The parasocial friends you'll never meet

The parasocial self is that which passively solicits engagement from others. From the perspective of those others, the parasocial self appears as a public performance of the private self. It embodies an inversion of the dynamics of agency we previously ascribed to the public self: we present the parasocial self publicly and invite others to approac... See more

And while it’s tempting to dismiss it as a shallow trick to boost engagement, I’ve come to view it slightly more charitably. Cultivating the parasocial by attaching one’s face or voice to the content itself is a powerful way to make people care more about something—effective marketing if not a source of underlying quality. As AI normalizes the idea... See more

In digital spaces, brands can have personalities and influencers with whom one has never met can feel like close friends. These are consequences of the same thing. The parasocializing force that humanizes corporations also serves to abstract the individual, collapsing individual identity into something more synthetic and structured