Enough of main character energy; 2025 was the year of main character burnout

For the better part of the past decade, “main character energy” was sold as self-worth rebranded. Wake up early, romanticise your routine, document your coffee, your workout, your ambition. Life, we were told, should look intentional at all times—ideally filtered, softly lit, and narrated like a coming-of-age film. Hustle culture dressed itself up as self-actualisation, and both millennials and Gen Z learned how to perform productivity as personality.

But in 2025, we saw the fantasy beginning to crack. The pressure to always be improving, glowing, and growing felt less empowering and more punishing. Being the main character now comes with an exhausting expectation: that every moment must mean something, lead somewhere, or translate into success. What once felt like control now feels like surveillance, and mostly, it happens to be self-imposed.

Burnout, in this context, isn’t just about work. It is about narrative fatigue. The quiet exhaustion of living as though your life must always be watched, validated, relevant, and worthy of attention.

Social media didn’t invent main character energy, but it perfected it. Platforms rewarded visibility, vulnerability, ambition, and aesthetic consistency. You weren’t just living your life, you started curating it. Every choice, from career moves to wellness rituals, became part of a larger personal brand. Even rest had to look productive.

Over time, this turned identity into labour. To be the main character was to constantly explain yourself, to justify your choices, your pace, your success, and even your lack of it. There was little room for ambiguity, mess, or the ordinary. But real life, in fact, is mostly ordinary. It is repetitive, non-linear, and often unresolved.

The tension between how life is lived and how it  is meant to look has created a deep, collective fatigue. Not everyone wants to be exceptional anymore. Not everyone wants their struggles turned into content or their ambition into spectacle.

The rise of the side character mindset

In response, something quieter is taking shape. A growing desire to step out of the spotlight, not in defeat, but in relief. The “side character” isn’t passive; they are liberated from the expectation that their life must always be a story worth watching. They show up, do their work, enjoy their pleasures, and go home without narrating the experience.

This shift isn’t about apathy. It is about sustainability. Choosing a life that feels manageable rather than monumental. Letting go of the idea that every season must be transformative or defining.

There is a certain freedom in not being the hero of the story. Side characters don’t need arcs or re-inventions. They are allowed to exist as they are, without the pressure to constantly be in the limelight and perform.

What is emerging now is a quieter definition of success. One that prioritises mental bandwidth, emotional steadiness, and the luxury of anonymity. Logging off without guilt. Working without making it your identity. Wanting a good life, not a remarkable one.

This is not a rejection of ambition, but just a recalibration of it. A step away from hustle as self worth, and towards lives that leave room for rest, relationships, and imperfection. The fantasy has shifted from being admired to being at peace.

In 2025, the main character energy has not disappeared. It is just no longer the default aspiration. And perhaps that’s the most radical change of all: choosing to live without an audience, and finding that life, unperformed, feels every bit richer for it.

Lead image: IMDb

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