There’s never been a better time to be a well-meaning man with disposable income and a bit of free time. The grind of corporate life has spawned a wide net of socially-acceptable hobbies to take the edge off after 5 p.m: You could be the marathon guy, the climbing guy, the pickleball guy. Maybe you want to fine-tune your espresso pull or discuss the nuances of regional craft beer. Get into crypto or cold plunges. You could even try your hand at stand-up comedy.
Yet, no side quest seems to proliferate as many eye rolls as the casual male DJ. To clarify, I’m not talking about sound engineers and music school alumni dedicating their life to PLUR. I am talking about your B-school grad Chads, squarely in the mid-20s to late-30 bracket. These are your normcore bankers, consultants and even software developers who moonlight as DJs after hours, typically at friends’ parties and the occasional rooftop bar. If the archetype had a patron saint, it’d probably be John Summit, the Ernst & Young CPA turned Gen Z’s favorite festival bro. If they had a god, there’s no better candidate than Goldman Sachs head honcho, David “DJ D-Sol” Solomon.
When did every guy with an aux cord decide he’s ready for a residency? In theory, the proposed sex appeal is there. It gets you into clubs, parties and onto guest lists. In practice, it’s up for debate. In a conversation with some friends, I wondered aloud about the attraction to the admittedly normie-looking John Summit. “DJs are the new rockstars,” my friend said. “The fact that he’s a DJ is enough.”
For some other women navigating the dating scene, a guy that “occasionally spins” falls on the cringe spectrum. “It’s kind of like when a guy in middle school pulls out his guitar and starts singing for you,” another friend confessed with a wince.
The rise of the casual male DJ runs parallel to house music’s ascent into the cultural stratosphere, led by its biggest acts: the posh prodigy Fred Again; the sceney, if not occasionally cringey, Keinemusik; and the gorgeous, globe-trotting Peggy Gou. The barrier to entry, meanwhile, has never been lower. Beginner-friendly equipment costs no more than $400. Streaming has made track discovery frictionless with algorithm-fed playlists, and clubs without a real emphasis on sound quality are unperturbed by the tinny creaks of Spotify or Apple Music.
Then there’s the photo op of it all. As Air Mail pointed out, the underground scene no longer belongs to a microcosm of dedicated ravers. Instead, it’s been unleashed for mass consumption via a mob of half-dancing concert goers with their phones raised skyward. The stages have gotten more glamorous, as have the locations. Hell, Keinemusik performed in front of the Pyramids of Giza.
It’s ironic that the underground scene now finds itself helmed by the Connecticut suburb-raised bros and six figure-earning tech whiz kids when, like many creative endeavors, its roots were laid by marginal communities — queer and POC subcultures — their block parties and underground movements. Techno arose from Detroit and Frankfurt, Germany, in the 1980s, born from Black futurism and European synthpop. House found a home in New York’s queer clubs, led by icons like Larry Levan at Paradise Garage. Across the Atlantic, spaces like Berghain and Amnesia turned DJs into cultural architects and gatekeepers. Underpinning it all was serious knowledge, crate-digging research and a dedication to catapulting a sonic moment.
With its history charged by architects of the future of sound, DJing remains a craft where selectors are entrusted as both tastemakers and innovators. It’s no wonder, then, that the casual male DJ has become a meme. Its unique susceptibility to ridicule stems from how it straddles nightlife cool with corporate cringe: the tension of someone who wants to live for the music but has a 9-to-5 to get to. It also takes a fair amount of finance bro-level ego to think, Hey, my music taste is fantastic. I should play for a crowd. The discourse inevitably circles back to the ever-prolific performative male archetype, an inauthentic persona designed to project taste, confidence and proximity to cool. It’s a modern-day peacock display, if you will.
There’s a lot to poke fun at here, but it’s hard to ignore that beneath the irony lies an earnest impulse to participate and create. Outside of the genre, it might be useful to remember that even Bad Bunny began as a SoundCloud artist. That is to say, there’s something admirable about putting yourself out there even when it’s cringe or short-lived. For all the posturing, the casual DJ scene points to the enduring human instinct to share our ideas and personal projects. After all, hobbies are supposed to be experiments of self-expression — they’re not meant to telegraph cool. Because at the end of the day, we don’t need more DJs. We just need fewer men convinced they’re headliners.
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