The Myth of the Modern Sidekick
Also from this author: The Only 10 Things You Need to Know Post-Graduation
As a child of the nineties, I absorbed everything there was to know about friendship from TV.
Cory Matthews & Shawn Hunter, Lane Kim & Rory Gilmore, Dawson Leery & Pacey Witter. The teachers varied by channel but the syllabus remained consistent, and underlying each lesson — a single, prerequisite dishonesty: the archetypal best friend. Singular.
As if you’re prescribed a loyal wingman at the opening moment of your social existence; as if your reality isn’t a whirling, chaotic mess of half-baked Facebook friends; as if it were that easy.
It hasn’t been for me. Like so many of us right-swiping our way through the Digital Age, I’ve never had that ONE best friend; no Robin to my Batman. Instead of a single, designated counterpart — or even a sole, cohesive squad — my social geography is made up of islands. With a new set of hypnotizing screens to contend with, what was once a fish bowl is now an app-filled ocean.
Sometimes we come together as a single land-mass, a friend-of-a-friend Pangea; more often we remain distinct. I exist within carefully mapped concentric circles, tenderly curated silos of friendship.
On top of those inlaid divisions — friends from the neighborhood cul-de-sac versus those from the small-town college bar — there are subsectors of friends with whom we share particular sides of ourselves. We fall into familiar rhythms of wry political debate with some and surf the cresting swells of emotional retellings with others. We allow several to tug out our playful side; we entrust one or two with our confessions of rabid professional ambition; we permission a gilded few to the somber duty of guarding our secret shames.
To further complicate matters are the various levels of accountability by which we are bound today. You think Lane ever got mad at Rory for posting a Snapchat before responding to her text? You think the cast of Friends had to brave the great unwritten chasm of social rules regarding Instagram birthday collages? (On everyone’s birthday? On no one’s birthday? Or the minefield method: on some and not others?) Heck no. They had it easy; they just orbited around each other’s living room couches and that was that.
With these new social technologies, you see, we don’t just select a bigger cast for the internal production of My Life, Currently which opens nightly inside our heads. We give them more lines and bigger parts, we expect them to perform right beside us at every curtain call. So at its worst — when our hordes of casted actors go rogue and disappear into cyberspace — modern friendship sends us retreating into the darker corners of our own minds: do I fit somewhere? Am I sure? How do I know? On which app can I find the evidence?
But we do fit—no longer into the other half of a gold-plated “best friend” necklace, or a two-seater Batmobile. Instead, we fit incrementally – a piece tucked here, another snuggly secured there – into the myriad of relationships we create and build. We loan a slice of our personalities to each of a thousand trustees. In return, we receive the same, our lives enriched.
I may not (ever) have a Dawson to my Pacey. But I could fill his whole damn creek with rowboats and kayaks worth of friends, and friends-of-friends, and familiar faces that may someday become friends. I’ll take that preposterous, joyful disaster of a flotilla any day. I’ll even watch the re-runs. Every single one.
Film still via 20th Century Fox
The post The Myth of the Modern Sidekick appeared first on Man Repeller.
Leandra Medine's Blog
- Leandra Medine's profile
- 75 followers
