Slonging tenderly through 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 some examples of a TikTok trend that sees young people act out scenarios and present themselves as a protagonist or the ‘main character’ in a fictionalized version of their lives – usually based on film clichés.
With more than 5.2 billion views of the hashtag of the app #maincharacter – psychologists believe that the trend has gained momentum because lockdown and the feelings of isolation that accompanies it have created a void that was once tackled by social connection .
Social media users are now equal claims that they are afflicted with what they call “main character syndrome”(Not an official medical term), with the symptoms that each person’s action” fits into a narrative “, as if it were written.
For Eddie Brummelman, an assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam who specializes in child development, the recent notoriety of the main character trend can be seen as a natural consequence of the past year. “We know that the pandemic has caused people to feel nostalgic, lonely and helpless, especially young people because they have been deprived of so many important parts of their lives, especially social parts,” he says.
‘Creating a story around you might be a way to fill that void, or to take away the loneliness. Introducing yourself as a protagonist not only gives you a sense of agency that has been taken away due to the pandemic, but also the feeling that other people are watching you or caring about what is happening to your story. ‘
Olivia Yallop, author of the book Break the Internet and director of the youth-oriented marketing agency The Digital Fairy, says the trend is a “means to reposition and re-contextualise your identity to feel more empowered and become the center of your own.” story ”.
She says: “Becoming your own protagonist speaks to the way younger generations self-narrate, especially given the tools at their disposal: a camera that looks ahead.”
She adds that intertwined with the concept of the main character ‘is eternal self-monitoring:’ everyone always looks at me and I always look at me to look at myself ‘. Main characters cannot exist without an audience. Yallop, who observes social trends as part of her work, does not believe the timing of this trend is coincidental. “It’s interesting that the main character is blown up at a time when so many are isolated and want social cohesion,” she says.
The idea that young people feel they are performing, or creating a story of their life in front of an audience, is not a new concept or one that is inextricably linked to social media. David Elkind, a child psychologist, coined the term ‘imaginary audience’ in the 1960s, which he used to argue that adolescents who experience the concept feel that their actions are the main focus of others’ attention.
Considering yourself a main character can be dismissed at first glance as a product of unhealthy individualism, but some have argued that there are benefits. According to Michael Karson, a professor of psychology at the University of Denver, it’s something positive to consider yourself the main character in your life, because it can lead to you being “more likely to put energy into actions that can leave your life. go well”.
“While you consider yourself unimportant, even in your own life, you are more likely to take a passive approach to what you can do to improve things,” he says. But central to Karson’s view is that the goal is to ‘be the main character of your own life, but not the main character of everyone’s lives’. “The other extreme is when you think you’re the only person who matters,” Karson says.
Although the trend has recently become popular, Yallop says she is wary of suggesting that #maincharacter is something new. “It’s an evolution of past Internet repetitions of confidence through digital documentation,” she says. ‘Like any viral trend, the main character mythology has since collapsed on itself: it went viral, then became a meme and then recovered from that meme again. I’m sure the sentiment will quickly develop into something else. ”