Unfinished thoughts on "being someone" to return to later

Molly and I were talking about this thread today:

Which reminded me of this conversation I had recently, with another old friend: 

I spent all of my teen years studying the people I'd silently elected into the Someone class of whatever it is they did well — being good at volleyball, being preppy, being cool, being a Christian, lol — not by doing, but by obsessing over what it took to be Someone who would. And desperately seeking their acceptance and validation. 

Fwiw, I don't regret the way I did this when I was between 11-13 years old; that's basically how to be that age. You observe, you tastemake, you emulate. I remember just using the internet to surf blogs and look at Pinterest and watch YouTube videos of random people and stare at fashion catalogs to literally sample the elements of personhood and of beauty from the world. I had an Alexa Chung phase (sigh). But I unfortunately didn't learn the differences between attempting to be someone who x and just doing x until much later, like my early twenties. I don't remember when the shift happened, but it eventually just did. And I'm trying to figure out how.