Our generation seems to have an infatuation with what is known as “main character energy.” If someone is interesting enough, they have the potential to be the main character of their story. For the young population that lives on the internet, inflating the significance of our everyday lives gives us a sense of purpose.
This concept as a whole is generally very individualistic. There is little focus on the community and there’s an insinuation that we live our lives for other people to witness. But is there any harm in that?
Found on TikTook is the viral sound which urges any listeners to “start romanticising your life.” Generally, this is a call to appreciate our environment and to take every opportunity that comes our way so that our actions hold importance and our surroundings serve our personal growth.
If we take interest in our own selves like we do with people in movies, our self-esteem would skyrocket. After all, self-regard is subjective and we have the ability to fall in love with ourselves just like we fall in love with our favorite characters.
Social media gives us a platform to perform. Our performance consists of the idealized version of ourselves that we want our followers to know. An otherwise seemingly mundane event becomes engaging when we add filters, music, and captions.
This flare that we provide to our lives for the sake of others parallels the idea that if we are the main character, then our followers are the audience and our friends/family are the side characters. It’s all a performance to boost our self worth. It can be self-indulgent, but it’s a way for our generation to cope with our relationship to our technological world.
Social media can be extremely harmful in the way it forces us to continuously compare ourselves and our lives to that of famous, rich, beautiful, and successful people all the time. When we think of the collective anxieties and insecurities that social media has provided, the moments of self-obsession seem negligible.
With the harm that social media inherently holds, it can be liberating for people to take ownership of their lives and to show off a little. Instead of drowning in self-hate, our generation is leaning into the benefits of social media and refusing to make our lives seem dull. By showing others we are fascinating, we can start to truly believe it too.
Being the main character doesn’t mean you’re without flaws. In fact, most of the time it means you have a bunch of them whether it be personally or in your general life. Believing yourself to be the main character only means you’re taking an interest in yourself beyond what’s required.
It’s living as best you can and falling in love with where you are in life and what it means for where you’re going. It may be a bit silly to think about how you can “romanticize your life,” but there’s a lot of good that can be done when you look at yourself as the most important person in your own life.