practices of keto is proof to others that he takes all aspects of his life seriously and applies to it the same level of control and rationality: he sees his own body as a factory in need of constant management and improvement in order to be made most efficient. Within the coordinates of this new imaginary, Keto Man takes a performative pleasure in rejecting the pre-made commercialized foods – foods that he often characterizes as carbs – that are sold in stores. He distinguishes his own dietary habits as superior and freer than those of the mass consumer; he is not captivated or enslaved by the addictiveness of eating cookies or breads, all things he has reduced to carbs. Carbs are framed within this narrative as irrational. They link the individual to consumerism for self-pleasure and stagnancy rather than active production. The individual is weighed down and kept from doing more than their menial, monotonous, and valueless labour.
Marino frames his weekly consumption of meat as providing him with a socially respected power. From Marino’s meal preparation (“THE ULTIMATE ‘ALPHA’ DAILY ROUTINE” 05:14) to running a business (06:14), meat consumption is imagined as a tool of the alpha male: innately knowing how to utilize the system around him for his own advantage. He notably “stocks up” on meat from Costco (“What to Eat to Get LEAN” 00:51), a store exclusive to those who have the disposable income to pay for membership. For Marino, it is the thriftiness of these grocery trips which matter. The consumer is made to look disciplined in their shopping experience at Costco through their savviness in shopping in bulk to save money. He maintains this control beginning at work and earning money right through to buying the meat. The purchase of meat in transparent bags and free of branded packaging foregrounds the product itself as indicative of value: meat has symbolic value that does not need to be qualified by branding. It is the fuel that enhances and breeds a sly and fierce competitor that is like the “king of the jungle.” He feels as though he has greater purchasing power because even though he spent “a hundred and twenty-five bucks at Costco [he] got a month’s worth of chicken and salmon” (01:43 - 01:50). The transaction between Keto Man and private enterprise illustrates what neoliberals perceive as a mutually beneficial system. Thus, Keto Man aims to maintain the system for both his own liberation from the state, and in turn, to secure the self-governing system and practices which support the privatized businesses.
For Marino, the image of the entrepreneur—a ruggedly individualistic shark like Kevin O’Leary—takes on a life of grandeur. He narrates his life journey as one from bankruptcy to billionaire—having failed as a gym owner, Marino began his entrepreneurial journey creating the online business “AlphaMConsulting”—where he understands the conditions of the world through the market as both systems have grown and established themselves together. Having appeared twice on the television show Shark Tank, a show where aspiring entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to successful businessmen, Marino’s product receives validation from its appearance on network television for a clientele who legitimize his status as an entrepreneur. His ability to attain success and perceivably become a persona with the magnitude of Kevin O’Leary transforms Marino into a powerful individualistic figure. Marino identifies this persona as the “alpha” male. Marino equates the alpha to someone who is “capable and is going to kick ass at life” (“10 Rules ‘ALPHA’ Males Follow that ‘BETA’ Males Don’t” 00:16-00:21).