Let’s Talk Main Character Energy

What it means and why it has become a firm fixture in popular culture over the last three years.

Last week I found myself advising a friend over dinner that he needed to embrace and embody ‘main character energy’ to help him get the opportunity he wanted. Without realising it, I was referring to an internet archetype that blew up on TikTok during the pandemic and which has since spread across popular culture, both online and IRL, and is even this year’s biggest dating trend. By way of a general definition, main character energy is about advocating for yourself and prioritising your own happiness and self-care. According to Urban Dictionary it also refers to ‘A person that unintentionally lives, breathes, and is like the protagonist in a story or series’. It is an energy made up of both introspection and extroversion; an unusual combination of traits which wouldn’t ordinarily gel together, but somehow works well to create main character energy and makes sense as a byproduct of the pandemic. But why is it continuing to resonate and surge in popularity – the latest viewing number on TikTok is over 925 million – especially amongst young millennials and Gen Z?

The answer here isn’t clearcut. My take is that main character energy ‘acts’ as a deliberate dialogue between the relationship we have with ourselves, our relationship with ourselves and others online and our relationship with others IRL – three different dialogues we’re more vividly aware of post-pandemic and (still) getting to grips with. Along with its sister embodiments, manifesting and vibrational energy, main character energy comes from a heightened sense of Self in the world and was created at a time when the world was divided into two – the human and the digital. Whilst the pervasiveness of online life had slowly been creeping up on everyone pre pandemic – think about the hours mindlessly spent scrolling on your phone/getting lost in endless tabs/unconsciously giving over your shopping habits to online stores rather than buying in-person – the pandemic solidified it. It is perhaps inevitable then that years after the Selfie became the norm, main character energy has superseded it by merging personal self-awareness (thanks to the boom in wellness) with social media.

Three years after the era of ‘The Great Reset’ begun (I wonder how that’s going…) the relationship with ourselves and each other still feels different than pre-pandemic, and main character energy has unknowingly and significantly contributed to this. Social isolation and the mental health crisis combined with extensive reliance on technology and the normalisation of remote work has shifted the balance in favour of our own story and our own positive narrative of any given situation we find ourselves in. Bearing in mind these significant social changes, creating our own optimistic spin on events is an important and necessary response to how we interact with the world. For people in my age group and younger who have had to adapt to a rapidly changing economic, ecological and social climate, main character energy is a powerful reminder that we don’t have to fall victim to the circumstances that the current timeline is bestowing on us. Instead, we can create our own conditions that enlighten and empower the light within us by using communication to create a more heroic script of our lives. This is the basis of what main character energy is all about.

Yet the perspective of the audience is an inherent aspect of the ‘story’ that main character energy relies, survives, and thrives upon. A main character needs other characters for the story unless it’s a one-person monologue. One of the negative traits of main character energy is that it risks being egocentric with NPC’s (‘non-player character’) being the crude description of characters who aren’t classified as ‘main characters’. Research shows that the circumstances that we’ve grown up under have bred increased individualism and self-reliance, and main character energy requires individualism and self-reliance to exist. But what about ‘collective character energy’ ie, the collective conscious, the shared story between equals, the role of all ‘characters’? Where does that fit into the script? Born out of a crisis that actually emphasised how interconnected we all are and how much humans need each other for their own survival, main character energy is a bit of a mystery creation.

Yet the introspective aspect of main character energy and its focus on appreciating yourself, your unique journey and your happiness can only lead to legions of people feeling happier in their authentic skin and generally healthier and more positive about their place in the world. The mindful take on main character energy – focusing on what expands your energy field and what is draining it, taking pleasure in small things and making it matter – is the complete antithesis of the hustle culture that pervaded the early 2000s and 2010s. The mental and physical exhaustion of hustle culture meant that the vibe shift to main character energy seemed overdue, especially as it gives greater prominence and space to our soul’s purpose and our individual and multifaceted human purpose.

Whenever I hear someone speak about main character energy I always think of Oprah’s spellbinding Spelman College speech in which she says ‘You want to be in the driver’s seat of your own life, because if you’re not, life will drive you […] I want to fulfil the highest, truest expression of myself as a human being. I want to fulfil the promise that the Creator dreamed when he dreamed the cells that made up me.’ These points tap into the idea that each of us have a responsibility to share our greatness with the world, in whatever form that may be, and main character energy wholeheartedly embraces sharing and spotlighting our greatness.  

Main character energy has another translation; your life is for living to the fullest, and there is no place for, or pleasure to be gained from, playing small. Yet our greatness needs others to benefit from it. Otherwise, where is the meaning? Our greatness is also influenced by others who have contributed to shaping it. To seeing it. Hearing it. Identifying it on our behalf. Whilst I do appreciate the wellness and self-awareness aspects of main character energy, I would prefer for it be explored through different strands and phrasing as we move into the future – think ‘my character energy’ and ‘collective character energy’ – as main character energy risks dominating at the expense of other vital characters who greatly contribute to our lives but who may be quieter, less showy characters.

Depending on what’s happening in the world and how social media evolves, maybe the next internet archetype will give greater prominence to such characters who deliberately dance with and put focus on the communal. I wonder how that will be received and how viral it will go.