Understanding A Parasocial Relationship Between Fans and Celebrities

 During my free time, I normally do not follow news updates on celebrities’ activities, such as Justin Bieber, Kanye West, and Miley Cyrus. This is because they do not suite my needs as a person, and I really do not care about their everyday routines. I do not follow an artist just because everyone likes one particular artist. I only follow a artist based on his or her quality of the art, not just for the artist’s physical looks. The only times that I look up information and videos about those celebrities is the controversial aspects of them. For example, If you look up any videos of Justin Bieber going to a public place, you will usually see many his screaming fans that wants to get close to him.

I wanted to bring this up because I would like to briefly talk about the parasocial relationship between celebrities and their fans. One may ask, “What is a Parasocial relationship?” According to my Com 280 textbook, “A First Look at Communication Theory,” the textbook defines parasocial relationships as a make believe bondage, between a fan and pop culture icon (Griffin, Ledbetter, and Sparks 359). One example of a parasocial relationship is a fan that is into Christian Bale, and has imaginary beliefs that he or she will be loved by Bale. So why is the phenomenon of fans developing parasocial relationship with celebrities becoming more noticable? According to Pacific Standard’s article “Your Imaginary Relationship With a Celebrity,” written by Alana Massey, the reason that parasocial relationships of fans and celebrities are increasing in society because social media networks made it simpler for fans to interact with celebrities, and monitor the celebrities’ public activities. This can cause any fan online to make a request to the celebrity, to do something for the fan (Massey).  In my opinion on these parasocial relationships is that I think it is okay to talk to celebrities on social media sites, as long as the fans are making respectful comments and not send unexpected messages. I think it is also okay for someone to imagine meeting a celebrity, and that is normal. The important thing for fans of any Hollywood celebrity is understand that they are regular people, and they have other lives outside of their careers.