how fictional friends introduced me to real ones

and what the social surrogacy hypothesis tells us about why we value culture.

Welcome to the Friday Special: longer-form musings on culture, storytelling, and anything else I can’t stop thinking about. No regular cadence for these - just as and when.

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When I was four, my parents gave me a Cinderella dress that became my go-to day-to-day outfit for nearly a year. I slept in it, I played in it, I went everywhere in that dress. Attempts to wash it were traumatic for everyone involved and required elaborate bribery or secret scheming to separate me from the sparkly blue fabric. Later came a fascination with Pride and Prejudice’s Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bennet (the 1995 BBC version with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth is the definitive adaptation, don’t @ me). After reading and watching repeatedly, I insisted that I be Lizzie for Halloween. My very kind and patient mother found a local seamstress to make me a custom Jane Austen-inspired gown for my second-grade Halloween parade. Unfortunately, the costume was lost on my seven-year-old classmates, and most people thought I’d dressed up as the American Girl Doll Felicity. Could they not spot the subtle differences between Colonial America and Regency England garb!? What philistines. These were the beginnings of my long obsession with fictional characters and the early signs that stories played a role more significant than just entertainment in my life.

Left: Me in the aforementioned Cinderella dress; Right: My best impression of Elizabeth Bennet (in a Regency Era portrait, duh).

There were other ways the culture I loved influenced my behavior besides encouraging a penchant for wearing gowns. To this day, I still say “yikesabee” because of Win a Date With Tad Hamilton (Kathryn Hahn is the real star of that film, coming through with the big life lesson: your odds go up when you apply!). After watching Grey’s Anatomy, I so deeply felt like I knew the people on screen that I spoke conversationally about the characters as if they were my friends and used medical jargon as if I, too, went to medical school. I wanted to unzip myself from my human form, dissolve into the screen, and materialize as a Seattle Grace Intern. To this day, I still watch the first season when I’m sick with a cold - it’s my chicken noodle soup. That and Singin’ in the Rain - an instant cure for a bad day. 

I’ve often asked myself - why are you like this? My best answer is probably that my brother is eleven years older, so I spent much of my childhood as the only kid at home. Most of my early memories feature adults rather than children. Connecting with other kids was challenging. I found that being described as “precocious” or “mature for my age” really just meant that I didn’t quite fit in. Recently, while talking about the wonderful friendships I finally accumulated over time, my parents reminded me of a period in seventh grade when I came home crying most days because I didn’t have anyone to sit with at lunch. Instead, I hid in a secret hallway behind the school auditorium reading Sylvia Plath (upon reflection, maybe that’s actually why I was crying?). I now know that many people felt this way during middle school, but back then, it seemed like I’d never have close relationships like the ones I saw on TV. 

It was about this time that I discovered fanfiction and online roleplaying. I don’t remember how it started, but at some point, I joined an online RPG message board. The concept was simple: find a storyline that interests you, create a character, and then take turns with other users posting from your character’s perspective (research tells me this is called play-by-post roleplaying, but I didn’t know that at the time). These weren’t fantasy RPGs but your standard high school teen drama-type stories. I spent hours creating elaborate character profiles, selecting famous actresses as my avatar, and posting back and forth with strangers. I never admitted this hobby to anyone, as I found it pretty humiliating that it consumed so much of my spare time while others from school were actually living the life I was roleplaying. It was a life raft for me, providing social connection and an outlet for creativity when I didn’t yet have either in my real life. 

I’ve since learned there’s a theory in psychology for much of my relationship to stories as an adolescent - the social surrogacy hypothesis. The hypothesis suggests that “humans can use technologies…to provide the experience of belonging when no real belongingness has been experienced.” Researchers conducted several studies, including one where they found that speaking about favorite TV programs buffered study participants against feelings of rejection and low self-esteem. Additional research suggests that these substitute feelings of belonging can come in all different forms, including listening to music, reading books, watching movies, etc. This is how culture functioned for me. Fictional characters played a stand-in role for the relationships missing in my actual life. I couldn’t be lonely when I had Nancy Drew to investigate alongside, Jo March to aspire to, or Elphaba to learn strength of conviction from. 

Over time, my relationship with culture and stories has changed. I still feel very deeply for the culture I love (see below for pictures from my Barbie-themed birthday party this past summer), but instead of turning to stories as an escape from isolation, they’ve become a bridge for connection. My deepest friendships have begun from a shared love of culture and the knowingness of what it means to feel stories so deeply in your soul that the lines of reality feel blurred - especially when the world has a habit of making you feel bad for the culture you love if it’s not deemed worthy of critical praise. In high school, when I finally found my people, I connected with my best friends over High School Musical and the Flight of the Conchords. We’d scream "Bet on It" and "Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros" at the top of our lungs as we cruised our suburban streets. To this day, I never feel more seen than when someone else has the same childhood cultural references as me. When social anxiety has prevented me from knowing how to connect, my cultural lexicon has provided a helpful fallback for finding shared interest (the final season of Succession was doing the lord’s work for New York small talk in Spring 2023).

My Barbie-themed birthday party (and proof the penchant for dressing up continues).

There are many reasons we tell stories. Clearly, we share and listen to them to escape the loneliness inherent in the human experience and to compensate for unmet emotional needs. But the same stories that can provide solace in times of isolation create opportunities for meaningful connection and mutual understanding. When we share our cultural interests, we’re saying, “Hey, this thing matters to me. Does it matter to you, too?” And sometimes that’s a lot easier than sitting someone down to hear your personal manifesto (though I’ve done that too - I’m fun at parties, I promise). 

If I could speak to that precocious little girl in her Cinderella dress, I’d tell her that loneliness will come and go but to keep holding deeply to the things you love. It’s much “cooler” to be into something and to have your own sensibility than to downplay the things you love for fear of embarrassment. In an interesting twist, those stories that help you navigate isolation will create a path to the people who will add dimension and color to your life. And she’d probably say, “Cool - but don’t wash my dress.”

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Does the social surrogacy hypothesis resonate with you too? What culture defined your adolescence?

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