Have you ever been in a certain situation, maybe you found yourself upset to the point of crying over an argument with your friend, and the first thought that came to your head was ‘it’s okay, this is good character development.’? Or maybe you’re on the train reading and your mind wanders to how other people may be perceiving you in that moment. Or even the recent TikTok trend where the creator of the video asks the writers of their story to give them a break because their life is going too fast now. If these thoughts or something similar has ever occurred to you, especially if they had been repeated, you might have gotten a taste of main character syndrome.
The term ‘main character syndrome’ has been tossed around on the internet for some time now. If you don’t know what it is, Kate Rosenblatt, a therapist and senior clinical manager at Talkspace says it “refers to identifying as the protagonist in your own life story”. This term became popularized on TikTok and is a generally newer phenomenon.
Main character syndrome is a direct effect of social media. Because everyone participates in social media, they are participating in performance. The whole point of social media is to curate a ‘brand image’ for yourself for others to perceive and judge you on. Even if you try to steer away from a hyper-curated feed, you’re still upholding a certain image, maybe this time of carefreeness or spontaneity. A lot of the time, even if you’re not on your phone now, you’re not really experiencing your life as you, but rather as someone watching you experience it.
Due to social media being such an integral part of our lives, and therefore performance becoming how we live, it is the next logical step to think of our lives as a movie. Or at the very least, something for others to watch and judge. This mindset of constantly needing to perform for others is what leads to main character syndrome.
While this phenomenon is directly tied to the rise and normalization of social media, Psychologist Dr. Michael G. says that main character syndrome is an “inevitable consequence of the natural human desire to be recognized and validated merging with the rapidly evolving technology that allows for immediate and widespread self-promotion.” Main character syndrome might be natural, but it has rapidly increased and become more of a problem as society places more energy in social media and performing on platforms for others.
There is a more sinister side of main character syndrome. It can lead to you thinking that your problems are the only ones that matter and can lead to you ignoring your friends’ problems in favor of your own. It can also make you think of everyone else in your life as side characters rather than actual people with their own lives. It can also make you think and behave more narcissistically, which usually leads to more apathy toward other people and an inflated sense of self-importance. However, this is the more extreme side of main character syndrome, and just because you tend to think that you’re the main character of your own story doesn’t mean that you’ll automatically start to neglect your friends.
Main character syndrome, or at the very least parts of it, are natural. So don’t go into a downward spiral of thinking you’re a bad person because you think you’re the main character in your story. I would argue that in a way you are the main character because it’s your life and you’re the one experiencing it. You’re experiencing the world as yourself, so naturally, you’re going to think of the world as if you’re the main character. That being said, I think that it’s good to have a general understanding of why you might think this way and the role social media has in amplifying this very normal feeling.
https://www.insider.com/4-signs-you-have-main-character-syndrome-like-carrie-bradshaw-2021-12