Sorry, You Are Not The Main Character

Spotlight, centre stage — that is where we all want to be. Basking in our beauty, applauded for our ability to exist, living life out of a storybook.

While attainable, one must be cautious of this lifestyle’s superficiality. With the rise of this online phenomena known as “main character energy” and “main character syndrome,” people have forgotten what it means to be confident versus self-absorbed. 

Internet culture is rapidly growing, with new microtrends and terms emerging from every nook and cranny. In 2020, “main character energy” caught public attention. It describes the outcome of heavily romanticizing one’s day-to-day life and is typically aestheticized through cinematic videos and images. It’s about channelling the aura of the most important figure in a story — specifically your own. 

Embracing this energy may inspire self-love and confidence, but in overabundance, “main character syndrome” can infest the psyche. Though not scientifically diagnosable, this phenomenon occurs when “you often see yourself as the most important person in the room, and you act according to the narrative of your plot,” as outlined by the Cleveland Clinic. 

There is a fine line between self-love and self-absorption. This phenomenon of main character energy grows more precarious every day, and its cultural and social implications must be addressed.

Comparison Kills

It’s natural to want to stand out from the crowd, and we do this in many ways. From the way we dress to the music we listen to or even the phrases we use — our interests make us unique. While our eccentricity may come innately, our desires to be different may also come from comparison.

Psychology Today writes that social comparison theory is “the idea that individuals determine their own social and personal worth based on how they stack up against others.” When our value is predicated on hierarchizing ourselves socially, our motivation to adopt surprising or unique traits rises. 

The online origins of “main character syndrome” are of great intrigue. The amount of comparison online users undergo daily is at an all-time high because of how much accessibility we have to strangers all over the world. 

Cameras Rolling… Action!

Professor of Psychology Dr. Phil Reed wrote for Psychology Today about how internet culture is vulnerable to false explorations of reality. He said, “The anonymity afforded by digital communication allows people to reinvent themselves, or, in extreme and potentially dangerous cases, to present entirely false versions of themselves, much more easily.” 

Films distance the audience from the story by using symbolic narrative techniques that are meant to aestheticize and hyperbolize reality. Social media platforms, contrastingly, are a much more accessible visual medium that uses “normal” people as content generators and consumers rather than a film’s unattainable “celebrity.” A social media user is considered more relatable as a result and, while inspiring, can also be damaging when false presentations infest feeds.

When false content is created on social media or romanticized, users interpret it as reality because, simply put, “these are real people, after all.” By internalizing other people’s supposed ways of living, we begin to self-reflect and compare ourselves to the influx of characters we meet online, which is unhealthy in large doses. 

Suddenly, realism goes out the window. Instead, what Dr. Reed described as “delusion” and “fantasy” bleeds into our daily behaviours. By seeing others’ lives from an external view (thanks to cameras), we dissociate from the present, using the videos and images we see online as templates for what we should look, act, and think like.

As a result, we falsely position ourselves as having high importance because of how intensely we focus on our characteristic output and align ourselves with online creators — main character syndrome is then born. 

Distorted Empowerment 

Many have attributed the main character’s lifestyle to an increase in self-empowerment. Undeniably, by mentally positioning yourself as the centre of your life, you become more in tune with your needs and desires. However, when we focus all our attention on looking like the main character, we run the risk of becoming deeply self-absorbed.

In fact, Dr. Reed asserted that “developing a digital fantasy-life is, at best, a distraction that will fuel further problems and prevent the person from addressing what needs to be addressed.” When individuals use internet media as the basis for their personalities and interests, the Cleveland Clinic suggested it could be a reflection of their fears, anxieties, and insecurities rather than their empowered spirit.

We Got it All Wrong

Let’s think about it from a writer’s perspective. If we are going to be main characters after all, we might as well understand what it entails. A simple definition found on Masterclass describes a main character, or protagonist, as “the character who drives the plot, pursues the main goal of the story, and usually changes or grows over the course of the [story].” 

Jo March, Harry Potter, and even Spongebob Squarepants each possess this simple ethos as characters that respond to their environments and the situations around them, undergoing critical character development as a result. This is where the online perception of the main character goes wrong. 

Rather than embracing natural change, we force ourselves to become the leader of the narrative through superficial alterations, including our fashion and beauty regimes. In other cases, we also alter our behaviours. For example, by mentally viewing others as side characters rather than community builders, as described by the Cleveland Clinic, our behaviour towards them changes as we treat them as having less importance than ourselves.

We have to remember that our lives are not movie scripts waiting to be unfolded by the natural course of time. Our lives are beautiful catastrophes that are constantly changing and, in truth, will guide us down the pathway to our authentic selves rather than the constructed selves we desire because of what we see online.

Going forward, I hope we stop throwing things at musicians on stage, talking obnoxiously in movie theatres, or believing that we “don’t owe anyone anything” because we are all humans who possess enough empathy and compassion to simultaneously be empowered and part of a collective. 

So, I’m sorry, but you are not the main character.

• #mental health
• culture
• internet culture