parasocial

Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl coined the term parasocial interaction in 1956 to describe the imaginary interactions between the audience and TV variety show hosts, noting the “seeming face-to-face relationship” that viewers developed […]

[2006, Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, editor, Encyclopedia of Children, Adolescents, and the Media, SAGE Publications, →ISBN

In the past, parasocial relationships occurred predominantly with television or film celebrities, but now these […] celebrities openly share their opinions and activities through various social media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook.

2016, Molly Marshall, AQA Psychology Student Guide 3: Issues and debates in psychology, Hachette UK, →ISBN

And yet for every creator for whom parasocial relationships are an unintended byproduct of their work, there are many more – influencers, YouTubers, vloggers – who actively cultivate that faux-intimacy with their followers, softening them up so that they might more easily ply their wares, be that waist trainers or make-up brushes.

2022 February 13, Otegha Uwagba, “Too close for comfort: the pitfalls of parasocial relationships”, in The Guardian

With the advent of AI chatbots, the ethics of parasocial relationships just keep getting murkier. Introducing: CarynAI, a voice-based chatbot that was trained to mimic a human influencer to become your artificial girlfriend.

2023 May 11, Maggie Harrison, “Influencer Creates AI Version of Herself That You Can Rent as a Girlfriend”, in Futurism