So many of us are doing things ‘for the plot’ on social media. But at what cost?
From our love lives to careers, millennial and Gen Z women are throwing caution to the wind in exchange for anecdotes. But what’s it doing to our mental health?
As I clicked my seatbelt shut and peered down at the tarmac below, my heart started to race. Not because I’m scared of flying — but because of the emotional turbulence I was headed for. ‘What the f*ck am I doing?’ my thoughts blurred. What drove me to say yes to boarding a 22-hour flight from Sydney to New York, at the request of my ex-boyfriend, who I hadn’t seen in over two years?
Truthfully… A big part of me did it for the plot.
Over time, my interest in my ex had faded, but communication lingered — fluctuating between obsession, dissonance, blocking, nudes, confusion, clarity… lather, rinse, repeat. The will-they-won’t-they was endless, and when he offered to fly me over to “see if there was still a spark”, it felt cinematic. Like an episode of Girls playing out in real-time, set to the same cityscape backdrop. The high likelihood of an upsetting outcome aside, and whether or not I actually had feelings for my ex that I wanted to pursue, the lure of being a part of a narrative quite so intoxicating? I was powerless to resist. The part of me that was genuinely curious about seeing him again — and keen to pulse-check a relationship I knew was probably, definitely dead (and for the best) — was overshadowed by the pub anecdotes I knew I’d get from the trip.
And this feeling, this doing-it-for-the-plot attitude, is something that many Gen Z and millennial women say they’re experiencing: an urge to risk emotional whiplash and justify chaotic choices, even when we know they’re bad for us.
But why are we all suddenly throwing caution to the wind, actively leaning into potentially damaging scenarios? And how is this ‘live like the main character at all times’ energy impacting our lives (be it romance-related, career-wise, or our mental health) in the long run?
Is delulu the solulu?
Social media has given us ‘main character energy’ as cultural philosophy. We’re told to romanticise life, to find meaning in the mess (and what a mess ‘it’ is: amidst a shallow dating pool, cost of living crisis, and political hell). But beneath the glitter of self-mythologising is something darker: a kind of generational nihilism, where uncertainty and instability have made us both hyper-aware of our lack of control and desperate to reclaim scraps of meaning. So now, the motive isn’t necessarily about finding what’s best or healthiest for us, it’s about harnessing the most out-of-pocket experience. Nothing’s that deep anymore — we live in a simulation, right?
#ForThePlot has amassed over 52,000 posts across TikTok, with videos declaring, ‘No better feeling than talking to the forbidden man again’, ‘Every mess in your 20s is just content for the plot’, and, ‘It makes all the fear go away cos it’s too effing funny’.
One creator’s video, with 4.2 million views, sums up the realities of plot-living: consequences aside, you’re going to do it, even when you already know on one level that future-you wants to grab you by the shoulders and shake you for it. This sentiment clearly resonates with people, as evidenced by a comment under the video, which amassed over 17k likes: “Doing it for the plot sounded fun until the plot got messy and the main character needed therapy.”
Jokes aside, it’s overwhelmingly young women turning ‘plot’ risks into a genre of its own, on and offline. That’s not a coincidence; we’ve grown up being told that stability and safety come from following a certain script (marriage, mortgage, motherhood), only to realise this might not be the only option we have — or want. Creating our own plotlines can feel less like recklessness and more like reclaiming authorship.
Calling my romantic chaos ‘the plot’ made it feel like agency — a fun little rebrand of emotional tumult in a world that sees fewer women in their 20s and 30s meet the traditional ‘milestones’ our parents comfortably hit.
The patriarchal rule book hands men more financial freedom, time, and fewer social penalties for being ‘behind schedule’ — so it makes sense that women might be drawn to ‘live for the plot’, as they attempt to retaliate against tradition and expectations, and strive to write their own scripts. But as Dr Jilly Kay, an expert in feminist media and cultural studies, reminds me: “Trying to play the patriarchy at its own game is very different from trying to abolish it.” In other words, what looks like rebellion is often just survival cosplaying as empowerment.
And when the plot inevitably collapses, we don’t just lick our wounds — we narrativise them. Heartbreak becomes a story to tell, an anecdote for the group chat, a lesson to frame. But, adds Dr Kay, when we start lowering the bar and justifying bad relationships as growth, “there’s no possibility of changing heterosexual culture for the better”. We might tell ourselves it’s resilience, but sometimes it’s just another performance.
Still, faced with a dating landscape that feels rigged, many women are developing emotional survival strategies — one of which is reframing chaos as empowerment, or even mediocrity as adventure. I call my own emotional exhaustion a ‘strategic surrender’ of sorts. In a world that’s post-feminist, post-app, and still defined by patriarchal pressures, maybe the real question isn’t what we want from love — it’s what we can leverage from men.
“At least [doing it for the plot feels] alive, cinematic, like you’re starring in something instead of endlessly swiping and feeling nothing,” suggests relationship therapist Simone Bose. “It’s not really about love, it’s about wanting to feel something.”
But is the thrill of narrative escapism always such a bad thing — or is it actually just part and parcel of being young, living life, and learning important lessons?
Credit: Cosmopolitan