I wish people were more careful about parasocial relationships. Like yeah you probably never will meet Chris Evans and feeling like you have a personal relationship with him and know way more about him than you possibly truly could doesn’t make you bad or anything but like, it’s not great for you? And it’s a slippery slope in more ways than people even think about. It’s dangerous to invest your own self in someone you don’t know, for one. You see a lot of cult and hivemind mentalities with singers and actors and youtubers and podcasters, where even when like, a writer is outed as a child molester or active racist some people will write 4 page essays 14 times a day to defend their guilty conscience and their fave’s pride trying to convince everyone and their dad actually it’s a conspiracy or it’s ok somehow or it’s not a big deal. And you see a lot of people not only support terrible things and people, but actively become worse to make doing that okay to themself. If you delude yourself into thinking a person you never met is not only your best friend or loves you, but that you know them? It suddenly becomes very personal when you find out they did something that sucked or they do suck, and also it’s so easy to convince yourself everyone else is wrong bc you pretend you know them and kind of believe it to truly do. And start defending them like you would your childhood best friend you actually know would never commit murder or condone slavery or something: There is no part of that that is healthy or good for you.
But that’s the side people talk about more. What people talk about less is that this is also a big problem within fandoms and for small content creators. While your parasocial relationship with Chris Evans is your problem and the people you harass on his behalf’s (note: I picked Chris bc I know of absolutely no scandal abt him so it seemed he’d be a clear ‘this is not targeted at all’ choice but if it wasn’t I like Evans; I know little abt him but he seems cool and this is not at all abt him or anything), because Chris is safely up in his huge house with his bodyguards and several levels of separation. He’ll probably never have to know you exist even if you try to stalk him. But in a fandom and with small content creators, there’s an added layer, which is when you read a web comic or fic or see a small group’s original animated series, a lot of people come up with a like parasocial-lite idea of who that person is, and bring it with them to meeting that person directly. I’ve seen a similar thing happen with people really big in fandoms, where they’re so well known people expect them to be a certain way just because of their content. And sometimes that means you get the YouTube white man treatment and the ‘fandom mom’ exerts really creepy hive mind influence (especially over smaller and very interconnected fandoms), and sometimes it means a popular artist or writer gets harassed because a fan meets the real person and realizes they’re not the idealized version they already invented, and take that personally. Which is really not cool, and depressing at best to chilling at worst. It should be a simple concept that just because you read someone’s web comic you don’t know them, and that they’re going to be a living breathing human with complexity and also existence and interest outside of that comic, and not everything about them will be the way you guess or want, and the idealized version of them you have in your head is not their responsibility or fault or problem, but most people don’t seem to get it. I’ve met a lot of super cool people through various aspects of fandom stuff from fan, to artists, projects, games, to writer, and some are normal and great, even if they met me because of my work, but there’s also been a disturbing number who approach me excitedly with this idea of me they made up, who are repulsed violently the second they see even a minute divergence from it, and seem to take that as some personal betrayal, or failure, and can’t handle the fact that I am in fact not a celebrity, but just another person trying to make sense of life and do the right thing and look out for the people I love and the ones I don’t know. It’s. Something. Alienating maybe. How many people seem to handle even tiny content creators that way. It’s certainly not pleasant.
Anyway, I’m only writing this because I’ve seen more parasocial posts tonight than like, ever before, because of to the best of what I can gather something happened on YouTube? And I figure while it’s temporarily in the public consciousness, if you see this, please consider how you treat big name fandom members and small content creators, and think of us. Even positive dehumanizing (as in idealization) is still dehumanizing and not actually positive at all or enjoyable and it does hurt people. And we are...people. So. Yeah, that’s all.
