#MainCharacter: pandemic brings TikTok self-parody to the fore
Staring longingly out of a window watching the sunset across the New York skyline, or sitting on a balcony while Summertime Sadness by Lana Del Rey plays softly in the background. These are just a couple examples of a TikTok trend which sees young people act out scenarios and imagine themselves as a protagonist or the “main character” in a fictionalised version of their life – usually based on film cliches.
With more than 5.2bn views of the app’s #maincharacter hashtag – psychologists say the trend has gained momentum because lockdown and the feelings of isolation that come with it have created a gap once plugged by social connection.
Social media users are now even claiming to be inflicted with what they call “main character syndrome” (not an official medical term), with symptoms being that a person’s every action “fits into a narrative”, as if it were scripted.
For Eddie Brummelman, an assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam who specialises in child development, the recent prominence of the main character trend can be viewed as a natural consequence of the past year. “We know the pandemic has caused people to feel nostalgic, lonely and helpless, especially young people because they have been deprived of so many significant parts of their lives, especially social parts,” he says.
“Creating a story around you may be a way of filling that gap, or taking away that lonely feeling. Imagining yourself as a protagonist not only gives you a sense of agency that has been taken away due to the pandemic, but also this feeling that other people are watching you or care about what’s happening to your story.”
Olivia Yallop, author of the book Break the Internet and the director of the youth-focused marketing agency the Digital Fairy, says that the trend is a “means of repositioning and recontextualising your identity to feel more empowered and to become the centre of your own story”.
She says: “Becoming your own protagonist speaks to the way that younger generations self-narrativise, particularly given the tools at their disposal: a front-facing camera.”
She adds that intertwined with the concept of the main character is “perpetual self-surveillance – ‘everyone is always looking at me, and I’m always looking at me looking at myself’. Main characters can’t exist without an audience.” Yallop, who observes social trends as part of her work, doesn’t believe the timing of this trend emerging is a coincidence. “It’s interesting that main character is blowing up at a moment when so many are isolated and craving social connection”, she says.
The idea of young people feeling like they are performing, or creating a narrative of their life, in front of an audience is not a new concept, or one inextricably connected 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 as though their actions are the primary focus of other people’s attention.
Viewing yourself as a main character may at first glance be dismissed as a product of unhealthy individualism, but some have argued that there are benefits. According to Michael Karson, a psychology professor at the University of Denver, viewing yourself as the main character in your life is something positive, as it can result in being “more likely to place energy into actions which may make your life go well”.
“Whereas if you think of 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 viewpoint is that the goal is to be “the main character of your own life, but not the main character of everybody else’s lives”. “The other extreme is when you think you’re the only person that matters,” Karson says.
Although the trend has become popular recently, Yallop says she is wary of suggesting that #maincharacter is anything new. “It’s an evolution of previous internet iterations of self-confidence through digital documentation,” she says. “Like any viral trend, main character mythology has since collapsed in on itself: it went viral, then became a meme, and then became reclaimed from that meme. I’m sure the sentiment will evolve quickly into something else.”