“You don’t know me”
EDIT/NOTE: Pinned this note I wrote after Wilbur’s comments in the year-end recap bc it seemed relevant after new stream. I really wish we could have a real conversation with Wilbur on parasocial stuff- almost academically. The POV of the stan/superfan experience might be interesting to him, just like his POV is to us. The focus is usually that it's a problem-- and ofc it is--but I suspect the nature of the parasocial thing fans experience is a little different than his interpretation. (It’s parasocial to want this conversation. Gotta love irony)
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“You don’t know me”
Maybe it’s not as simple as that.
(I’m talking about Wilbur’s new video of course.) I think there are a few angles to examine, a few perspectives on that sentiment.
You don’t know us. Could that be at issue?
I think one learning point from the incident is not that fans didn’t really know him, but that a CC can’t really know their fans.
Had the fans known the real Will, truly known him, would they have behaved differently? Nope. The fans are the wildcard, the variable, the unknown.
But sure— of course he’s not wrong. Fans can’t presume to really know a celebrity and his point is well taken. But I assert that fans knew him far better than he knew his fans. His streams and his art are decent windows into who he is even if the whole picture can never be clear. What does he know of the fans? That we are a bunch of highly emotional simps and sycophants? That’s the extent of the view he gets through the windows.
Did fans know Wilbur was imperfect? Kind of a mess? Yes, they must have. He told them and showed them in a multitude of ways.
Did Wilbur know his fans could - or would- behave the way they did, tearing it all apart without considering his perspective? He never could have predicted that. He didn’t know them. He never could.
Looking at it another way — maybe he’s exactly right. “You don’t know me,” but not because you have an incomplete picture. But meaning instead that he doesn’t stand in front of you, corporeally, in person. Meaning instead that we can’t accept humanity and faults and failures in someone we don’t share space with. Fans can know details, know the concept of him, and think we understand, but may still not be able to grant the room for error that we give to people we personally know.
I’ve said in another writing that we accept far more bad behavior from our real life friends and family that the think we do or care to admit. Because we know them.
But we don’t know him.
Humans wobble. The challenge as we try our best to be compassionate people is to accept some wobble, even from those whose heartbeats are too far away to hear.
