main character energy is not narcissism
in defense of romanticizing your life enough to survive
Before I ran an Interintellect salon on Main Character Energy this week, I decided to scour the Internet to see what’d been officially written about it.
If you take the pleasure of looking through the listing’s recommended reading, you can see how I was very unsurprised to report that everyone was shitting on it left and right.
In the words of the New Yorker:
“It describes any situation in which a person is making herself the center of attention, the crux of a particular narrative, as if cameras were trained on her and her alone. The term can be used appreciatively, acknowledging a form of self-care—putting yourself first—or as an accusation, a calling out of narcissism: a person dressing too extravagantly for a casual event, for example, is trying to be the main character. Main-character moments are those in which you feel ineffably in charge, as if the world were there for your personal satisfaction.”
In the words of Glamour:
[A psychologist] says [to the Daily Mail] that "main character syndrome is an “inevitable consequence of the natural human desire to be recognised and validated merging with the rapidly evolving technology that allows for immediate and widespread self-promotion.””
Ok… these takes are honestly not fucking qualified, and my butt was very much hurt because the whole reason I wanted to run this salon was because I am a main character energy kind of person.
We all know what MCE is. If you’re reading this, you’re probably online enough to know. It’s literally centering yourself as a character in a plot, and living your life accordingly.
Suddenly, every moment is rife with meaning. Every encounter furthers some sort of momentum in your life. It’s magical. It’s interesting!
And… it’s reviled?
I was excited about MCE writings until I read them and realized many, many cultural critics disapprove. From their peanut gallery, they’re like “well I guess that’s not me but it’s all these young ‘un Millennial Gen Z’ers. Gee hope they get help.”
Owch.
This cuts deep because, to be honest, I have literally been called out for this my whole life! You could call me an early adopter. Many have said I resemble a protagonist ripped straight from a novel or an award-winning Netflix TV series in my mannerisms, mindset, speech patterns, and the events that happen to me. This happened to me before Tik Tok apparently popularized this into a syndrome, a condition.I recalled, then, how most people from my hometown were unbelievably triggered by me constantly. Anytime I tried to be honest, be brave, decide to do things differently, I’d be sternly told to conform and sit the fuck down. It very much defined me for a lot of my years. Ironically, it was the fact that I was getting hurt constantly, rejected by peers and verbally abused by my mother, that I needed to disassociate my way into being a main character —
So after reading some so-called journalists on the Internet wag their fingers at this phenomenon, I had to sit back for a second and be honest. (Let me be “main character”-y for a second and paint you a picture.)
I literally leaned back in my desk chair and stared up at the ceiling. I sighed through my teeth and felt the shame roll through my body. Am I trying to self promote when I go through my life seeing it as a story? Am I someone who needs to be the center of attention? Am I stepping on people in the name of self care?
I felt more hot guilt rise up my body until it reached my neck. And then I stopped leaning and snapped forward to grip my head in my hands (another MC moment that happens often). I asked myself — am I going to shit on myself when everyone else is already? Yes, *I* would take literally 90 minutes out of my Wednesday weeknight to talk about narcissism basically. Fine then. Would anyone go to that salon to listen to a narcissist talk? Would anyone want to be proven wrong?
I was so, so upset thinking about it. For not more than 10 minutes though.
Then I shrugged, and went, “If it furthers the plot, I guess I’ll do it.”
*****
Annnnnnd here’s my soap box moment on Substack.
As someone who’s both an MC and a writer, I want to clear up that MAIN CHARACTER ENERGY is NOT:
An excuse to treat everyone else like NPCs
Why do some cringe at the idea of Main Characters? Why do some people think that romanticizing your life is an automatic indication of how you’re going to behave towards others?
Well… because some people really do be using others to further a plot. Some people literally cannot comprehend that there are other people they affect outside of themselves and don’t take the time to listen deeply, take responsibility, and be truly empathetic. And often, it seems like these people are too busy disassociating from reality into some fantasy where they’re the only one that matters.
Yeahhh, I can see how that’d be seen as MCE. I don’t think it’s baseless to think that MCE can lead to people being shitty. But not all shitty narcissistic behavior is *everyone* who’s an MCE.
Some people out there do be thinking that other people don’t have qualia or inner worlds, that they’re just flat-dimensional objects that just serve as obstacles.
They are forgetting the truth though, which is that —
EVERYONE’S A MAIN CHARACTER!
Once you realize this, you cannot treat people badly and also be a MC.
Which brings me to my second point, that MCE is NOT:
Exclusive to only certain people
If everyone’s a main character, maybe no one is a main character! But that’s the point. You live your own life, and deeply respect everyone else’s.
If you’re too busy vibing with the narrative of your life to recognize that everyone around you is also on their hero’s journey, then you’re delusional. Still a main character, perhaps, but not one that lives in the world that’s compiled of billions of narratives, all around us.
I used to feel my chest sink hard when I’d read reports of people dying. No matter how, or what age, I’d panic at thinking about all the stories lost to the records. I’d read Wikipedia articles about famous figures and feel a grief that I’d never know their stories.
This spurred me to become someone who makes every conversation interesting because I want everyone’s main character energy to emerge. Because I can’t live in a world where I’m the only main character.
Which brings me to what MCE is…
A great way to interface to deal with grief.
I spent a lot of time alone as a kid. I was so sensitive that I couldn’t speak to many people, and years of having my emotions invalidated by my mother meant I was literally always afraid of everyone.
Funny because as an adult, I’m the most extroverted, chatty person ever. But back then, I only had myself to talk to. So I’d swing on the swings, take walks through the forest track behind my elementary school, or sit at home and read lots and lots of books.
Then I’d write lots and lots of stories.
I felt more comfortable with books as a young child because they couldn’t hurt me. And then I tried to actually get back out there and socialize properly, and got bullied so hard I became suicidal.
SO you know what helped me? Believing my life had a story.
In every book I’d read as a kid, the protagonist has to go through tough shit in order to fulfill his destiny. Slay the dragon, save the queen, find his missing father, or just survive on an island.
Robinson Crusoe is a main character! There’s no one around on the island. He’s still a main character though. Even if no one’s around to witness you, you’re a character because it’s between you and God.
After I left organized religion as a young child, I even more strongly held steadfast to this idea that I’m a main character and my life will continue to move, even if all my friends abandon me, even if my mother makes me cry, even if I never amount to being the famous and successful author I wished to be if I didn’t deserve intimacy.
I believed that my suffering had meaning because there had to be a function to everything I’d gone through.
I learned to value myself and find intrinsic value inside me.
I learned later to also help others with this.
By now, I have stepped out of darkness so intensely by the time that people are unable to comprehend what built me. For I’m less socially anxious and befriend strangers left and right.
Because my grief — and the meaning I assigned to it, that it wouldn’t define me, but make me stronger and help me save the world from more of it — would be the redemption of an entire generation of friends I’d meet.
I believed this because I *Created* this story for myself, as the main character, when I was a kid. And then it came true.
But I was a MC before there were other people in the story for me to presumably dunk on!
I haven’t always been a great person, but some people that don’t relate to MCE are definitely also shitty. It’s not one and the same.
To be quite honest, I’ve realized anyone who doesn’t get the whole deal with MCE, is probably thinking something in their life is unsolvable. Or is so privileged, they’ve never had to deal with any real problems (highly unlikely) that they consciously have to interface with.
If our society has more people trying to be MC’s than ever before, I believe we’re in a grief recession where people are desperately trying to re-romanticize life, because a life that doesn’t feel powerful or is devoid of meaning is not one many want to continue living, whether they admit it or not.
Take it from the people who ended up loving my salon, as we investigated what it means to be a MC, and saw we are all that:
(And yes, Elaine, I will write soon about Narrator Energy!)
Anyways, I believe that instead of talking about ourselves as Main Characters (everyone, not just one person), we could also just go:
“My life is a story that is still unfolding.”
And maybe that’d be enough.
Everything’s best done in moderation — so don’t romanticize your life to where you stop caring about everyone else’s.
And don’t forget that, every time someone believes their life is a great story and they will find a way out of the dark path they’re on…
Often they do.
I've had my Disney princess moments regularly for a few years and it was just ridiculous. Now I think I'm ready to slowly learn and progress until I reach the level of a Disney grandma.
Hero's journey is all about becoming an adult, but beyond that there's a whole another world of becoming an elder. Adults are rare these days, elders are almost nonexistent, at least in the West. We are the first generation in many that might be able to bridge that gap.
BTW so glad to hear your first salon went great! Wish I could have been there with y'all 😍😍😍