Stan culture is one of the more popular spaces on the internet, having origins from 2000 and being recognized as one of the biggest social “tribes” on the internet. It is notorious for incidents of harassment, bullying, and even doxxing. It is a community of like-minded individuals who discuss their fandoms, and in recent years K-Pop and Dream SMP have become the most infamous of them. Parasocial relationships stem from these online relationships specifically.
What exactly are parasocial relationships? Parasocial relationships are one-sided relationships where one person extends their interests and time to another person who is completely unaware of the other’s existence which is most familiar with celebrities, online personalities, or organizations. Some benefits to a parasocial relationship include increased self-confidence and stronger interpersonal relationships, though they are uncommon and limited. As long as there have been celebrities, there has always been unhealthy and irrational attachment, technology just happened to create an even larger and normalized space for it.
In 2020, the DreamSMP and other Minecraft Youtubers (MCYT) boomed in popularity due to the COVID-19 shutdowns, creating endless content that is fun to watch and designed to foster emotional investment in the content creators. The modern MCYT community is filled with mostly younger people that have become attached to the fictionalized versions of their favorite YouTubers portray. Many of these fans flock to Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms to defend their favorite content creators from criticism and accusations whether they be true or not. Frequent harassment, even to extreme levels such as doxxing and death threats runs rampant in the community. Several times content creators in the MCYT community have been accused of homophobia, racism, transphobia, ableism, and even grooming or sexual harassment.
Usually, any “problematic” accusation goes through the following cycle: content creator is exposed for doing something wrong and mass criticism follows, “stans” go to social media comments and deny, doxx, or harass people who post criticism, the content creator gives a low effort apology, and then the internet moves on. Giving these people a platform effectively damages the judgment process of younger people as well.
“I think that a lot of the time [parasocial relationships] can ruin real relationships. There’s a point when the line gets thin people’s heads and they start caring more about the online person than the people around them,” says junior Amanda Wylie. “I’ve had personal experience with one of my friends being in that kind of relationship and over time it damaged our relationship because they were so obsessed over getting this content creator’s attention to the point where that’s all they cared about.”
The K-pop (Korean pop music) fandom has also had several run-ins with parasocial relationships and is definitely notorious for incidents like this. Many people love several idols on the internet by making edits or tweets about their favorite groups. Similar to the DreamSMP fandom, they have doxxed, harassed, and cyberbullied people who don’t like the same idol. Several of these idols have also been quite “problematic” as well, engaging with homophobia, racism, transphobia, ableism, and other points of criticism. These claims are met with defense from their fans as well. They are also not allowed to date publically as well in fear of the fans being less engaged.
Normalizing these parasocial relationships can create incredibly isolated and toxic spaces that begin to start excusing and sweeping serious issues under the rug. Several times people treat these celebrities as “people who they need to protect” and infantilizing (treating grown people like small children) them as well. They create problems that affect expectations on social media and real life as well.
How do you realize that your relationship with a creator is toxic and parasocial? Signs of a toxic parasocial relationship include extending large amounts of emotional energy, interest, and time to a creator as well as being willing to defend anything they say at any time.
There can be some benefits to parasocial relationships, but when they become extreme, they can become toxic and can ruin your real-life relationships.
