What are they, why do they exist, and how has the media nurtured them?
Do you ever find yourself thinking that you and your favourite celebrity would be best of friends if you ever happened to meet? It’s not uncommon, in fact, in this day and age it is easy for us to have these trains of thought, nurtured by the media.
Media has given us a chance to get to know celebrities, feel close to them, relate to their lives, or even look up to them. Unfortunately, the problem is it’s all one-sided, it’s a para-social relationship, meaning only one person is aware of it.
To an extent it’s all normal, it doesn’t make you desperate for friends, it doesn’t make you weird, it’s a natural response. However, things can quickly go south if taken too far.
We see time and time again musicians, actors, and influencers all trying to set boundaries with fans, or sometimes naively sharing everything, even down to the birth of their children, with their fans.
How does this shape how fans interact, when there is an element of a physical relationship involved? And is it all getting out of hand now with the introduction of AI and generations who spend most of their life online?
How did it all start?
Without the media, parasocial relationships probably wouldn’t exist. As there would be no accessibility to these celebrities’ lives there would be no bond to be formed.
The first introduction to parasocial relationships was probably when television and radio started getting big, people often ended up talking back to their TVs and feeling a sense of friendship with radio hosts.
Then as the media got bigger and bigger, connecting more and more people, these types of relationships peaked. The introduction of social media and content creators also had a huge influence on these types of relationships.
When influencers first came on the scene they shared everything, down to mental health issues and who they were currently in a relationship with. Get ready with me! Featuring a storytime! Almost like you’re on Facetime with a friend.
Musicians were able to have social media accounts about things other than their music, about their fashion or their personal lives. Instagram started letting people go live, TikTok blew up and with it, the accessibility to these people.
You might as well have had their full childhood address.
Fan clubs were created, musicians were now naming their fans, and influencers were calling us ‘friends’. I guess it’s all about being on the same level as their audience, but in turn, it has contributed to the expectation of this and fans being let down when not actively recognised.
I asked some questions on Reddit about fan clubs and parasocial relationships for opinions and why people believe they come about. I had some responses that seemed to believe in ‘loneliness’ or finding your people. One person commenting on fan clubs said ‘looking back to my teenage years, ‘ fan clubs offered ‘friends, feeling like you belong.’
But is it allowed to just be your job, is it possible for these sorts of people, the musicians, the presenters, the writers, the content creators to have boundaries, or is that unachievable and unrealistic?
All things media
Social media has a huge influence on all parasocial relationship tendencies. Making everyone so accessible but also dehumanising people. We often complain we only see the good bits on social media, so people are building foundations and perceptions of people on a skewed reality.
I wanted to ask some questions, not only on Reddit but to the person in my life who knows more about pop culture than I ever could, my sister Connie. I’m constantly making fun of how much she knows about her favourite celebrities, so I thought she could be the perfect person to talk to!
I wanted to ask her about how she views celebrities and why she feels so much intrigue when it comes to their lives. She stated “I’m nosey” and sometimes that she “likes the detachment from her own life.”
Filling her feed with podcasters and reality stars helps my sister escape from her own, chaos-filled bubble – and I do think this is a massive factor for why people get so invested in parasocial relationships!
Of course, you want to be friends with that celebrity; she has the same morals as you, and he makes you laugh online. But it’s a relationship not only one-sided but built on something similar to a facade.
Connie states that she has felt close to celebrities: “I relate to their personality so much, I feel like if they met me, they would like me.” Adding that “because I know so much about them intimately” so “then it feels like it’s not one-sided even when it is.”
She mainly feels this with podcasters as they have such personal conversations where “you’re like a fly on the wall” and that watching someone’s life from an outer perspective is almost like “watching a film”.
This supports the intrigue, fans delving deeper, maybe even trying to find flaws. And due to recent years being predominantly online we can usually find this pretty easily, from a search on TikTok.
AI (artificial intelligence) will summarise your searches on Safari and provide links to each point, you can find videos of people discussing controversies and rumours.
The world is literally at your fingertips, so no wonder people find themselves down a rabbit hole of pop culture.
But it’s become more than just pop culture, as social media has developed. First came lives on Instagram for people to record themselves live putting out to all their followers to watch or join. This created another space for people to ask questions and find things out. Getting insights into the more casual aspects of their lives, feeding this idea that you know them.
Then AI got bigger and bigger and bigger and started being used for some crazy stuff online, particularly with celebrities. It’s so easy now to manipulate images and videos, that now we do have to second guess what we see online as it is just so accessible.
There have been deep fake scandals, from political propaganda to sexually inappropriate images with someone else’s face – but it is not like Photoshop, sometimes it is undetectable and is quite scary.
Users on Reddit told me that parasocial relationships are at best “harmless without being beneficial, at worst they’re toxic, life-destroying and potentially dangerous (and if you include religion and politics in that category then they’re potentially world-disrupting).”
Things like this is what takes it to another level, quite a dangerous level now. Something that needs to be regulated and controlled to protect everyone from damaging content. But would this kind of thing be happening if we didn’t feel so close to these celebs, whether that’s out of admiration for them or hate, is it the idea of being so connected to them at the root of it?
Right to privacy and boundaries
Nowadays, many celebrities have started to take issue with how eager their fans can be. Recently, we’ve seen Chappell Roan, a newer artist, come out with some boundaries, for which she faced a lot of controversy. Some fans complained, claiming it felt aggressive and that they were being unrecognised for all they did for her – bringing her fame.
To put it bluntly, without fans, people wouldn’t succeed, if you think about it more specifically, these loyal fan bases – more stereotypically teenage girls – have supported and nurtured creative industries for years and years from the Beatles and Bob Dylan to One Direction and Beyonce.
The fans are the ones who buy the merchandise, collect the albums, pin posters of them all around their room, or even defend their name.
But does this mean they have the right to know the ins and outs of their lives? Is it OK to ask for a photo when they’re at a club, or to ask for their autograph when they are not working?
Is this a breach of privacy? Are celebrities allowed to clock off as some say, or does that kind of job have no room for that?
How does it turn sour?
The difficulty is that it is really easy for it all to turn sour: sex tapes have been shared around, deepfakes are on the rise, and people don’t respect boundaries. Whether that’s sexually, physically, politically or just plain making things up. Conspiracies are made about relationship status and fans can start to oversexualise and step over the line.
One example of this happening is with pop star Renee Rapp, who has a big following of LGBTQ+ people due to her openness with her own sexuality. However, when turning up to perform on tour, at first, people waved jokey signs in the air.
But as the shows went on, all started to go a bit too far. With people over-sexualising her so much, it resulted in other fans coming to TikTok to express their disapproval.
It goes even further on other social media with there now being threads created of comments and discussions from fans on a Reddit page.
Renee Rapp herself explained this was too far for her and asked fans to respect her boundaries. But really, why does she have to make this boundary clear? She’s a stranger to all these people so surely they know the inappropriate nature of their comments.
I wonder if this sort of thing is rooted in parasocial relationships or if this is something completely unrelated, could it be that the fans felt so close that they felt it was acceptable to share?
Parasocial tendencies mean we can easily forget that these people are just humans – who we have never even met! And when you find so much relatability amongst an artist, an influencer, or a celebrity, you can forget it’s not OK to interact on such a personal level with them. They are not your friend and may feel quite intimidated.
Is there a limit on what celebs should share?
So how much should they share? Is it even about that, or as humans is it just nature for this all to happen? The concern is that in such a digital world boundaries are hard to enforce, so the line remains blurred.
Is it down to the person and how they interact with their fans that drives these types of relationships, is it about being wise in what we share online when having platforms?
How do we decipher healthy parasocial relationships to those that could be quite damaging, not only to the person with fame but to the other individual, could it be that they could miss out on more two-sided relationships, or even just human connection when so heavily online?
Another person on Reddit added that “Parasocial relationships can be interesting but also tricky if they replace real connections”, which can be done easily, so there is a risk for sure.
Connie, my sister, a social butterfly, even confessed to feeling a more human connection to celebrities too when I asked, saying bluntly, “Yep, I do”, so it is not like it is just because people feel lonely, there are so many reasons. There’s escapism, relatability and even perks like early access to tickets when part of a club.
On Reddit, someone else told me that their dad is a member of a Scottish rugby fan club and that because of this, they “managed to get tickets for the Taylor Swift’s Eras tour about a week or so before they went on general sale.”
So, I don’t really have the answer, I guess that’s part of the mystery of social media and just media itself, it makes people so accessible in ways that play to our vulnerabilities.
I just hope people aren’t missing out on life and real connections too much.
Featured image by Fauxels via Pexels.