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The thing about internet and this site is that it's international (as my flair says I'm in Finland while @self_made_human is an Indian living in Britain) which means the norms differ between countries. Where I live "shorts and t-shirt" is normal summer attire when it's hot and "band t-shirt" is simply what a lot of guys would wear in the late 90s and 2000s. Hell, I've had most of my bosses dress occasionally in shorts and t-shirt on hot summer days because why wouldn't you when it's hot outside and you work in an engineering department where nobody cares about it?
Which is to say that there is nothing "performative" about shorts and band t-shirt around here. Frankly the vast majority of engineers just don't care about signaling in the first place and who would you even be signaling to when the only people who see you in the office are your coworkers who also don't care. You dress in shorts and band t-shirt because it's convenient and that's how you'd dress if you eg. went out for drinks with mates on such day, not to "stick it to the man" or to flaunt anything.
Sure, it'd be different if you dressed in some tight gym shorts (that you wouldn't use elsewhere outside gym / sports either), "programming socks" or similar ridiculous things that are actually outside the social norms in public - which is why people don't do it here either (barring perhaps some rare socially maladjusted exceptions).
You mean everything my Swedish and Danish friends said about uptight Finns is wrong? I am shocked, shocked.
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