When the NPCs Unionize: TikTok's Main Character Trend Gets a Hostile Takeover
TikTok’s “main character” trend has dominated feeds for half a decade: a GIF-ready aesthetic that frames daily rituals, wardrobe edits, and soundtrack choices a
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TikTok’s “main character” trend has dominated feeds for half a decade: a GIF-ready aesthetic that frames daily rituals, wardrobe edits, and soundtrack choices a
If you’ve spent any time on TikTok in the last few years, you’ve seen it: a sound, dance, or joke explodes overnight, splinters into a thousand variations, and
If you’re in a family WhatsApp group, you know the ritual: someone sends a five-minute voice note at 11:42 p.m., Grandma mispronounces a word, Dad launches into
If you’ve spent any time scrolling TikTok in the last year, you’ve probably stumbled on a dozen variations of the same strange, sticky meme: dancers, non-dancer
If the last half-decade of social media taught us anything, it’s that cultural aesthetics can feel like tectonic plates: slow to budge, then suddenly rearrangin
If you spend any time on TikTok, you already know the pattern: a dance, audio, or format explodes overnight — then, just as quickly, it's gone. Creators wake up
By 2025, "main character energy" has become shorthand for a very specific kind of online life staging: cinematic selfies, curated routines, and an ongoing narra
If you’ve spent any time on TikTok in 2025, you’ve probably scrolled past a dozen versions of the same deadpan response: someone posts a major life announcement
TikTok's Main Character Era is officially over: what felt like an endless parade of cinematic day-in-the-life clips, hyper-staged aesthetics, and the “romantici
If you spent any time on TikTok in the last five years, you’ve seen it: the cinematic slow-motion walks, the “main character” captions, the soundtrack-snipped s
If you’ve ever felt the anxiety of waking up and discovering that every sound, dance, meme, and joke you loved yesterday is suddenly “so last week,” you’re not
What happens when the people who built the influencer economy start telling you not to buy stuff? You get deinfluencing — a paradoxical, viral, and highly profi
We used to think virality was a slow-burning rocket: a post catches on, it ripples through feeds, and then legacy media and brands join in. On TikTok, that time
The internet loves mismatches: theater of sincerity colliding with platform-native chaos. In 2025 a new sputter of cross-platform gracelessness spawned as verif
The "I'll Be There" trend is a perfect example of how TikTok distills feeling into form: a short, repeating monologue that promises presence and continuity, pai
You know the format: bold white text overlays the first frame — “When you thought…” — and your brain instantly fills in an expectation. The video starts in one