Aren’t we friends?
Examining the true nature of parasocial relationships.
Before we dive into today’s essay, I have some quick housekeeping to attend to. When I first launched Break Free in October, I had zero subscribers and zero newsletter experience. Since then, we’ve grown to a community of nearly 2,000 people(!) I began the journey by publishing twice weekly essays, then I added on an additional essay every other week for paid subscribers. As someone who is writing about less in a world of more more more, I realized that the sheer amount of content that I’m producing doesn’t align with my message.
So starting this week, I’m scaling back. I’ll be publishing an essay once a week, and 1-2 times a month, I’ll add in a Q&A post for paid subscribers. The detox program and community chat remain exclusive to paid subscribers as well.
Now, let’s get to the good stuff.
I grew up in a typical suburban household, complete with a mom religiously catching up on her soaps — aka soap operas. At her peak, she watched three soaps daily, which in today’s tv consumption, might not feel excessive, but in the 90’s, it did. There was an elaborate VCR recording system involved, and we were the first to get a DVR when the technology was introduced. What I remember most about this time, though, is not how much she was watching, but how intimately she spoke of the characters on her soaps.
I can more clearly recall the names and storylines of the people who lived in these fictional towns than of my own childhood peers (Hope Brady, Victor Kiriakis and Nicholas Newman to name a few).
Despite the fact that the rest of our family did not indulge in these shows, we could still recite the latest happenings because my mom would tell us in detail at the dinner table as if these were real people, my mother’s real friends, who were breaking up, getting back together, coming back from the dead, etc.
Do I find this behavior normal? No. But is it unhealthy? Maybe, maybe not.
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We are living in a parasocial world
A parasocial relationship is defined as a one-sided connection where a person feels a strong emotional bond with someone they don't actually know, like a celebrity or fictional character, often developed through media exposure.
I hadn’t heard of parasocial relationships until this past year, but of course, this is what my mom was having with these fictional characters.
It’s not abnormal for most people to experience this in some way, especially in childhood. I remember feeling certain that I had a real chance with Ashton Kutcher and my sister was a member of an actual Johnathan Taylor Thomas fan club (complete with signed poster).
Some research points to this even being a healthy outlet for children. From Harvard:
“Bonding emotionally with famous or fictional people might also shape people's values. For example, children might learn lessons about right and wrong from characters they connect with on shows such as Sesame Street or Bluey. Teens or adults might feel moved to work harder if they're attached to champion athletes, or do good deeds if they admire selfless leaders.”
As for my mom, she was raising four kids and working full-time. She didn’t have a lot of time for real-world connection, and she found it in her soaps. I get it. I understand the urge to seek comfort in a relationship that you don’t actually have to maintain.
Yet, in the advent of social media and with the floodgate of access to strangers' lives, our parasocial friend groups have grown exponentially. Has it gotten out of hand?
Is it friendship if I don’t know your name?
I could write another essay on the dynamics of celebrities and social media, so let’s leave that aside for now and focus on our relationships with influencers — a category that wouldn’t exist without platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.
Influencers are, most typically, normal people who have compelling lives and innate skills in documenting and sharing the details of those lives.
We get glimpses into their homes and their families. We watch them fall in love, get married, and raise children. We know what gifts they're buying for their family and what their holiday traditions are. We know their diets, their meal plans, and we specifically can tell you what they bought at Trader Joe’s this week. We know their childcare plan, their favorite vacation locales, we know their pets — past and present.
Some influencers are more guarded, but others give us deeper peeks behind the curtain – they let us know when they're struggling with infertility, when they're having marital problems, when their kids aren't hitting their milestones. It’s intimate. It can be a level of closeness I don't even have with some of my closest friends.
And what do they know about you? Nothing.
What do they get from you? Money.
Parasocial relationships are quite literally a financial transaction. Whether you pay by supporting influencers ads or purchasing from their affiliate links or by simply engaging in their content, you are participating in a transactional model. The more emotionally compelling their content is, the more they are likely to earn.
From National Geographic:
“We as human beings have a brain that is hardwired for survival and reproduction,” Gayle Stever points out. If a character or celebrity brings a person a feeling of comfort, safety, and security, “[your] brain doesn't care if [you] know this person in real life or not”—it will automatically form a lasting attachment…The illusion of intimacy can feel very, very real to a human brain—beginning with watching someone on a screen, and enhanced by the possibility of direct communication in a comment section.”
When we engage in a parasocial relationship, we are seeking a feeling of connectedness, of attachment. We want the benefits of a friendship without having to put in the efforts of seeking and then maintaining a friendship. We want closeness with ease, but that closeness is always going to be empty, and in the long-term, it cannot satisfy the true need.
Being in parasocial relationships with influencers will not make you less lonely.
I don't disparage influencers, it's a unique model — spreading the feeling of belonging — as a career. I’d argue most influencers come to this naturally, they aren’t manipulating their followers. If they weren’t charming, they wouldn’t amass a following.
Influencers are on the financial end of the parasocial transaction, but it’s not without pitfalls for them too. Followers transform snippets of a stranger’s life into a complete narrative about who that influencer is and what they stand for. Influencers were put through the ringer in 2020 when we unfairly expected answers from anyone with a voice, and they continue to have expectations waged against them ranging from their political affiliation to their parenting decisions.
I read a great essay by Gina Knox on this topic yesterday about how much pressure influencers have to maintain reliability, which is actually impossible to be the same thing for every follower.
So in some ways, the parasocial relationship might let you down. You might fall in love with this person, who was never going to love you back, and now they have “betrayed you” by some choice they made in their life.
Relationships are a two-way street
It's human nature to seek a sense of belonging and connection. But to fulfill this need with parasocial relationships is tragically shallow, another symptom of our inability to find depth in a digital world.
Can influencers help you feel “less alone”? Sure, but we are attaching the feeling of connection to a false narrative that’s been built up in our brains. The relationship is not real, nor is the character you’ve built in your head. You can’t plug the hole of loneliness with an imaginary plug.
Real connection, real friendship is a two-way relationship where you connect with each other, you learn with each other, you grow with each other.
The true antidote will always be a full, rich life offline.
I absolutely applaud the decision to scale back. Feels authentic and genuine in a very refreshing way - good on you!
This was super interesting. It’s funny how the digital world has created that shift in these relationships that were largely fictitious back in the day (soap stars, book characters etc) and now actual people with actual lives that are kind of acting to their audience. It’s scary really that the lines have blurred between real world and fiction and that’s now our kind of reality.