main character

English

Noun

main character (plural main characters)

1. (Internet slang, idiomatic) A person who becomes a focal point of discussion on a social media platform (particularly Twitter).
   • 2020, Paul Farhi, "How the dusty old op-ed pages became the red-hot outrage-generating machine of 2020", The Washington Post, 28 December 2020 (image caption):

     With his Jill Biden essay, Joseph Epstein became Twitter’s main character this month.

   • 2021 January 5, Dani Di Placido, “The Ballad Of ‘Bean Dad’ Shows The Cruel, Petty Side Of Twitter”, in Forbes:

     Unless you’re in the business of receiving hate clicks for profit, you never want to be the “main character” of Twitter.

   • 2022 July 14, Delia Cai, “How Elon Musk Became the Internet’s New Main Character”, in Vanity Fair:

     And while Trump, at least, now faces a reckoning over his most consequential tweets via the January 6 hearings, one final way to understand Elon Musk as our new main character is to consider the internet that has incentivized the rise of both men.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:main character.
2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see main,‎ character.

Derived terms

• main character syndrome

See also

• protagonist