S.longingly out a window watching the sunset over the New York skyline, or sitting on a balcony while Lana Del Rey’s Summertime Sadness plays softly in the background. These are just a few examples of a TikTok trend where young people reenact scenarios and imagine themselves as a protagonist or the “main character” in a fictionalized version of their lives – usually based on movie clichés.
With more than 5.2 billion views of the app’s hashtag #maincharacter, psychologists say the trend has gained momentum as lockdown and the sense of isolation that comes with it have created a divide once closed by social connection.
Social media users are now equal claim to have been caused by what they call ‘main character syndrome’(Not an official medical term), with the symptoms that every act of a person “fits in a story”, as if written in a script.
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(@Drebae_)I arrive everywhere because I have the main character syndrome: pic.twitter.com/0RbUaC2Ia6
For Eddie Brummelman, assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam who specializes in child development, the recent prominent role of the main character trend can be seen as a natural consequence of the past year. “We know that the pandemic has made people feel nostalgic, lonely and helpless, especially young people, because they have lost so many important parts of their lives, especially social parts,” he says.
“Creating a story around you can be a way to fill that gap, or get rid of that lonely feeling. Imagining yourself as a protagonist not only gives you a sense of freedom of choice that has been taken away by the pandemic, but also gives you the feeling that other people are looking at you or caring about what is happening with your story. ”
Olivia Yallop, author of the book Break the Internet and the director of youth-focused marketing agency the Digital Fairy, says the trend is a “means of repositioning and re-contextualizing your identity to feel empowered and the center of yourself. to become. story “.
She says, “Becoming your own protagonist speaks to the way younger generations tell self-stories, especially given the tools at their disposal: a front-facing camera.”
She adds that intertwined with the concept of the protagonist is “perpetual self-surveillance -“ everyone is always looking at me, and I am always looking at me while looking at myself. ”Main characters cannot exist without an audience.” Yallop, who observes social trends as part of her work, does not believe that the timing of this emerging trend is coincidental. “It’s interesting that the main character explodes at a time when so many are isolated and long for social connection,” she says.
The idea that young people feel like they are performing or creating a story of their life in front of an audience is not a new concept or inseparable from social media. David Elkind, a child psychologist, coined the term ‘imaginary audience’ in the 1960s, arguing that adolescents who experience the concept feel that their actions are the primary focus of other people’s attention.
Seeing yourself as a main character may at first glance be dismissed as a product of unhealthy individualism, but some argue that there are benefits. According to Michael Karson, a professor of psychology at the University of Denver, seeing yourself as the main character in your life is a positive thing because it can result in you being “more likely to put energy into actions that can make your life go well “.
“Whereas if you see yourself as unimportant, even in your own life, you’re more likely to take a passive approach to what you can do to make things better,” he says. But central to Karson’s position is that the goal is to “be the protagonist of your own life, but not the protagonist of the lives of others.” “The other extreme is when you think you’re the only person who matters,” says Karson.
While the trend has been gaining popularity lately, Yallop says she’s wary of suggesting that #maincharacter is something new. “It’s an evolution from previous Internet iterations of self-confidence through digital documentation,” she says. Like any viral trend, the main character mythology has since collapsed on its own: it went viral, then became a meme, and then was reclaimed from that meme. I am sure sentiment will quickly evolve to something else. “