Main Character Syndrome: What Do We Owe Each Other?
Filming etiquette when everyone is a main character but no one wants to be an extra
Are there unwritten rules of living in a world in which the camera is always on?
Recently, I found myself the unknowing star of someone else’s social media show, violating what I thought was a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Which made me think: When we’re navigating public and private selves, lives, and spaces, what do we actually owe each other?
An Uninvited Lens
Every Saturday for over a decade, in cities all over the world, yoga has been my sanctuary.
For me, my Saturday yoga class acts as a reset button for the week that came before it. One tightly wound version of me walks in and another lighter, freer, and clearer version of me walks out.
I was recently at one of my favorite Paris studios—Rasa Yoga—a gorgeous, peaceful Rive Gauche studio, tucked into a Parisian courtyard with vaulted glass ceilings and excellent, creative instructors.
It was a full class so each half of the class faced their mats inward toward the teacher, who positioned her mat in the center of the room.
A few minutes into class, I noticed that there was an iPhone perched against the back wall recording video with the front camera on.
The phone camera’s lens framed three people: the backside of one woman next to the phone, the teacher, and me.
I was looking directly at it—practicing toward the camera’s bright red record button, seeing my face and body clearly from two mat lengths away.
I was immediately uncomfortable and distracted watching myself through the camera—not necessarily because I’m terribly self-conscious on camera, but because I never consented to be starring in this movie in the first place.
It was distracting at best and invasive at worst.
After the class, I decided to approach the woman that I suspected was recording.
In the Background, Yet Front and Center
“Hi! Is that your phone?” I said after putting away my blocks.
“Yes,” the woman responded.
“I noticed that you were recording the class. If you post the video on any social platforms, would you mind putting an emoji over my face or blurring me out or something?”
This did not land well. “You can’t even see anyone in the class. Look,” she retorted. She played the video at 2x speed to prove her point.
Except I am front and center in it.
“I understand; I know the format. I am the person in focus on the camera right there. [I pointed to myself] I even waved at the camera at one point because I noticed how visible I was. Can you please just blur me out? I didn’t agree to be featured in your video.”
She said, “okay,” and walked away. I assume she’ll never do it.
What’s a Reasonable Expectation of Privacy?
Emotionally, it was clear for me: I was irritated and confused. I didn’t sign on to be an extra in the movie of her life. It felt like a violation of a tacit agreement we have to all be relatively decent human beings to each other, accepting that there are other real human beings inhabiting the same spaces we are.
It's natural to want to document and share our lives, but there's a boundary that gets crossed when the background characters aren't given a choice in their role or the terms of their participation.
I’ve long joked that there will come a day when facial recognition is sophisticated enough that some algorithm will tag me in every tourist’s photo in which I appeared as a little speck in the background. Running on the Brooklyn Bridge. Having a glass of wine along the Seine in Paris. Existing in the background without any knowledge that I’m a filler body in a city-scene background captured for social media consumption.
This doesn’t bother me very much, if I’m honest.
I accept that we’re in a digital age. I’m a willing and open-eyed participant. I work in an AI startup that helps gaming streamers create short video content for algorithmic social platforms like TikTok and YouTube so they can grow their audiences. I’ve worked on the internet, reckoning with social platforms and content production, with a fragmented digital and IRL self, since I was 18. I love the internet—in all of its power and chaos.
But the yoga studio is not a public tourist attraction or busy plaza like that. I have a certain expectation of privacy in a semi-private space where we pay to gain access and in which many of the participants are in a vulnerable state during class (e.g., semi-dressed in sports bras, moved to tears). It’s a time to be alone in public, and a place to try, fail, learn and improve. For the “me time“ that we all talk about but don’t make a reliable enough part of our routines.
The official laws under GDPR (since this is in Paris after all) hinge on the following questions: Was the yoga studio a public or private space? What was the recording's purpose? If the video will be used commercially, say for an influencer promoting their own personal fitness for ad dollars or a brand sponsorship, the subject must consent.
U.S. laws also echo this sentiment, with celebrity cases litigating on the extremes of the amorphous “right to privacy” (remember the Gawker Hulk Hogan case?).
For example, I attended TwitchCon Paris for work in July 2023—a conference designed to showcase the wild world of Twitch streamers and welcome their fans and the brands who support them. There was a big sign at the entrance to the conference center that said: by passing this point, you consent to the fact that you might appear in the videos of streamers taking footage at the event. It wasn’t shocking; the whole event was full of live streamers with selfie sticks videoing themselves, their friends, and their fans. The booths were set up as video-genic sets—with lights, sound and music—for a pro to use as a backdrop for social media-ready vignettes. That set blatantly included the other attendees as props and extras, as the sign let you know upon entering.
In a scenario like this, or for example the street style photo shoots before a runway show at Fashion Week, the digital world isn’t just a snapshot of the real world. The digital world *is* the point. And the physical event is a production set to feed it.
But that’s not the intended purpose that attendees of the yoga class believe they’ve signed up for, which made this scenario right on the edge.
The Cost of Main Character Syndrome
I felt like the yoga studio scenario put me into direct contact with the consequences of Main Character Syndrome, a concept that started bubbling up alongside social video culture on TikTok. Main character syndrome describes the phenomenon in which everyone wants to be the protagonist of their own movie, often neglecting the feelings and consent of the supporting cast around them. To some, it’s a close cousin to narcissism; to others, it’s a little “delulu” (i.e., delusional) with a dash of empowerment, a way to “romanticize your life.” (To ground you in the popularity of these concepts on TikTok: #maincharacter has 9.2B views on TikTok; #maincharacterenergy with 899M; and #romanticizeyourlife has 1.2B.)
The discourse around #maincharacterenergy on the internet is largely playful and tongue-in-cheek. Tube Girl, for example, is a newly minted influencer in high demand for confidently dancing and recording on London’s public transit with creative selfie camerawork. She deftly turned a mundane commute into a career, no matter how “cringe” the initial filming looked to other Tube riders. The digital footage was worth it; the bystanders just happened to be there.
But what happens to when you realize you’re the supporting cast? The extra?
Listen, I’m certainly not innocent. I’ve been posting one video per day on TikTok since January 15 as a challenge to myself to learn how to make video content and increase creative experimentation. (More on this later, but I’ve stuck to it - except for seven particularly challenging days when I either forgot or couldn’t bother.) I try to crop out the faces of people who are extras in my little stories and vlogs when I can. But sometimes, the *movement* of other people, the filling of empty spaces with real candid bodies, does make better content. Because it helps project the moving image of our lives in richer detail, and helps video viewers project themselves into the scene too—either because they can *truly* imagine themselves in that scene or because they *wish* they could.
Showcasing your yoga practice progression in a sped-up video might perform well on socials if you video it on a mat at home alone. But it’s much more likely to perform if you can portray it to be authentic, with a full room of people to lend context to you and your progress, to you and your Parisian life. What irks me is that I was used as an object to lend authenticity to the main character; my body on screen makes hers more real.
Instagram and TikTok in particular really lend themselves to showcasing the theater of real life like this. It’s the reason why short slice-of-life carousels of “real moments” from “real life” by samyoukilis are a genre unto themselves. Or why people film pour-over videos of baristas (you know, that video at Dreamin’' Man). It’s why mega-popular #OOTD videos usually entail someone perching a phone on a building and backing up at the exact moment when some unsuspecting passerby walks through the frame—confused—while you showcase today’s fit. Or why a POV video observing “odd“ behavior around you (e.g., commenting on someone looking sad while eating lunch alone in public) with text overlay performs super well on TikTok.
The people around you who you don’t know only approximate real until they actually become real. Like the time I got a DM from someone after I posted a restaurant still photo to my Instagram Stories saying, “omg that’s my friend in the background lol.”
The social media theater of reality creates an extra layer of uncanny mediation—because, when you’re filming, everything feels both exactly real and not at all.
Until it happens to you.
Being an Extra in Someone Else’s Movie
Every individual, whether front and center or in the background, deserves to have their boundaries respected.
Here are mine:
I don’t care about being in someone else’s photo in a high-traffic public area (including landmarks and restaurants).
I don’t even care about being in someone else’s one- or two-second video in a high traffic public area.
I care very much about being in an hour-long video—please notify me or blur me out.
I care very much about being in a purported safe space where the point is to let your guard down—because the activities there stir emotions (e.g., church, therapy session, etc.) or require a literal state of undress (e.g., sauna, spa, sports bra at yoga, etc.)
I also care very much about being videoed as an object if you have a large-ish audience on a social media platform (let’s say 10K+)—unless we are close friends.
Because it doesn’t start getting really real until *you*, living your normal life, are fully aware and seething knowing that you’re the background to someone else articulating their authenticity on the back of yours.
Like I felt in the yoga studio, in an hour-long video, where I was used as a supporting character and as a prop. Front and center in a video taken by someone who I may never see again. Who will almost certainly never blur me out. For an audience that doesn’t know that I’m a real person who was frustrated by the terms of unwittingly appearing in that video. In service of just another piece of content that I will surely never see again.
This is such a thought provoking piece. I love how intentionally you're digging into this issue. It's a pressure I also feel, but have not been able to articulate. Beautiful ❤️