Side Questing: Just a trend?

Anushka (25-E2)
2 days ago
8 min read

Written by: Anushka (25-E2)

What is side questing culture?

Side questing by definition is “the act of pursuing secondary, often spontaneous activities, hobbies, or mini-adventures that are separate from your main goals, career, or daily routine”. Originating from video games, it has recently become a slang term for taking detours, sometimes out of spontaneity, to add enjoyment, novelty and personal fulfillment to one's lives. With the main goal, to reclaim spontaneous joy in an increasingly hyper-scheduled and algorithm-driven world. In less fancy terms, wasting time on purpose purely for our own happiness. Side quests can include learning a random new skill, going out with no reason, or taking a detour to a new cafe. It's about looking for the simple joys in a highly predictable world and enjoying one’s own company.

Why is it trending?

It has become a cultural trend due to the power of social media. By the celebration of unplanned and spontaneous moments it has gamified real life. It gained significant traction on platforms like TikTok and Instagram as a way to romanticise daily life and resist the monotony associated with adult life. The supports the “main character” narrative also popularised on social media. In this framework, your job or school is the “main quest” while everything else is a “side quest”, it could be a 10pm trip for ice cream or starting a personal creative project. These “side quests” only add more character depth to the “main character”. The term used as hashtags only fuelled this unconventional trend, of sharing random missions.

Another driver of side questing culture is the whimsy economy which reframes it from being “wasteful” or unproductive time as a high value personal investment in joy by providing financial and social permission for people to pursue these side quests. In a traditional economy, value is tied to productivity and utility of time; however in a whimsy economy value is derived from narrative and emotional surprise. It fuels a desire for real-world experience marketed as a necessary break from not just doomscrolling but also everyday work. Celebrating doing things that are unpredictable rather than have a serious purpose reflecting a dissent from work-centric thinking. The “everyday whimsy” also encourages consumers to add playful details to their ordinary activities which turn regular errands into side quests. The highly visual style also motivates people to find and share showable details like a quirky cafe or unique thrift haul that read well on social media.

Additionally, the whimsy economy and side questing culture is driving consumption trends. Many brands like Etsy and retail forecasters are positioning these as a major 2026 demand signal. With the practice of leaning into what your inner child would love, such as colourful clothes or buying silly things just because they spark joy. For example, people are increasingly buying products that offer a tiny surprise detail that make them feel something even briefly which mirrors gaming mechanics where a side quest might yield a rare item or a small lore discovery. Buying a silly thing isnt consumerism its a side quest by giving an object a memory attached to a specific moment of spontaneity. We are simply not buying products for what they do anymore, we are buying them for the story they tell. Especially for GenZ, who view life as a portfolio of different paths rather than a singular path, engaging in the whimsy economy and going on side quests helps build a multifaceted digital and real-world identity.

The Efficiency Trap

Side questing is just the action of wandering off-path, anti-optimisation is the ideology that justifies it by reclaiming human friction. A protest against efficiency and intentionally picking the scenic route in life. Unfortunately, modern culture has reached a point of “hyper optimisation” where algorithms and apps remove all friction to our lives, anti-optimisation advocates for introducing it back in. Side-questing is a form of this where taking a sub-optimal path is framed as a side quest instead. It's a form of rebellion against traditional optimisation culture which treats time as a resource to be maximised for output through an argument that not everything has to be faster or smarter. When we stop trying to optimise every minute of our days to maximise productivity, naturally we will have more time for side quests. It protects our mental health from the trap of over-optimisation. Social media has further encouraged the movement with the push for perfectly curated feeds to be replaced by anti-aesthetics, like blurred photos, unedited photos and a sense of unfilteredness. People post their side quests specifically because they are unpolished and random. A video of a failed attempt at making bread is valued precisely since it wasn't a planned, optimised piece of content for views and clickbait. In a way, it's a push against algorithms as well, since algorithms are watch time optimisation machines that predict exactly what you want to see. Anti-optimisation trends encourage people to un-automate their tastes by actively seeking out niche, non-recommended content.

Finally, in a time where dopamine is sourced from doomscrolling, side questing provides the ultimate dopamine detour. It hijacks the brain’s reward system in a way that productive tasks rarely do. Our brains are wired to prioritise novelty which means routine tasks like “main quests” eventually stop triggering dopamine because they are predictable. A side quest, on the other hand, floods the brain with dopamine simply because it is new and unexpected. Unlike main quests and specific goals, a side quest has no fail-state which removes the cortisol associated with achievement, leaving only pure enjoyment of the experience itself. Like walking into a weird bookstore but not buying anything is not a loss. Not only that, it also provides instant gratification unlike main quests which further fuels the dopamine hits. Doing something just because you want to give a massive psychological boost, which is much harder to get when doing something because you have to. This sense of autonomy is a powerful mood stabiliser that combats the feeling of being a cog in the machine.

Side-questing as a Mental health tool

Side-questing is much more than everything discussed so far; it's a paramount mental health tool. It acts as a low-pressure bridge back to engagement as it lowers the cost of entry for social interactions and decision making. Decision fatigue which mostly comes from the weight of consequences, side questing simply overcomes them by treating it as a low-stakes experiment. So instead of searching for the perfect activity, following the first “shiny object” is much more simple. It also provides a path of least resistance because if a side-quest doesn’t work out, you just abandon it. Thus, replacing analysis paralysis with something much better, curiosity. With no paralysis of trying to make the right choice since there is game over. Side questing essentially removes the sometimes anxiety-inducing consequence of a choice by reframing it to be a win-win scenario no matter what happens, since there's no right or wrong choice.

Loneliness is a feeling observed increasingly amongst residents of modern society. Side questing directly combats loneliness. Loneliness can feel like a wall that’s too high to climb, initiating anything like “making a new friend” feels terrifying. Side quests provide the perfect social buffer by providing a task-based reason to break out of one's shell and to be out in the world. It's easier to talk to someone at a plant nursery about a garden you're growing than to go to a mixer to meet strangers, you have seemingly nothing in common with. side quests often lead to weak tie interactions like the brief, friendly chats with a barista or a librarian. Even research shows that these small, low-pressure social moments are surprisingly effective at reducing feelings of isolation. When one feels lonely, they tend to stay inside and over analyse. By changing the environment, a side quest forces a “pattern interrupt”. Going to a new location physically shifts your perspective. You then begin looking for “side quests” in your environment which moves the focus from internal rumination to external observation. Moreover, completing a side quest, even a random, silly mission provides a sense of efficacy. It proves to the brain that you can set a goal, navigate the world and achieve it which builds confidence needed to tackle “main quests.” Not only that, going on a side quest teaches you to be at ease with yourself and enjoy your own company by doing things alone. That's powerful enough to beat the loneliness out.

Pitfalls

The trends with many many benefits also have a dark side one should be careful of. It happens when a side-quest stops being a detour to relax and starts becoming a defense mechanism, a more sophisticated form of avoidance. It is termed to be productive procrastination where it is “the act of avoiding high-priority, difficult tasks by completing less important, yet still productive, tasks instead.” It is still procrastination even if it's productive because you are doing something objectively good or useful specifically to avoid a high stakes priority. You cannot tell your boss you did not complete an assigned task just because you were on a side quest of walking your dog at a dog park, it's unacceptable. A sidequest like cleaning your room feels virtuous, so you don’t feel the guilt associated with procrastination. Your brain does get the dopamine hit of “finishing a task” but the main task remains untouched, creating a “shame debt” that hits much harder later. This can discourage you further from doing anything, even sidequests, and you ultimately fall into other dopamine inducing traps like doom scrolling.

Additionally, the dopamine hit when completing a sidequest feels amazing but when constantly chasing the novelty of new sidequests, you may lose the ability to simply sit still without boredom or difficulty. Falling into the trap of a “novelty junkie”. It supports the purpose of sidequests but too much of anything is not very good either. You reach a dopamine threshold where you start a dozen hobbies or projects but abandon them the moment they require actual grinding or effort. This leads to a life of shallow starts rather than deep finishes. Your life becomes filled with stories and facts that add nothing to your character. You end up saying “i learnt to play the guitar” but when someone asks you to play, you cannot since you never truly fully mastered the instrument.

Social media, the thing that started it also presents a major pitfall of side questing culture: performative sidequesting. It is the authenticity trap on the internet where something is manufactured to be authentic. When a spontaneous detour, a sidequest becomes a content strategy, it's not a side quest anymore, it's just work. It completely defeats the purpose of going on side quests. The moment one thinks “this would look great on my story” the dopamine source shifts. You’re no longer getting a hit from the experience, instead you're chasing a hit from the validation. This kills the “whimsy” aspect of it because you're now managing a production instead of enjoying a moment. It’s a ridiculous irony “planned spontaneity” if you spend 20 minutes setting up a tripod to film yourself “randomly” discovering a hidden alleyway, the spirit of the sidequest is dead. Its performative un-optimization. Since it's such a massive trend, on social media, side questing has turned into a flex of time and money. It turns into a competition of who has the most “main character” energy which makes people feel like their own quiet, unfiltered lives are boring by comparison. True sidequesting is often weird, messy, or even a little embarrassing. When we filter it for social media, we strip away the "human friction" that makes it valuable for mental health. If it’s not "post-worthy," people might stop doing it, which means they lose out on the genuine, unpolished benefits of just wandering.

At its core, side questing is not just another social media trend that will die out next week, its part of a rising notion of appreciating life. Not just the aesthetics or “main character” energy we project onto a screen but the messy unpolished and deeply human act of being curious. It's a rebellion against the mindset that our time must be maximised and optimised. Its the choice between the straight line and the scenic route, and picking the scenic route. The most valuable item you will find is not directly presentable, it's the moment of clarity of enjoyment and mental quiet that comes when you stop looking at the clock. The little joys of life in our existence.

Thanks for reading! Now, put down your phone and find a side quest!