Scribblers Rewire Reality
Every story you tell shapes the world you live in. I'm not being metaphorical. The way you think about love comes from centuries of romance narratives and recent rom-coms. Your ideas about justice were shaped by courtroom dramas. Your sense of what's possible in life has been expanded or limited by every protagonist you've ever rooted for.
Stories don't just entertain us. They're empathy machines. Every time we slip into a character's world, we're practicing what it feels like to be someone else. Every plot we follow is basically a flight simulator for facing our own chaos. It's emotional boot camp dressed up as a good time.
When millions of people watch the same stuff, play the same games, binge the same shows, we're literally rewiring how entire cultures think about what's normal, what's heroic, what's even possible. You can spot this everywhere if you look:
The Geography We Create
Los Angeles isn't actually a warzone, but Boyz ‘n the Hood portrayed it that way (sorry, tourists!)
Miami Vice Mirage – Tourists think Miami is all neon, speedboats, and kingpins, while locals are mostly just sweating through errands.
CSI Effect – Juries now expect airtight forensic evidence because TV crime labs solve murders in 48 minutes. Real prosecutors say it changes trial outcomes.
The Paris Syndrome – Travelers expect a perpetual romantic glow from endless rom-coms and crash into reality.
Yellowstone convinced half of America that Montana is full of murderous ranch dynasties (spoiler: it's mostly just cold)
Life Choices Our Stories Inspire
The Top Gun flicks literally made Navy pilot recruitment explode (I got my pilot's license in High School and rode a Kawasaki Ninja)
The Queen's Gambit caused chess set sales to jump 1000% during COVID (and made ceiling chess seem normal)
Squid Game had people playing deadly kids' games at parties (thankfully, not actually deadly... yet)
Mad Men Drinking Culture – Viewers romanticized three-martini lunches and vintage cigarette brands.
Politics Via Story
The West Wing taught a generation how they think government should work (walk and talk, people!)
House of Cards became the template for how people imagine DC corruption (probably not wrong though)
The Handmaid's Tale costumes became the protest uniform for reproductive rights (Margaret Atwood basically designed a movement)
24’s Torture Debate – Counter-terrorism dramas normalized “ticking time bomb” logic in real policy discussions.
The Streaming Revolution
Wednesday made everyone want to learn cello and dress goth (Hot Topic stonks through the roof)
Stranger Things brought back Kate Bush and made D&D cool again (finally!)
Euphoria made everyone's high school experience look boring (and probably safer)
Shark Week Panic – People think sharks kill thousands yearly, when vending machines are deadlier.
I've been scribbling TV for decades. We weren’t just making shows. But programming how people experience reality. Building mental maps that millions use to navigate their actual lives.
On Lost, we watched fans create elaborate theories that were way more complex than anything in our scribble room. I remember Damon pulled up a fan site where someone had mapped out this intricate connection between the numbers and ancient Egyptian mythology. We all just stared at it like, "Should we... should we make this canon?" The audience was co-creating the show’s mythology.
On Heroes, people started believing in their own potential for something extraordinary. We'd get letters from viewers saying the show made them realize they could be more than ordinary. One kid wrote that Hiro made him proud to be a nerd who loved comics.
On VALORANT, I've seen players build entire identities around the characters and worlds we create. These stories don't stay in their boxes anymore. A game becomes a Netflix series, spawns a comic book, inspires cosplayers who become TikTok stars, and suddenly you've got this transmedia organism that's alive across platforms. The story jumps from screen to screen, mutating and evolving, picking up new DNA from each medium.
Netflix isn’t just streaming content; they're streaming culture. Every Korean show that goes global, every true-crime doc that becomes a phenomenon, every dating show format that gets people talking, they're all rewriting our social operating system.
So, think about what this means for you as a scribbler. You’re not cranking out content. You're creating mythology that someone will use to understand themselves. Words become code that will run in millions of brains. You’re not just a scribbler, you're an architect of imagination, a designer of dreams, a crafter of culture.
Don’t look at the blank page like it’s empty. It's pregnant with possibility. Every scene you write could be the moment that changes how someone sees the world. Every character you create might become the template for who someone decides to become. So yeah, no pressure. But also... holy schnitz, what an amazing opportunity.
Just remember, “With great power comes great responsibility.”
