Every generation creates terms for things that are either old or old but viewed through how life works now. We’ve had a slew of them around work and careers, such as quiet quitting and quiet firing, and others that pop up every other day.
One of the terms that has become popular in social media over the last 12 – 24 months is main character energy. It gets flack, but let’s put forward a defence and another way of looking at it.
Main Character Energy
Main character energy is about attitude and demeanor. It’s the confidence, charisma, and sense of self-assuredness that makes you feel like the protagonist of your own story.
Before we get into the negatives of main character energy, which is what a lot of the social media commentary I’ve been encountering has focused on, let’s admit there are some positives.
The advantages: –
Okay, here we go, The disadvantages. The source of many a rant!
We’ve all met people with these traits. When you meet a person with many positives, they lift you, inspire you, and carry you forward, or they have incredibly engaging YouTube content through complete force of personality.
We’ve all seen and experienced negative traits, whether it’s an executive at work who sees everyone else as pawns in their success or people on social media who see every person as a bit part of their content and every location they visit as their scene to dominate.
So, it’s easy to see why there is some kickback against main character energy on social media, but a whole bunch of people are taking a totally different approach, and this brings us to romanticizing your life.
Romanticising Your Life
Romanticizing your life involves viewing your experiences through a lens of idealism or nostalgia. It’s about finding beauty and meaning in everyday moments, even mundane ones.
There are several YouTube channels now that take the view of being the main character in their life but from a radically different perspective. This can be seen as the romanticist lens. let’s do what we did for main character energy and look at the advantages and disadvantages.
The advantages: –
It’s not all sunshine and roses, though; romanticising your life can also lead people to not connect with life due to idolising the perfect or living in a fantasy world: –
I’m sure we’ve seen examples of this as well. You can see its positive aspects on the YouTube channels Elina Osborne, Natalie Lynn, and Life of Riza. When you meet someone who does this without thinking, it’s easy to feel the reflective glow that allows you to see your life differently and how you might not be attributing sufficient value to the small things. We also know people who hold life to unrealistic standards and, as a result, are perpetually unhappy, always comparing themselves to others or existing in some weird fantasy world.
Is This Extroversion and Introversion?
I had no intention of incorporating extroversion and introversion into this, but as I’ve been writing, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is something to it.
Main character energy seems very outward-focused, forward-looking, and predicated on a self-insert view of life. Romanticising your life seems more inward-focused, self-reflective, and predicated on a personal view of life in your head.
It doesn’t seem that shocking to suggest that extroverts may lean more towards main character energy and introverts more towards romanticising their lives. It’s a scale, not some binary dichotomy, but there is definitely something in it.
I definitely lean towards reflection, romanticizing my life, and weaving narratives from it. While I still have some aspects of main character energy, like a high locus of control, I lack many of the others. This is probably because the locus of control comes from other elements of my life rather than being an extrovert.
And, Finally..
Am I defending main character energy? I think so. I’ve experienced enough people exhibiting positive traits to realise its power when used in a wholesome way. I’ll admit to also meeting a good number of toxic individuals with negative traits who just need punching in the face, metaphorically or otherwise.
I do get why calling it out exists on social media, especially YouTube and TikTok. It becomes focused on the completely narcissistic creation of content with complete disregard for the experiences of others around them.
I find it interesting that romanticising your life is not seen as a similar topic but for a different personality type, and I certainly sit more on that side of the fence.
As I’ve been writing this post, I also read a book titled The Power of Moments, which intersects with all this and is a better way of looking at it, but that’s a topic for another day. I highly recommend the book