Parasocial relationships with content creators or celebrities
The weird nature of relationships between fans and creators in the internet age.
This is a topic that likely predates the times of Twitch creators, or YouTube creators. I wanted to dive into it though because:
a) One of my favourite content creators on Twitch/YouTube (Ludwig) has already started a conversation on this and it’s an easy write.
b) Recently one of my favourite CSGO players Tarik “tarik” Celik commented on a message I said during one of his streams and kinda got first hand experience on what a parasocial relationship is.
c) And my other drafts aren’t really ready yet to publish so I feel this is a good topic.
So what are parasocial relationships? Simply put, its when the audience or content consumer, feel a “personal relationship” towards a content creator or celebrity which is one-sided. Parasocial relationships are one-sided relationships, where one person extends emotional energy, interest and time, and the other party, the persona, is completely unaware of the other’s existence.
The internet age has made it easier for people to delve deep into the private lives of these creators or celebrities which lead to very unhealthy perceptions. Also livestreaming has been more prevalent where creator-to-consumer content is live and on-demand. Interactions between the audience and creator are more seamless.
So what are examples of this:
Stan behaviour seems to be a a good example. The origins of the term “stan” is often credited to the 2000 song “Stan”, about an obsessed fan, by American rapper Eminem featuring Dido. Twitter stans are people I come across often on the app. I see a lot of pages strictly posting “fan cams” or threads and manifestos on their favourite celebrities.
Another example are livestream chatters. Twitch is a growing platform, that you might not have heard about. It was bought by Amazon and is a livestreaming platform that has been around for more than a decade (originaly Justin.tv). The pandemic has created a boom in users of Twitch and I expect that more people will use it. With livestreams, users can talk to the livestreamers in the chatbox. Whether the livestreamer has 10 viewers or thousands. Users comment and interact with the streamer on an instant basis. Some users ask questions. Send personalized messages to these streamers through TTS (text-to-speech) donations, or by pinging them in the chat.
I was one of the many that started to watch Twitch during the pandemic. I did watch Twitch every so often back then (usually just watching livestreamed videogame tournaments) but the past year I got more into it, it became my goto place to watch things. Whether it was lefitst politics and news from Hasanabi, casual gaming or just shooting the shit with Ludwig, or top tier FPS gaming with ex-CSGO pro tarik. Anything you can think of you can probably find it on Twitch. I kinda want to also write about Twitch and how chat works because honestly its an interesting topic in itself too, but that’s for another time…
Most recently I was able to know what it’s like when a big streamer answers your chat. Tarik was playing Valorant, a tactical shooter, where he was having a close game. Stream snipers are common for big and well known players (Sniping: where other players in the game watches his stream to gain information to give them an advantage). For context there was moment in the last seconds of the match where an enemy player peaks a corner suspiciously as if they knew Tarik was there to which I commented on his chat “that sage just straight up know where he was lmao?” to which he answered me:
“Yeah, how did that Sage know to jiggle that. Yeah. Abaeho (my Twitch user name is a play on my last name Abejo), good fuckin’ observation there buddy.”
I rarely chat, I’m what’s called a “lurker”, I keep the stream on and put it in my second monitor in the background while I do homework or readings. I’ve been answered to before in other chats, but this one I felt a bit star-struck. Tarik is one of my favourite CSGO players and Twitch creators, he’s funny, his old CSGO content never fail to make me laugh. I didn’t actually expect him to read chat and answer me but yet he did over the hundreds of other people chatting.
After a bit, though I came back to reality. Tarik doesn’t know who I am, I don’t know him personally. Before Tarik, I used to regularly tune into Ludwig’s stream and his remember his rant about parasocial relationships. I understand that religiously praising creators as if you know them is unhealthy. I know that they don’t know me personally cause in reality all they see is a username. Tarik probably already forgot about my comment 5 minutes after I wrote it.I know not to praise these people and act as if they know me personally.
On Twitter, I see many folks praising other celebrities as if they personally know them, they defend them without hesitation and act like a friend through replies. It’s honestly weird seeing this. The worst I see are Elon Musk fans, not to be harsh but these braindead individuals defend him on Twitter like no other, it parallels on other high celebrities defence but this fucker is straight up a multi-billionaire. People use a rich person’s philanthropic deeds as an excuse anytime they are critiqued. We will simply never change the system if every tax write off is considered a good enough job. The richest in the world, and yet some of these twitter users see him as some kind of Messiah. I see a bunch of Elon Musk fans defend that fucker as if he’s some kind of god and honestly that’s the cringiest parasocial relationship I can think of.
At the end of the day these celebrities, creators and streamers are entertainment. Yes they are real people that have feelings and thoughts, but on a level, we don’t know each other beyond pixels on a screen. Unfortunately, there are cases out there where other folks take it further than that. Parasocial relationships can be crippling for both the creator and consumer.
On the creator side, extreme fans can become stalkers, doxxing is an issue for some where streamers would need to move due to “fans” knowing where they live. On the consumer level, a moderate parasocial fan might donate too much or be overly zealous in chat to receive attention from the streamer, then thinking they have a relationship because of the attention reciprocated. Praise of these idols are a unhealthy habit and while I do understand admiration, thinking you know them on a personal level is an insane thought.
Overall, I want to warn folks of the dangers of this. It leads to unhealthy perceptions, and even a consumption addiction, it can lead to even less real personal connections and intimacy with real friends or family. Probably some connection between low-esteem and anxiety and people who fall into the parasocial trap but I don’t want to delve too much in the psychological implications of who can and can’t fall into the trap. I wonder if this ever happened with celebrities or famous people back in like hundreds of years ago. Did Mozart have stans? Would have been funny if he did and see how they would interact on Twitter today lol.
Anyways, till the next time.
JA.
Post publish edit:
A day later after writing this I came across another Twitch user who was in the parasocial sauce. I was writing another post just before bed waiting for Tarik to go live. While streamers are offline, the chatroom is still “live” so people in some communities have what’s called “offline chats”, these are usually where communities grow and come together other than on discord. Ludwig has a prevalent one I am accustomed to after watching him for a while. Tarik I don’t really think has one, the offline chat is Nightbot with scheduled messages, or mostly the people that stop by are people trying to mimic his settings by typing chat commands (!crosshair for his crosshair settings, !res for his game resolution settings, etc).
Tarik was about to go live, his usual time to stream is late and it was known he was in the chat about to stream, but still about half an hour before there was this user being ultimately parasocial in the chat. He commented on wanting Tarik to go live earlier and eat on stream, (without his shirt on he was originally known as noshirt_tv, and its a bit of a reference to a clip that got Tarik famous). This user (muz1kmylife) however kept talking as if he was talking to another person in chat, even though no one, not even Tarik was talking to him.
Anyways I tried at least try to break this person’s parasocial habit cause I felt bad. They said “even on the internet people ignore me Sadge”, Sadge is an emote on Twitch, something I’ll explain in a future post. Sadly that was eventually the end of the conversation and didn’t hear from him after.
I just wanted to give an update. Its sad seeing this kind of thing online and you can really see how bad parasocial relationships can be.
JA.
