Katherine Morgan Schafler
— from The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control, Location 3066
Research demonstrates that we intuitively gravitate towards reruns when we’re feeling down because doing so increases our communal sense of belonging and decreases loneliness; it’s the parasocial connection that’s comforting us. One study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology showed that watching reruns of your favorite show “buffers against drops in self-esteem and mood and against increases in feelings of rejection commonly elicited by threats to close relationships.”