Lucky Girl, Main Character—What Does It Mean?
The girlies are working overtime to rebrand narcissism, and it's bad for our society.
When Narcissus saw his reflection as he went for a drink, he became entranced by it—so much so that he killed himself because he could not obtain the object of desire he so pined for. When e-girlies fall in love with their reflections inside the glowing rectangle as they log in for their daily validation, they pathologize about it as to not appear too vain. It’s not narcissism, it’s Lucky Girl Syndrome. Or Main Character Syndrome. This new pathology gets meme’d into oblivion. The cycle ends when Poosh uses that pathologization to craft a cheeky article with some product placement, and we all determine it’s all become gauche. Before long, we’re on to the next. There is nothing new under the sun.
Not to continue making things too Greek, but sometimes I feel like I’m the Sisyphus of being annoyed by women. (Pick me.)
This “Lucky Girl Syndrome” has been in my crosshairs for a while after stumbling upon it via several coordinated efforts by “them” to expand this latest psyop to my timeline. I’m told that it started on TikTok, which I wouldn’t know, because every time I try to use TikTok, I log off almost immediately. How does it work? No one knows. For better or for worse, I’ve been mostly shielded from this phenomenon, as well as whatever else may be happening on that God-forsaken app. Ever-curious though, I looked it up. According to Poosh, it’s this:
Lucky Girl Syndrome is basically a mash-up of the law of attraction and the law of assumption. The former says that positive thinking attracts positive outcomes. The latter says that what we assume to be true becomes reality.
Optimism and positive thinking can help improve our self-esteem and mental health. There are certain components of Lucky Girl Syndrome that can help us cultivate a positive mindset.
A lot of words to say, “I, I, I, me, me, me.” It’s too much. Does anyone remember “The Secret?” It’s just that. But somehow worse. Aside the the madness of it all, modern “self-care, self-love, etc.” quickly went from “light some candles and take a bath” to “exercise a sycophantic level of selfishness and manipulation under the guise of ‘kindness to self.’” I’ve seen women in my own life burn every bridge, tear every last friend down, and be left alone in the wreckage only to say, “why am I surrounded by so many shitty people?” My sister in Christ. And it’s not going away any time soon. In fact, it will only continue to become more and more common until there are no female friendships left. (Inshallah.)
Though I joke, it really is detrimental to self (and society at large) to behave this way. Pathologize as we may, we still end up drowning before too long. The only difference is that now, when we fall to this obsequious narcissism, we are either venerated as a prime example of self-care, doomed to perpetuate the cycle until we only resemble a hollowed-out shell of our former selves, requiring injections of validation in order to limp along, or we are deemed persona non grata (usually for being the “wrong” kind of self-involved). Either way, we end up alone, divorced from true self, and justifying increasingly vain behavior. “Self-love” is a thinly-veiled attempt at continuing the pattern of social atomization until there is no real interpersonal connection left.
In my dark corner of the internet, there is a lot of discussion about “longhouse culture,” which is an exemplar of gynocratic societies and their inherent ills. Picture those old cartoonish renderings of suffragettes browbeating any opposition into submission, extending the apparatus of power through scolding, weaponizing “shame",” and justifying hysteria by filtering it through the lens of “lived experience.” The longhouse looks a lot like Twitter, actually.
What the conventions of modern “self-care, self-love, etc.” (and the various pathologies they’ve spawned) have done is create large-scale delusions of grandeur among those susceptible to them. These delusions center self above all else, and in self being centered to the point of delirium, any degree of dissidence is regarded as violence, and thus met with “sanctions,” which are—of course—deemed warranted by the regime in power. (Butterfaced jannies and women with access to Canva, in this context.) It’s no longer “my self-love.” It views any individual expression contrary to it as a threat to be neutralized. On a less-serious note, this is why I can’t talk about my personal disdain for women who play acoustic guitar without every woman feeling personally attacked. (If you don’t follow me on IG, you may have missed that scandal.)
With that context out of the way, back to “Lucky Girl” and “Main Character.” It all harkens back to the “manic pixie dream girl” trope so popular in the mid-aughts. You know: with the ukulele, the Zooey Deschanel bangs, listening to Local Natives on a tinny Crosley suitcase record player purchased at Urban Outfitters—individually, these phenomena can be quaint. (Endearing, even.) But in the age of online ubiquity begetting constant psyop via cultural homogenization on a global scale (thanks to the aforementioned ongoing atomization of “in real life” society,” leaving social platforms as the new agora), “quirks” can’t just be “quirks” anymore. They become—at the risk of sounding like Alex Jones with breasts—a “social contagion.” When self-involvement becomes not only commonplace but is valorized to the point at which is replaces meekness, poise, and other traditional virtues, that cannot be good for any society.
It’s not the President of the United States of America, it’s not the World Economic Forum, but it’s the TikTok girlies and their corporate-backed powers that be. They’re steering our society towards a state of total and complete matriarchy, a state in which you can lose your livelihood for expressing an “unsavory” opinion, a state in which you may be named a fascist for tacitly endorsing preferences towards tradition and beauty, it’s all tiring and it’s all the most annoying kind of authoritarianism.
In this way, lucky girls, main characters, and the like are not merely harbingers of The Longhouse, but an indication that it has already arrived. For some, this is great news. (Probably none of them read this newsletter—and if they do, I’m sure they’ll be hitting the “unsubscribe” button after this one.") For most, it’s one tough blackpill to swallow. Not to be too much of a “pick me” again, but some patriarchy might be nice right about now.