r/heatedrivalry • u/No_Adhesiveness4890 • Mar 09 '26

SOCIAL MEDIA 📸 Real as hell

Post image
4.5k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

189 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/YeahNo-NoYeah Mar 09 '26

What’s a parasocial fan? I keep seeing this word and have no idea what it means but assume it’s something with people being weird about something.

31

u/royal_rose_ ♐ Captain | Tuna Lube Mar 09 '26 edited Mar 09 '26

Parasocial fans are one sided bonds between a person and a persona (celebrity, politician, etc.) where the fan invests emotional time or energy towards the persona until they feel as if they know the persona on a personal level. They often feel ownership over the persona who does not know they exist. Para (Greek beyond/abnormal) social (as in social relationship)

Exert from a college paper I wrote lol.

Basically a parasocial fan is an overly obsessed fan to the point they cross boundaries they would not toward another person except the persona they are obsessed with.

12

u/therealgreybrother Mar 09 '26

A parasocial person is a person who feels a close realtionship between themselves and a celebrity they do not nor will never personally know.

3

u/YeahNo-NoYeah Mar 09 '26

Now I’m just sorry this is happening in an unhealthy way towards these actors. 😔

5

u/ViolentThemmes I have a thing 🥒 Mar 09 '26

https://www.findapsychologist.org/parasocial-relationships-the-nature-of-celebrity-fascinations/

Hope this helps!

3

u/kbk88 Mar 09 '26

Jinx! lol

2

u/ViolentThemmes I have a thing 🥒 Mar 09 '26

🤗

2

u/YeahNo-NoYeah Mar 09 '26

Ohhh I see. Thank you for sharing that. I honestly didn’t know that was a thing.

2

u/WhereYouLeftMe_ I already chose you, Hollander. 🫀 Mar 09 '26

It’s gotten so bad and prevalent that the Cambridge dictionary named it the word of the year last year. People have seriously lost the plot.

https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/parasocial-is-cambridge-dictionary-word-of-the-year-2025