Hank Green Commented on My TikTok about Parasocial Relationships
I have officially peaked. Not only did Hank Green comment on my TikTok but also kind of approved of my suggestion.
I promise to refrain from unnecessarily milking the Hank-Green-stamp of approval as divine internet law (sorry Hank, but you are an informed measuring stick for some of these topics).
However, I am more encouraged to take a stab at making my case for adopting a new word because “parasocial” just isn’t cutting it anymore.
Parasocial Relationships: The Origin Story
By now, you’ve likely heard the term “parasocial” as it has gained popular use and basic understanding across the internet.
Predating the internet or any idea of it, anthropologist Donald Horton and sociologist Ronald Wohl published their 1956 essay titled Mass Communication and Para-Social Interaction: Observations on Intimacy at a Distance.
It took some years before the topic gained interest, but it was adopted by psychologists in their studies of emerging social relationships consumers formed with figures of mass media. Ultimately, in academia, parasocial relationships and interactions became a popular subject in media and communications studies.
My second lap of a bachelor’s degree took me to the Communications department where I first came across “parasocial relationships,” and I dove headlong into the topic.
The original observations of what constitutes parasocial phenomena had zero consideration of the future of mass media, namely the existence of the internet.
Parasocial phenomena is a blanket designation from the essay, Parasocial Interactions and Relationships with Media Characters–An Inventory of 60 Years of Research by Nicole Liebers & Holger Schramm (2019). A highly recommended review of the current state of academic perspective on the subject.
In the last four or five years, I have seen phrases of “parasocial” this or that enter the chat more and more often. It is generally understood to describe the one-sided, unrequited dynamic between celebrity/public figure/fictional character and fan as it was originally designated.
The person experiencing the parasocial relationship feels as if they know the celebrity/public figure/fictional character.
Through the lens of the internet and social media, parasocial relationships extend to YouTubers, content creators, streamers, influencers, and internet personalities at large.
When the internet got a hold of terms like gaslighting, love-bombing, trigger, and trauma, the most accurate meaning of those terms lost their plot against the narratives of individualism and being chronically online.
In true internet fashion, the pedestrian understanding of these terms devolves, at times, to buzzwords — meaningless but provocative.
I worried this to be the case with “parasocial.” However, instead of just overuse or misuse of the word, I think part of the problem is the word itself.
“Parasocial” is a necessary term when describing how we (the people, the consumers, the fans) believe we know the object of our attention (the celebrity, the famous person, the fictional comfort character).
However, in the context of internet media and social media, it doesn’t account for the entire picture.
Parasocial tendencies are not exclusive to fans of people. We don’t just treat celebrities and creators parasocially, we also treat each other a bit parasocially online.
We make assumptions and believe we know each other as strangers commenting and responding and quickly reacting to one another all across the internet and social media platforms.
But there is another problem.
It is a bit more complex and a hell of a lot more compelling — content creators having a parasocial relationship with us.
The Actual Problem with Parasocial Relationships: The Content Creators
In a recent Vlogbrothers video, Hank Green contemplated this idea inspired by Brittany Browski discussing the difference between the parasocial relationship her fans have with her versus the parasocial relationship with her audience.
Hank spoke with his brother John about the idea, and John suggested these are “sarapocial relationships” as they are parasocial relationships happening in the opposite direction.
have suspected and speculated for some time now that content creators must have a parasocial-like relationship with their audience. I imagined the relationship takes place psychologically, affecting how a content creator chooses what kind of content to make, how to act, what to share, how to behave.
In her guest appearance on Colin and Samir’s podcast, Brittany Browski says:
“I’m parasocially attached to [my audience] in a different way than they sort of look to me for a pick me up or for content or for the big sister vibe…Every decision I make is for them. I don’t want to have them be mad at me or be unhappy with the content I’m putting out.” (this clip is referenced in Hank’s video)
As Hank continues in the video “We Need to talk about Sarapocial Relationships,” he talks about the oddity of having a relationship with something that at times doesn’t agree with itself. He has wants and desires for that thing yet he can’t quite make that happen for the thing.
The thing here being Nerdfighteria — the name of the community surrounding the Vlogbrothers, John and Hank Green that has expanded and evolved over the years, welcoming a diverse congregation of Nerdfighters.
Nerdfighteria has its own personalities and tendencies which are at once influenced by Hank and John and manifest outside of that influence. Instead, the individual life experiences and personalities culminate in a cohesive but non-uniform community.
Creators participating in their own parasocial relationships in this way complicates the traditional definition of parasocial phenomena as they are actively acknowledging the presence and influence of their audience.
In April 2023, I spoke with friend and content creator Vyyyper, The Man About Tech on the TubeTalk podcast. I had spoken previously with Vyyyper about my idea of the reverse parasocial dynamics at play for creators with their audience.
And while he asked me to talk more about it on the podcast, I felt like I didn’t quite convey everything I wanted to. The thought hadn’t fully formed — it needed more time to percolate.
And by the time Hank uploaded his video on the topic, it all kind of fell into place. I uploaded a TikTok talking about the idea of using the term “telesocial.”
The Rebrand: Telesocial Conversations
Parasocial most accurately describes the attributes of our complex relationships with each other online.
It is a spectrum of imagination, projection, digitally tangible encounters, and belief.
It can describe the behaviors of the person experiencing the relationship — influencing their mindset, decision-making, how they view and value themselves — both for consumers of media and the makers of media.
Where we need to add an asterisk is next to the unrequited attribute of parasocial phenomena.
hank acknowledging my existence is pretty weird.
Prior to Hank commenting (and oh man, that means he watched the whole damn thing) on my TikTok, he had a conceptual idea of my existence as a member of Nerdfighteria, a fan of his work, or as simply as a person on the internet familiar with TikTok sensation Hank Green. This is a parasocial quality to his relationship with his audience and to me as a member of that audience.
But he communicated directly with me. And he communicates directly with many folks on TikTok and other social media platforms. Is it no longer parasocial? Are we best friends now?
Oh, absolutely not. That’s not what is happening here.
Even if I ever spoke with Hank privately, I would still have a parasocial relationship with him outside or beyond that encounter. And I can assume Hank acknowledges me as a person like him, with my own unfathomable complexities, but I am still a participant in his ongoing parasocial relationship with his audience.
So how do we describe what is going on here? Not just with my TikTok encounter, but all the encounters fans have with the person they are a fan of online? What about how we encounter each other online?
The words “parasocial” and “paranormal” share the same prefix para — which means abnormal, apart from, next to, beyond, near, resembling.
With that definition in mind, parasocial phenomena resemble something similar we already experience with social interactions and relationships — it’s an uncanny resemblance at times.
Or we could say it is an abnormal manifestation of attributes qualifying personal social interactions and relationships.
In a parasocial dynamic, its defining attribute is its one-sided nature. I think it is no longer accurate to say “unrequited” or “unacknowledged.”
But it is accurate to say the object of attention — the person or persons whom the parasocial relationship is formed around — cannot be an active participant in the relationship as one would in a personal relationship.
So, what if instead of “parasocial” describing all of these encounters and instances of communication, we called it “telesocial?”
Here’s my case — like any good English major I Googled a list of prefixes and their meanings to track down something that might help clarify the conversation.
Is it making more sense now knowing I have an English and Communications background?
The prefix tele- is already familiar to us — television, teleport, telephone, telescope. It means covering distance, far-off. Aside from teleport, each of these words accounts for a barrier or mediated interaction. With the telephone and television, interaction is mediated by the technology.
So if we look at the relationship between content creators and their audiences as telesocial in function, it can still account for behaviors and qualities to be parasocial by nature.
Telesocial conversation can better describe the interactions we have with each other online, and why people post TikToks talking to someone even with 100 followers and no specific person in mind.
We are constantly addressing an imagined audience and an actual audience is always receiving the message. This is where we cross the threshold into mass communication.
It is still an idea that needs to be worked out, expanded on, and clarified for the sake of semantics. But that is also why we need a word (or several) for not only better semantics but better pragmatics.
Semantics are concerned with the meaning of the word. Pragmatics are concerned with how we use those semantics to communicate.
Fundamentally, we not only need words to communicate with each other, we need a better understanding of those words to better understand each other.
Couples Counseling for the Parasocial Girlies
Another comment on my TikTok introducing the idea of “telesocial” mentioned how creators “need” us. And even with pure speculation built solely on my observations as someone who cares a whole lot about this stuff — I believe this to be true.
Creators — like Hank Green and Brittany Browski and everyone in between — look to their audiences for feedback, direction, and guidance on how to act, what to say, what to make, and how to keep the audience “happy.”
If these relationships were interpersonal, they would be unhealthy and dysfunctional.
Yet, the nature of the relationship is parasocial — an abnormal relationship. But they are interacting telesocially — at a distance and heavily mediated by technology and its context.
If we can understand the dynamics at play for our favorite creators and makers performing for us, would we not be in a better position to make the relationship healthier?
I believe the answers to my questions about how to approach these dynamics — whether they be parasocial or telesocial — lie in what we would do ideally in a healthy, functional interpersonal relationship. Here would be a great time to say the prefix inter- means reciprocal.
We wouldn’t ask things of the person that are unreasonable or out of character for them.
We would respect their boundaries. We would respect their sense of self-worth.
We would give them time and space to process things.
We wouldn’t ask them to speak on something they feel uncomfortable speaking on and we also went to ask them to accomplish a task that they just straight up cannot do.
Parasocial and telesocial phenomena are funky because of how those relationships or interactions are mediated by media or distance, whether it be physical or psychological.
Parasocial dynamics are specifically odd because they embody the qualities of an interpersonal relationship, but those qualities cannot function properly.
In telesocial communication, the qualities of interpersonal communication perform more like mass media communication than a conversation.
This communication is happening at scale, and as much as we try to treat it like a conversation between two people, it is not possible. So we must take a different approach if we are ever to reach a point of effective communication.
I believe there to be a trickle-down effect with our behavior online. When we first logged on, we brought along some of our expectations of interpersonal communication while being trained to consume media on demand.
We don’t see the people who make the media we love as people. The people have blended into the media consumption, resulting in us demanding them to perform and behave as we want.
And we have become the toxic, abusive big red flag who should have been dumped a long time ago.
Annoyingly, Aggressively Optimistic
It didn’t occur to me I might have made a huge misstep in posting my TikTok — I might have offended John Green.
And I do not want to offend the John Green by any means, but I felt like his word for reverse parasocial relationships needed a little workshopping. While I have no problem giving a little pushback to the authors I work with as a publisher, John Green is one author I hope to never offend.
As I continued on this thought about “telesocial” relationships, dynamics, communication, it became clear to me it cannot replace or eliminate “parasocial” or even “sarapocial” as designations.
It also never occurred to me to replace “parasocial” in our vocabulary, but I still can’t shake the feeling that sometimes we are talking about something else.
“Telesocial” might not even be the right word we need, and someone much smarter than me can make the case for or against it.
What I do hope for is that “telesocial” is a springboard for a deeper and clearer understanding of what is going on.
The better we understand the people we consider internet famous or platformed by an audience, the better we might understand them.
And ideally, the better we understand each other.
I am annoyingly, aggressively optimistic about the internet and social media. I am passionate about everything here because I believe these tools, this technology, could be the best thing to ever happen to us.
But we have to make sure it is the best thing to ever happen to us, and we’ve done kind of a shit job so far.
I don’t expect anyone to share this belief with me, and I understand why. I don’t care that, but I do care about this.
The internet, clickbait YouTube thumbnails, checking notifications, creating and consuming media — it’s not going anywhere. We have to learn how to live with it. We have to learn how to live with each other with it.
Plus, humans really, really like naming things. And what do we love more than naming something?
Giving it a rebrand.
River Jack is the owner and founder of Gigcraft Media, LLC. She is a writer and talker of internet things, social media culture, and being a creative in digital times.
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