At times, I wonder what it was like to attend an art museum, concert, or even a subway platform in the 1980s - or even 2009. Similar to today, during those years, cameras existed and people utilized them to capture special moments and events for later reflection. Now and then, people stood in front of the camera, posing as tourists with artwork, landmarks, and stages behind them, cheesy grins splayed and fingers pointing at whatever artifact they wanted to be captured with. Back then, I wonder if the seas parted like they now do for the person having their photo taken, scooting behind the photographer so that person can be the sole subject of the picture. Did people watch artists on stage sing through the viewfinder of their camcorders? Did they walk back and forth on the same crosswalk repeatedly as their friend captured the images, reenacting crossing the street until the correct degree of candidness is portrayed, with the correct number of bystanders in the periphery?
It was impossible to be a TikTok user in 2020 without coming across a video featuring the "You have to start romanticizing your life, you have to start thinking of yourself as the main character" audio. That audio and the subsequent videos made with it helped spearhead the “main character” movement online, in which internet users were directly encouraged to view themselves as the “main characters” of their own lives. Since social media’s conception, being the main character has always more or less been the objective, since users are encouraged to curate profiles capturing their highly individual - but culturally palatable - essence. Nonetheless, the main character trend spells out this aspiration in bold ink, as the accompanying audio features planned, aestheticized videos of people lounging on beaches, partying with friends, or striking a dramatic profile pose as the subway bounds by. The clips are like a flipbook of an It Girl’s Instagram grid or a romantic comedy montage.
“Character” is a significant aspect of the phrase “main character,” as it implies the trope’s fabricated nature. Playing a character isn’t inherently malicious, per se; it’s a part of how modern humans navigate life. We carry around a closet full of different faces - ones to don for family, coworkers, and select friend groups. Knowing how and when to change faces - to switch codes - is something we learn with time and practice. Playing the role of the main character is just another one of these faces - one that involves conveying your deservingness of the part. The act involves dousing oneself with confidence, even if it’s fictitious, as the phony and the material will ideally merge with time. You view yourself as the shining star of your life and the reality will materialize - in a perfect world.
I’ve often heard those outside the millennial and zoomer generation criticize or otherwise laugh at young people for being overly interested in the self. We’re all on a quest for self-improvement - undergoing therapy, leaning into sensitivity often by way of pop psychology - that wasn’t often as readily afforded to past generations. Careers and personal capital aren’t just means to an end, they’re avenues for discovery and self-actualization. We often place more stock in our personal well-being than in long-term financial and familial endurance. We take pride in acquiring objects and portrayals of those objects that are accurate encapsulations of ourselves. When they aren’t so, we undergo a personal style refresh in a way that approximates soul-searching. If we don’t possess an unwavering infatuation with our own bodies there’s something wrong with us. We have steadfast confidence - and a great concern for building it - and express it via digital and often highly material routes.
On the whole, I think feeling confident in oneself is a net good achievement. Nonetheless, the depictions of confidence that young people are often presented with online have their detriments. When widely expressed on social media, it’s easy to misplace the goal of one’s pursuit of confidence - it may begin stemming from a place of self-love, but get tangled with the intoxicating external validation bestowed by likes, comments, and story views. Dr. Nelisha Wickremasinghe says that such desires are a part of our “drive brain emotion system,” which can lead us to seek out more attainable, superficial forms of status in exchange for dopamine. Dr. Wickremasinghe says:
“If that drive brain is hijacked by an ‘always-on’ desire for recognition, status and fame, then we ignore what we've got in a desperate quest for what we might be able to get.”
In addition, from my personal experience as an internet user, I’ve seen the confidence movement online evolve from a lighthearted nurturing of one’s self-esteem - reposted pastel words of encouragement, “love yourself” Instagram captions - to an aggressive push to be loud about your hotness, intellect, cleverness, and at times, downright superiority. I think this is, in part, a result of capitalism gripping its claws deeper into the body positivity movement - it’s not enough to feel comfortable in your skin, you have to flaunt what you got unapologetically in our direct-to-consumer exercise dresses and cotton underwear (tag us on Insta!). You can self-actualize if you simply accumulate the right garments and objects.
In addition, TikTok and its copious advice forums on behaving, dating, and forming an identity have punctured the collective cultural consciousness. The focus is always on fervent action: protecting and bolstering oneself and undergoing any necessary steps to do so, whether it’s cutting off men and friends, indulging in products, being beautifully self-destructive, or increasingly regimented, pushing yourself to your limit or quitting altogether, all of which is done in a hyper-visible manner. To be confident, you have to be boisterous - noisy - if you have little to share, you must have much to hide. And if you don’t act swiftly and boldly with an unwavering sense of direction, you must not be the main character. Such an outlook leaves little space for sensitivity - for stillness necessary to determine what the next appropriate action is. It requires you to aggressively center yourself to a degree that borders on egotism. At best, it can leave you re-watching your Instagram story a few too many times, and at worst, it can make you a bit callous.
It’s a fine line to walk. Young people learning to step into themselves and support their own ambitions is an important development, and it’s great that communities that bolster that development thrive online. I just fear that the pendulum can swing too far in the opposite direction at times, in that we become so obsessed with maintaining our role as the main character that we start to assume those around us are simply supporting acts. We develop an obsession with the self that is narrow and shallow - vanity-focused - obscuring other people and deeper forms of self-concept from view. We become concerned with the representation of confidence - or lack thereof - and not the confidence itself.
I’ve been the selfish friend and been a part of friendships with contentious ego tugs-of-war. I’ve been the one who cares more about the representation of an event online than the actual event. We’ve all been the people and been around the people whose sense of self appears polished on paper and crumbles in quiet. A part of that is simply growing up, of being human. Another part may be the trickle-down effects of confidence pursuits being born out of heightened, presentational concerns and not a genuine desire to accept who we are to our core to benefit ourselves and those around us.
We are, in fact, all playing characters whether we’re aware of it or not, and those characters are further crystallized in one way or another when we partake in social media. If we’re going to cast ourselves in the play of our life, we should undoubtedly receive the starring role. We should put ourselves first and have our own backs. Simultaneously, confidence can’t repair a shaky foundation. Painting varnish over a crack makes it a whole lot shinier, but doesn’t mend the crevice. Humans were never meant to look at themselves in the mirror or in the reflection of their front-facing cameras as often as humans do today. We were never meant to view our lives as accumulations of the material, at least as much as we do now. In some regards, we probably weren’t meant to think about ourselves this much at all.
Such conditions will cause us to teter further into pseudo-narcissistic territory if we don’t adopt an unplugged sense of self-awareness. A realm in which we hold so much concern for ourselves and our representations - but such little respect. Perhaps we don’t need to inflate our senses of self to herculean proportions to improve our self-esteem; confidence can be loud, but it isn’t always. The key might be realizing that, sure, we’re the main characters of our own lives, but also a part of a larger ensemble that’s existed for longer than we had written words and screens to express our selfhood. We each have a sense of self that exists whether it’s digitally archived or not. The sooner we stop trying to claim a shiny footnote, the sooner we may be able to contribute something meaningful to the larger story.
I’m just starting to read this, and before I even read any further, I can tell you-- back in the 80s I was annoyed by camera people ruining my ability to enjoy what I was watching and listening to. And they weren’t omnipresent, the way phone documenters are now.
This was great!! One of my favorites from you! - LM