Visual Representations of Alternative Masculinities in a Mexican Gaymer Community's Instagram Content

This study examines how masculinities are visually represented and negotiated in the Instagram content of Gaymer Nights, a Mexican gaymer community formed in Monterrey in 2023 that organizes in-person gaming, karaoke, drag, and social events and has expanded to several other cities. Drawing on Connell's masculinities framework, geek and gamer masculinity scholarship, and Halperin's theory of gay subjectivity, the authors ask how alternative gamer masculinities are constructed through visual communication. The analysis covers posts, reels, and tagged content published between August 2023 and October 2025, with 2,867 images retrieved and cleaned to a dataset of 1,825, from which a randomized sample of 318 was coded into six communicative categories.

The findings show that advertisement is the most frequent category (109 images), followed by community member portraits and humor (64 each). Community members are predominantly adult men in their twenties and thirties, depicted through a range of expressions from traditional geek attire to tank tops, pup play gear, cosplay, and drag, alongside displays of affection and physique-focused poses. Gaming content centers on mainstream franchises such as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which foregrounds skill hierarchies, and Just Dance, which emphasizes collective enjoyment. Humor and memes, drawing on campy imagery, received the highest average engagement by a wide margin (about 138 likes versus roughly 56 for other categories), suggesting that playful confrontations with normative masculinity resonate most strongly with followers.

The authors conclude that Gaymer Nights presents alternative gamer masculinities that are less rigidly tied to hegemonic or geek norms, using familiar, nostalgic franchises and camp humor to emphasize approachability and belonging over mastery. Varied gender expressions are normalized alongside competitive gaming and eroticized male bodies. At the same time, the imagery remains largely male-centered and homosocial, indicating continuity with traditional gaming cultures even as the community reimagines gaming as a space for queer self-presentation and intimacy. The study's scope is limited to one community's public Instagram presence, and its interpretive, qualitative approach does not claim generalizability beyond this case.