'Parasocial Relationships: A Pervasive Risk' socialmedia influencers
There are a lot of one-sided relationships on social media. They have many names: superfans, otakus, and stans. When you intimately know the personality, likes, dislikes, and the entire personal history of a person you’ve never met and never had any one-on-one interaction with, you’re likely in a parasocial relationship.
The internet finally pulled the plug and turned the slow trickle of parasocial relationships into a screaming vortex. Twitch streamers, social media influencers, online “personalities,” and educators on YouTube feel like close personal acquaintances. I personally am in several such parasocial relationships. My imaginary friends accompany me whenever I do the dishes or mow the lawn. Whenever I have a block of time, I grab my headphones, and my friends appear.We often feel very connected to this particular kind of creator. We listen to them on a regular schedule, like a friend. They’re interested in things we like, and they act predictably because we know them well, like a friend.
When they then reach out to me months later, they will have seen me on their feeds every day, liked most of my tweets, and replied to many of them. In their DM, I can often feel that this created some sort of expectation of me. I’ve learned to expect that, and have found ways to calmly let them down if their expectations were inflated. But it does create a cognitive load: if I don’t reply to the request, their benign expectation can quickly turn into an angry outburst.
It can be very convenient to feel affiliated with someone: the relationship turns into entertainment. People can just watch their perceived friend do their work and stop doing what they themselves should do. They watch you build in public instead of building their own businesses. It’s like hopping on the couch to watch a nature documentary instead of going on a hike. The curated experience isn’t the same as your own adventure.
Don’t feed into the fantasy. Don’t act as if you had an intimate relationship. Unless you’ve built a genuine friendship with a person, you’re not a friend. You can be a peer or a colleague, but friendship is earned, not faked. If they overstep, draw clear lines in the sand and call people out — kindly and in private.
The flipside of the voyeuristic tendencies of people living vicariously is that what you do as a creator could turn into modeling: they see you doing something, and they start to see themselves doing that in their future. As the parasocially related person, you are likely a role model. Act like it, and your actions will shape the lives of others. Talk the talk, and walk the walk.
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