your parasocial best friend
reflections on nuanced takes and our relationships with celebrities
In my middle school English class, I learned about the different ways advertisements utilize ethos, pathos, and logos to convince people to buy products. The example my teacher used for ethos was the use of celebrity endorsements to contribute to the credibility of a product. My teacher warned us that just because someone we look up to tells us something, we shouldn’t immediately take their word.
That warning wasn’t enough for me.
I’ve talked a bit about my own parasocial tendencies in previous posts, but truthfully, it’s embarrassing to really reckon with how much I’ve bought into celebrity worship culture. When I was younger and lonely, I turned a lot towards stanning YouTubers, musicians, and actors (which, if you’re thinking, that sounds like you today, just wait!). I just needed someone to look up to. The danger in the age of the internet is that these figures are more accessible than ever via social media.
As I started growing up and the internet evolved, the word cancel culture began emerging. And no, before you ask, this is not a writing piece bashing cancel culture. Instead, I want to talk about the counter-culture to celebrity culture that seems to pull a complete 360-degree turn.
Instead of praising celebrities and defending their behavior, people are now inclined to actively bash celebrities. Sometimes, it’s justified, especially if the person has committed a literal crime. Other times, it’s due to misunderstanding a statement. Take how the internet turned on Chappell Roan for her video about refusing to endorse Kamala Harris and her comments about hating the way she’s treated for being famous.
My issue with slapping the label “problematic” or “controversial” is that it kills any nuance in discussions before it has a chance of appearing. Problematic can mean anything from a bad tweet made 10 years ago to multiple allegations of SA. The way social media (especially Twitter) thrives off discourse that involves pointing fingers makes it increasingly hard to determine the severity of someone’s actions and what a proportionate response is.
Sometimes, people end up being angry at a celebrity when, really, they’re angry at what a celebrity represents and the systems they’re upholding.
In writing this, it seems like I’m trying to defend celebrities and, therefore, am a hypocrite for criticizing parasocial relationships while holding parasocial relationships myself. And that’s exactly what I’m trying to get at.
With this counter-culture against celebrities, holding contrasting statements that can co-exist, albeit in a fraught state, has become near impossible. When someone who was at one point famously loved but became a shitty person dies, it’s easy to just focus on the fact that they were shitty and did some pretty bad fucking things that people are allowed to be angry about. It’s harder to also remember that their family and friends are grieving and making jokes on social media where they can see everything that’s being said about a dead person they loved is insensitive.
The way social media (especially Twitter) thrives off discourse that involves pointing fingers makes it increasingly hard to determine the severity of someone’s actions and what a proportionate response is.
The discourse about parasocial relationships raises questions about what these people owe to us and what we owe to them. Arguably, parasocial relationships can become a toxic cycle of exploitation, which might be an extreme word, but I can’t think of a lighter synonym that accurately captures what the experience of parasociality is like.
The way celebrities exploit fans has been debated extensively. Celebrities directly profit from their fans’ devotion. In addition to unlimited adoration, fans are expected to spend money on celebrities by supporting their work through means like attending concerts and events and buying merchandise. Some celebrities really play into the parasocial relationship they have with fans and try to hide the fact that they look at their followers and see dollar signs instead.
However, in a way, fans also exploit celebrities. The word celebrity itself inherently dehumanizes these figures as they no longer become a regular person but someone we’ve put on a pedestal and become shocked when they fumble and reveal they aren’t the perfect person we thought they might be. Paparazzi culture is still bad today; the lengths some people go to find information that violates any semblance of privacy—to the point of stalking—is shocking.
There’s an argument that celebrities only have power because we give it to them. However, we have to consider why we decided to give it to them in the first place and whether we have the ability to take it away. This applies to the argument that celebrities choose a career that puts them in high visibility; it denies the responsibility we have on our side of the relationship. After all, a relationship has to be a two-way street—otherwise, it wouldn’t be thriving.
It seems like parasocial relationships are a mutually destructive cycle. So, why do we still end up engaging in them?
For me, at least, it’s a guilty pleasure. I would say I’m someone with obsessive habits and a tendency to care just way too much (hence the title of this Substack). It’s easier for me to place all my affections on someone who will never have to personally know me, to just pour my heart out into something that will never love me back. That’s why I became a writer, after all.
At the end of the day, I can watch all the interviews I want and know every single publicly available fact about a celebrity, but that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t truly know them and never will. That also doesn’t change the deeply upset feeling I get whenever I find out about a shitty thing they’ve done. To others, these should be contradicting statements, but I feel both at the same time. It would be reductive to pretend that only one is true, to swing to either side of the culture instead of residing in this uncomfortable in-between space.
A quote I return to often is this line from Michael Schur’s book about morality: “We draw [the line] somewhere. You and I may draw it in different places, but we need to draw it, each of us, for ourselves.”
Parasocial relationships may be relatively new, but it seems like they’re going to be sticking around. Individual discourse aside, what truly matters is how we decide to draw the line for ourselves and figure out how to exist in these relationships in a way that slows the inevitability of destruction at the end.