the parasocial trap

The Story

This episode started as a conversation about parasocial relationships. It became something else.

A parasocial relationship is one-sided by definition. You invest real emotional energy in someone who doesn't know you exist. And most of us are in several of them simultaneously, without ever having stopped to think about what that does to how we see ourselves, or how we let ourselves be seen.

I get into the mechanics of it, why it isn't a new phenomenon, what it actually feels like from both sides, and why wanting to be heard and being terrified of being perceived are not opposites. They're the same impulse pulling in two directions at once.

I also talk about online dating as its own parasocial dynamic, the internalised male gaze and what it does to how you present yourself before you've even met anyone, the 2019 beauty community implosion and why I didn't feel personally betrayed, what it felt like to be recognised from a video I'd completely forgotten making, and what happened when I was sixteen and posted on YouTube for the first time.

And I talk about what parasocial relationships have actually given me. Because I don't think the point of this conversation is the warning. I think it's the possibility.

If you've ever felt genuinely seen by someone who doesn't know your name, this one's for you.