By Jaden Lum Zi Jun (26S05A)

How far would you go to impress someone?  

Because in 1981, outside the Washington Hilton Hotel, a man stood amongst the bustling crowd, intent on answering that very question. As officials streamed from the doorway, cheers roared, and cameras flashed. He reached into his coat. It was time.  

Six shots rang out, and the world watched in horror as US President Ronald Reagan narrowly dodged death at the hands of this would-be assassin.  

His motive? After watching the 1976 film Taxi Driver, he became fanatically obsessed—not just with its lonely, violent and insomniac protagonist Travis Bickle, but even more so with the film’s young star, Jodie Foster. And in a valiant attempt to win her love, he would allow fiction to bleed into reality by mirroring the movie’s plot with an attempt on the President’s life. Romantic.

Since Taxi Driver’s release, characters like Travis have proliferated. Mostly antiheroes, they are self-destructive, beset by angst, isolation and confusion, acting out against a society that alienated them. And, just like Reagan’s attempted assassin, young men online see their own inner turmoil reflected in their chaotic behaviour, relating to them so much that they can’t help but exclaim, “Wow, they are literally me!” Thus, with countless “sigma” edits immortalising it, the “literally me” character trope was born. 

The Characters

Whilst the “Literally Me” club features a diverse gallery of characters, the most iconic ones fall into three overlapping archetypes, each housing a different flavour of masculine rage. Mild spoilers ahead.

1. The Loners (Travis Bickle & Arthur Fleck)

Travis Bickle and Arthur Fleck are almost egregiously cut from the same cloth, enough so to warrant the persistent critique that Joker (2019) was too derivative of Taxi Driver, along with other films by legendary director Martin Scorsese. Upon comparing the two films, it is clear why. 

Both protagonists are mentally disturbed and socially awkward loners, crushed beneath the weight of their respective crime-infested and neo-noir cities—New York and Gotham. 

Travis—an insomniac Vietnam War veteran turned cabbie—aimlessly drifts through the city in his bright yellow taxi, a driveable coffin of sorts. Reduced to a passive observer in life, he unravels in maddening tirades about the city’s moral rot, fantasizing that “someday a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets”. Ultimately, he becomes that rain. More disturbingly, society thanks him for it. 

Meanwhile, Arthur’s descent into the Joker needs no retelling. The film captured the 2019 zeitgeist and was quickly adopted as a manifesto by countless disenfranchised men, especially incels. Appalled, director Todd Phillips would declare in 2024’s controversial sequel that “Arthur was never the real Joker,” much to the ire of the film’s cult following.

But despite its many flaws, the sequel was right: Arthur was no mastermind. He wasn’t a revolutionary with a political message—he was a mentally ill man, abused and abandoned, with society’s obsessions with martyrdom projected onto him. Fanboys may insist otherwise, but Arthur was no Clown Prince of Crime. In the end, Travis and Arthur are far from heroes.

Ultimately, both characters are portraits of male disconnection in the modern era. Men who feel worthless; men who feel betrayed. As Scorsese tastefully pointed out in a 2023 interview, “Every other person is like Travis Bickle now”. 

That’s unsettling. 

2. The Renegades (Tyler Durden & Patrick Bateman)

In the other corner, we have Tyler Durden and Patrick Bateman, characters that, unlike the previous two, who struggled with being invisible, battle the hollowness of being seen. Stuck in the system, they loathe every minute.

With Tyler Durden, the part-time soap salesman and full-time anarchist, we see a hypermasculine beast unleashed after rejecting the corporate treadmill, starting a cult of toxic freedom through his underground Fight Clubs, where millions of unfulfilled men willingly brawl it out in a bloody catharsis. His message? Embrace the inner animal. Liberate yourself.

Meanwhile, Patrick Bateman seemingly has it all. Money. Muscles. Flawless skin. Valentino suits and reservations at Dorsia. But strip away the picture-perfect image, and you’re left with a deeply resentful, insecure and cold-blooded serial killer. Murder is his medicine—his only outlet to feel in control after being neutered by the pressures of conformity and mindless competition. 

In our image-obsessed world, both characters are symbols of modern existentialism. They represent a deeper yearning—for true fulfillment, and genuine relationships. 

3. The Grindsets (Walter White & Jordan Belfort)

Finally, the notorious Heisenberg and the Wolf of Wall Street. These characters don’t just chase after greed and power. They revel in it. 

In Walter’s bloody transformation into a ruthless drug kingpin, we see a man, bullet by bullet, lie by lie, reclaiming control over his life. When we first meet him, he’s a meek, financially struggling high school chemistry teacher who, like so many of us, feels downtrodden in life and belittled. But by the end, he’s feared. 

Jordan Belfort—the only character here based on a true story—dives headfirst into his lavish lifestyle. Hedonism fuels him—drugs, partying, and casual flings; he wants it all. But it’s not his fever dream of excess that hooks male audiences. Rather, it is his charm, confidence, and charisma. It’s not just fun watching people flimsily bend to his will. It’s empowering. The irony? These men are the likeliest to fall for his fraud. It’s no wonder then that Belfort has successfully rebranded into a motivational speaker, hinging his classes on his “sales expertise”. Not bad for a convicted fraudster, huh?

Perhaps it has to do with us never meeting the families and lives Walter’s drug empire destroys or the working-class folk Belfort scams. All we see is domination. Domination over the criminal underground. Domination over Wall Street. Domination over oneself. When so many feel lost in life, that’s the deeper craving, isn’t it?

The Why

Something must be in the water. 

These characters were never meant to be liked, let alone idolised. They were written as satires or cautionary tales, not blueprints or bibles. Why then are they mirrors for so many? 

The answer is simple: masculinity is in an identity crisis. As gender norms are dismantled, young, heterosexual men—once at the epicentre of the cultural hierarchy—find themselves confounded by a lack of purpose. The old rulebook on being a “real man” was torched, and there has been no replacement since. 

The result? Whilst women and LGBTQ+ individuals gain long overdue representation, men are left in the dust, still taught to be strong, independent and emotionless. Add on traditional communal structures being replaced by the superficiality and materialism of social media, and a real loneliness epidemic begins to emerge, with suicide now a leading cause of death.

This is why the “literally me” trope hits so hard—these characters are hollow vessels for male disillusionment. Tyler Durden unshackles himself from society’s constraints, Walter White claws his way to domination, and Arthur Fleck fights back. They are, quite simply, fantasies of purpose.

And it doesn’t end there. Worldwide, a widening gender divide has erupted. Young men are increasingly radicalised, drifting towards right-wing rhetoric to feel heard. Alienation morphs into resentment. Feminism is smeared as having “gone too far”. 

Take the Passport Bros movement: Western men flying to less-developed countries to seek “traditional” wives. Or the viral 80-20 rule: the belief that women are so shallow, that 80% would only date 20% of men. It’s vile propaganda, and it spreads like wildfire online, reaching boys young and vulnerable. It’s through such rhetoric that some may believe returning to golden-age patriarchy is the solution, but do not be fooled.

Whilst it may seem that the patriarchy benefits all men, in reality, it advances only one select minority: the rich and powerful. Notice how Andrew Tate capitalises off the insecurities of young men by extracting their money in his “hustler” courses. Or how Trump split America by exploiting the gender divide. They feed off insecurity and anger, tricking vulnerable men into believing they are allies, before sending them to fight for their personal agendas. Sure, some privileges may be returned, but the generational trauma to “man up” still remains. 

So what’s the solution? To be honest, I’m not sure. But the answer I feel must be that masculinity must be redefined. We must teach boys of the next generation that they are valued and loved. If we do not, these “literally me” characters won’t just be characters anymore, and generations of progress will be undone.

As bell hooks wrote, “The wounded child inside many males is a boy who, when he first spoke his truths, was silenced by paternal sadism, by a patriarchal world that did not want him to claim his true feelings.” Sins of the father, indeed.