Parasocial and Other Online Relationships (Public Post)
I'm making this post public. :)
I believe that the concept of "parasocial friendships" is only gaining traction in popular usage, although the term itself has been around for some time now. (As is often true.) Essentially, a parasocial friendship is one where you might feel very close to someone, but the closeness felt is very one-sided. This happens outside the internet social sphere as well, but I'm here to talk mainly about the internet end of it, as well as how making connections with people and engaging in discourse with them is more difficult than it used to be.
Parasocial relationships include: Vloggers, podcast hosts, bloggers, and even fan creators who've also shared their personal lives. They do not interact with you, though - or if they do, the interaction is incredibly minimal. For example, I listen to a podcast where I feel I "know" the hosts. They'll like my replies to their tweets, but that's the extent of it. They don't know me. They don't follow me. This can even mean that it's easy to cross lines you didn't consider existed. At worst, people can become demanding. Sarah Z of YouTube talked about some of her followers demanding videos of her, the way you might jokingly bug a friend. Except because she's not their friend, it isn't funny.
An example of these relationships in blogging community is a popular blogger who posted parodies as well as personal entries on LJ around 2003-2008 or 9. She was on my flist, but we barely interacted, at least as far as I can recall. I knew her best friend's name, I knew some personal things I'm not going to get into (even if she did post them publicly to her hundreds of followers, that still feels weird), but I was just another comment. And you know, that was fine. I LIKED her, but didn't really need to be friends with her. I just enjoyed her stuff. (ETA: Since this is public, I omitted the name.)
Conversely, there were creators I did reach out to back then where the friendships were mutual. They shared stuff, I felt I had something in common with them, we became friends on IM or on LJ.
The fun thing about LJ is that I sometimes knew people without knowing I knew them elsewhere. For example, very early on in the Harry Potter fandom I read a fanfic that was amazing, one of my favorites, and much to my sorrow I never heard of the author writing anything else. One day I clicked on the link to the author's website... it was a good LJ friend of mine. I was like, "ARE YOU KIDDING ME? WHY DID YOU NEVER WRITE AGAIN?" because in that context, it was an entirely appropriate response. :P
That being said, even seemingly mutual friendships weren't necessarily as close as they seemed. There were a few people who I thought I was close to, only to realize we really weren't that close. That's another phenomenon not entirely exclusive to the online sphere, it happens IRL as well, but I think lack of tone - and, at times, nuance - on the internet makes that even more of a challenge. I found out one "friend" who wrote a fic I liked never liked me. I discovered a forum post where he said he couldn't stand that I IMed him. So don't give your IM name on the forums? Don't have conversations with me, which implies you enjoy my company? Whatever, his problem. The point is that it was complicated even when there was apparent reciprocity, because it was still one-sided even with interaction on his end.
Despite situations like those, I do miss the opportunities fans have to meet other fans through their work, as well as engage in fannish discuourse. Vloggers and podcast hosts aren't really trying to get to know their fans, the way a lot of people on LiveWidth and other mediums were back in the day. Twitter's algorithms make truly following people and exchanging conversations harder, because you don't necessarily see what your friends post, nor do they see yours. Reddit is very much based on upvotes and downvotes. It's also harder to engage in discourse due to the reactionary nature of so many websites.
I sometimes wonder if that's another reason LJ and DW are so quiet these days - people aren't meeting and coming here to engage further the way they were before. I've come across so many people who are shocked LJ and DW even still exist. They aren't realizing their favorite creators or random people on forums have LJ and adding them. Often, people aren't looking to meet anyone at all, as much as they are relaying their thoughts to a larger audience. Which, so we're clear, is not a bad thing - no one is obligated to socialize with anyone else, to exchange theories or meta with anyone else, to respond to comments or retweets. But there's far more of this one-sided discourse than there was before.
We're floating in the same water, which has its own beauty, to be sure; but it's not a communal beauty as much as it is an intuitive one, which can, at times, make it all rather bittersweet.
I believe that the concept of "parasocial friendships" is only gaining traction in popular usage, although the term itself has been around for some time now. (As is often true.) Essentially, a parasocial friendship is one where you might feel very close to someone, but the closeness felt is very one-sided. This happens outside the internet social sphere as well, but I'm here to talk mainly about the internet end of it, as well as how making connections with people and engaging in discourse with them is more difficult than it used to be.
Parasocial relationships include: Vloggers, podcast hosts, bloggers, and even fan creators who've also shared their personal lives. They do not interact with you, though - or if they do, the interaction is incredibly minimal. For example, I listen to a podcast where I feel I "know" the hosts. They'll like my replies to their tweets, but that's the extent of it. They don't know me. They don't follow me. This can even mean that it's easy to cross lines you didn't consider existed. At worst, people can become demanding. Sarah Z of YouTube talked about some of her followers demanding videos of her, the way you might jokingly bug a friend. Except because she's not their friend, it isn't funny.
An example of these relationships in blogging community is a popular blogger who posted parodies as well as personal entries on LJ around 2003-2008 or 9. She was on my flist, but we barely interacted, at least as far as I can recall. I knew her best friend's name, I knew some personal things I'm not going to get into (even if she did post them publicly to her hundreds of followers, that still feels weird), but I was just another comment. And you know, that was fine. I LIKED her, but didn't really need to be friends with her. I just enjoyed her stuff. (ETA: Since this is public, I omitted the name.)
Conversely, there were creators I did reach out to back then where the friendships were mutual. They shared stuff, I felt I had something in common with them, we became friends on IM or on LJ.
The fun thing about LJ is that I sometimes knew people without knowing I knew them elsewhere. For example, very early on in the Harry Potter fandom I read a fanfic that was amazing, one of my favorites, and much to my sorrow I never heard of the author writing anything else. One day I clicked on the link to the author's website... it was a good LJ friend of mine. I was like, "ARE YOU KIDDING ME? WHY DID YOU NEVER WRITE AGAIN?" because in that context, it was an entirely appropriate response. :P
That being said, even seemingly mutual friendships weren't necessarily as close as they seemed. There were a few people who I thought I was close to, only to realize we really weren't that close. That's another phenomenon not entirely exclusive to the online sphere, it happens IRL as well, but I think lack of tone - and, at times, nuance - on the internet makes that even more of a challenge. I found out one "friend" who wrote a fic I liked never liked me. I discovered a forum post where he said he couldn't stand that I IMed him. So don't give your IM name on the forums? Don't have conversations with me, which implies you enjoy my company? Whatever, his problem. The point is that it was complicated even when there was apparent reciprocity, because it was still one-sided even with interaction on his end.
Despite situations like those, I do miss the opportunities fans have to meet other fans through their work, as well as engage in fannish discuourse. Vloggers and podcast hosts aren't really trying to get to know their fans, the way a lot of people on LiveWidth and other mediums were back in the day. Twitter's algorithms make truly following people and exchanging conversations harder, because you don't necessarily see what your friends post, nor do they see yours. Reddit is very much based on upvotes and downvotes. It's also harder to engage in discourse due to the reactionary nature of so many websites.
I sometimes wonder if that's another reason LJ and DW are so quiet these days - people aren't meeting and coming here to engage further the way they were before. I've come across so many people who are shocked LJ and DW even still exist. They aren't realizing their favorite creators or random people on forums have LJ and adding them. Often, people aren't looking to meet anyone at all, as much as they are relaying their thoughts to a larger audience. Which, so we're clear, is not a bad thing - no one is obligated to socialize with anyone else, to exchange theories or meta with anyone else, to respond to comments or retweets. But there's far more of this one-sided discourse than there was before.
We're floating in the same water, which has its own beauty, to be sure; but it's not a communal beauty as much as it is an intuitive one, which can, at times, make it all rather bittersweet.