A TikToker and her followers physically push aside an older couple inconveniently in her way, claiming that they are “ruining” her selfies—and then post their grievances on social media.
You are trying to share something important with your friend, yet she is too busy scrolling “reaction” videos on YouTube.
Were these flukes—just so stories that impacted only a handful of people?
Perhaps another story might help.
Imagine a night in rainy Seattle. As the city settles down to sleep, a Hellcat (a modified Dodge Charger) supercar speeds down quiet streets, its souped-up engine roaring and backfiring, rattling windows, frightening animals, and waking up the neighborhood.
Some residents have complained. Others cheered from behind their phones, praising the driver’s behavior on social media.
The driver, Miles Hudson, is a twenty-year-old resident of one of Seattle’s more expensive apartments buildings. He has been sharing videos of his joyrides to massive followings on TikTok and Instagram, showing his speed topping one hundred miles per hour, bragging that “it sounds like a shotgun” and similarly engaging in other self-congratulatory, self-aggrandizing behaviors. Mocking those who complained, he posted a video of himself watching news reports about his dangerous driving, followed by shots of him mock-rushing around the house, pretending to hide from the police. When said police did eventually stop him, Hudson whipped out his cell phone—not to call a lawyer, but to show off his Instagram page. Bodycam footage captured the moment:
“No disrespect, but I feel like I’m doing my thing,” he told the officer, “I’ve turned it into a career, and the car has paid for itself. 650,000 followers.”
Later, when Seattle ordered him not to drive his excessively loud car, he posted a video of himself in the passenger seat with a woman driving the decibel limit-shattering vehicle. Another released on Instagram shortly thereafter showed Hudson with the caption: “Villain arc.”
What does any of this mean, and why is it now the time to ask this question? Because, I think, none of this is either random or perhaps even that perplexing. We find ourselves at a dangerous crossroads; one where our technologies, and the resulting isolation, loneliness, and disappearance of shared physical and moral spaces, have found a worthy adversary in our very human need to be seen. Yet our Paleolithic brains—with all of their fears, desires, and limitations—do not appear to be worthy opponents of the very machines that we are creating. The result, thus, is not what we might have imagined—neither the splendid isolation of our endlessly remote online existence nor our human yearning for connection have won. Instead, what won was an odd amalgam of the two, uniting technology-born solitude with an increasingly powerful longing to matter. To be special. To be recognized. To have a unique story. To be the main character of that story.
And so we return to the TikToker, the subway commuter, the late-night Hellcat driver. Do these moments of situational obliviousness of (or intentional disengagement from) others, “villain arcs” (or, as some prefer to imagine, “hero arcs”) not seem a bit too familiar? Do people seem to be more emotionally distant and increasingly self-obsessed? Is social media the central way in which they communicate and evaluate themselves and others? It is as if so many ways in which we used to hear, understand, and relate to each other no longer hold. Things fell apart—but at least we got every moment on Insta!
But what if we stop and ask if we, the eager critics, are imagining things, or perhaps are just a bit out of touch—if maybe we are missing something that so many others seem to have understood about being a person in the twenty-first century? The possibilities of being wrong seem endless.
Maybe.
And yet…do you ever ask yourself why so many people have normalized what looks very much like solipsism, narcissism—and probably a few more unsavory “isms”—and made it into a part of their (and everyone else’s) daily experience? Do you sometimes want to scream at the loud pontificator at work, “THERE ARE OTHERS IN THIS ROOM,” or at that friend watching YouTube videos, “I AM ALSO IN THIS ROOM,” or at a younger person seeking “likes” or “clicks,” “THERE IS MORE TO LIFE THAN LIKES AND CLICKS”? I know I have.
Right, you might say. Consider the source of this analysis. Perhaps you are simply one of these eager critics who are just too out-of-touch—one of those middle-aged academics, no longer willing or able to keep up with the current zeitgeist; a malcontent whose views about social norms are too grounded in twentieth-century ideas. The potential accusations write themselves.
But I want to counter these objections by arguing that my worries are neither a simple case of generational misalignment, nor are they a fear response to a world that seems to be rushing past the older generations in ways that email can still puzzle and frustrate our grandparents. Remember that the Paleolithic brain is something that all of us—all of us—still have in common, regardless of generational divides. Thus, while we respond to the intersections of technological advances and of our atavistic needs differently, we do so, I suggest, with a shared ability to only see ourselves, and others, through a glass, darkly.
What is the point of all of this? It is this: I think that too many of us have fallen under the spell of what is known as Main Character Syndrome (hereinafter MCS). While in some ways a relative of both solipsism and narcissism, MCS is neither an illness nor a clinical diagnosis but more a way of positioning ourselves among, and in relation to, others. It is an oddly narrative tendency to view one’s life as a story in which one stars in the central role, with everyone else a side character at best. Thus, unlike offering the kind of narration, or storytelling, which is inclusive of those who are central to one’s identity, the MCS narrative is a monologue. Only the central character—you!—possesses the desires, loves, hatreds, and perspectives that matter, while those of us in supporting roles are consigned to moral peripheries and denied any shared moral spaces. Main characters (MCs) act while we react. MCs command attention—we better comply. No mere rudeness, to main characters, the rest of us are merely the insignificant ghosts who happen to intrude on their spaces.
So who are these phantoms haunting the main character’s world? Like chess pieces, animatronic amusement park characters, or even zombies, the non-player characters’ agency is limited to their roles in the development of the MC’s story. In fact, to call it “agency” would be to grant the non-player characters something they do not possess. Perhaps more accurately, let’s call it their “programming,” or the algorithms that they are created to follow. To take a more historical angle, non-player characters (or NPCs) is a term that originated in traditional tabletop games to describe characters not controlled by a player but rather by the game’s “dungeon master.” Later, in video games, NPCs are characters with a predetermined set of behaviors controlled by the game’s algorithms. Rather than agents with their own narratives, NPCs could be either helpful road signs, or else hostile, and even threatening, obstacles in the MC’s journey. Alternatively, like that older couple in the way of a TikToker’s selfie, NPCs can be an annoying prop—something to shove out of the way. Something that is blocking the dear self that truly matters.
Why do I think that MCS, and its related issues, ought to be something for philosophers, and others, to take seriously? To put it simply, because MCS’s attitudes toward the world and the human beings who inhabit it diminishes all of us as persons—both the MCs and all those insignificant NPCs. Unwilling, and perhaps unable, to see others as worthy and vulnerable, MCs more easily dismiss, stereotype, and yes, even dehumanize “lesser” others in social spaces that become increasingly competitive, smaller, and more claustrophobic, in the end failing to hold us as moral beings. As a result, we become broken—and we break each other, unable, as E. M. Forster urged us, to “only connect!” In fact, despite all the clicks and “likes,” it is genuine connection that eludes us.
Has MCS taken hold of—and perhaps even taken over—our social, political, educational, entertainment, and other spaces? Is the result a much more solipsistic, narcissistic, selfish, un-empathetic, and disconnected society? These are questions worth exploring further. What is more, there are alternatives to simply accepting MCS as the new normal. Let’s call these alternatives acts of self-decentering. Perhaps these more relational, and more empathetic, ways of seeing both the world and each other just might remind us that we—all of us—still matter as vulnerable persons, perhaps more so because of our shared vulnerabilities. And not just as pawns of our own delusions.
Anna Gotlib
Anna Gotlib is an associate professor of philosophy at Brooklyn College CUNY, specializing in feminist bioethics/medical ethics, moral psychology, and philosophy of law. Anna is the current editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics (IJFAB).
I am not sure if social media is the problem – or the central problem.
Driving around with the windows down blasting loud music predates the Internet, and seems as popular (no more or less) as it has ever been.
Walking around with a blaring boom-box that weights as much as hundreds of mobile phones predates mobile phones and the Internet.
Walking around with weird haircuts, and threatening anyone who stares with violence seems to be a thing of the past – but was popular in the 1980s. I suppose threatening someone with violence is much safer when there is no chance of it getting recorded and reposted for likes.