Every Aussie city is now claiming main character energy on TikTok, and it's chaos

Every Australian city currently thinks it's the main character, and TikTok is refereeing the fight.

The trend, going around under tags like "someone's gotta hold it down," has creators filming their actual hometown and captioning it like they're personally defending it from tourist brochure Australia. It started overseas as a local pride format built on the idea that not everyone gets to live somewhere glamorous, so someone has to hold down the regular towns while the postcard cities get all the attention.

Australians have taken to it hard this week, because there is nothing this country loves more than a good city rivalry. Sydney will insist it's obviously the main character because it has the harbour and the ego to match. Melbourne counters that main character energy is earned through laneways and coffee snobbery, not a nice view. Brisbane's pitch is usually some version of "we're not trying too hard and that's the whole point," which is either genuinely relaxed or a very committed bit, hard to say from the outside. Perth mostly points out that main characters don't need anyone else's attention to feel important, then goes back to being three hours behind everyone's group chat.

It's petty, it's parochial and it's extremely relatable, which is exactly the kind of internet culture moment worth paying attention to. Nobody's actually trying to win a geography argument here. They're using a trend format as an excuse to be loudly, specifically proud of somewhere ordinary, which is a nicer instinct than the algorithm usually rewards, and a lot funnier than most brand safe tourism content ever manages.

Every city thinks it's the one holding it down. Every city is, technically, correct about its own postcode. Somebody just needs to let WA know that group chat notification actually came through three hours ago.