From musicians and actors to content creators, there are many different cultural icons who play a role in people’s daily lives. It is normal to look up to and be inspired by entertainers and influencers, however the rise of parasocial relationships has the capacity to foster harmful and dangerous behavior, both to the creator and the consumer.
Parasocial relationships are one-sided relationships where one person extends interest, energy, and time while the other party is unaware of the other’s existence.
Despite what it might seem, these relationships are not a new phenomenon. Though social media may have exacerbated how often it occurs, many people developed parasocial relationships before the social media boom. Sports fans, band groupies, and radio frequenters share similar relationships with the people they watch and listen to.
These bonds aren’t necessarily negative either.
People isolated in real life have the ability to create and maintain communities because of mutual enjoyment of a celebrity, and a celebrity can use their public persona to become more popular, and thus more marketable.
The danger of the parasocial relationship lies in how easy it is to create the emotional bond between viewer and creator; with human beings wired for human connection, and parasocial relationships thriving off an artificial dose of human connection, it’s very easy for the viewer to become attached to the creator.
These artificial bonds make it easier for people to fall into extremist pipelines, especially with the rise of the far-right movement online.
Take Joe Rogan—an extremely popular and successful podcast personality who has made a multimillion dollar business model out of interviewing and sharing controversial and often far-right opinions and conspiracy theories. Rogan has often been known to debate the necessity of vaccinations, especially ones used to fight COVID-19.
With many of his talking points filled with logical fallacies and false narratives, Rogan needs a space where he can discuss and debate ideas without any real change in base ideology. Rogan’s podcast, filled with people across the conservative spectrum, provides the perfect space to ping-pong a facsimile of an educated conversation.
Rogan, like many of his fellow alt-right social media personalities, does not sell political ideology, he sells a lifestyle. Rogan repackages fervent conservatism into something more easily consumable to even his most casual listener.
This rebrand relies heavily on critiquing and ridiculing progressive ideas and people, with the subconscious implication that by abandoning these ideas, the viewer will somehow become happier and more fulfilled.
Rogan’s laid-back style of sit down, conversational filming makes the listener more comfortable. That comfortability allows this often hateful rhetoric to permeate into the minds of his listeners, mostly made up of young, impressionable white men.
The environments that these people foster relies heavily on the viewers’ continued attention. It is the viewers responsibility to realize that they do not have to listen to these people and are free to not interact with this type of radicalizing content.
It’s vital to understand that these people who create and foster these environments want something from you, be it your support, your time, or your money. These celebrities and influencers and podcast personalities entertain the masses, they aren’t friends with them.
It’s also important for creators to place boundaries between themselves and their fanbase, and to place emphasis on the fact that their personal lives and their livelihoods are different and separate spheres of their lives.
