Shawn: Welcome to Classy as Hell, the podcast where we're just like you. And I mean it because we're not celebrities who say they're like us, but they're not. I'm Shawn
David: I'm David.
Shawn: So David, you wanna talk about our tragedy this week?
David: What was it? Friday morning.
Shawn: Early Friday morning, two thirty.
David: before we found out it was two thirty, Shawn had a doctor's appointment and she went out to get in the car to go to the doctor's appointment and the car wasn't there. At first we thought maybe it was towed, so we called the towing yard. We checked the website all the tow companies list what cars they've towed and where they towed them to, which is actually very user friendly.
Shawn: Actually no, It's City of Richmond Police. Was the site that showed the cars that they had impounded and which impound lot they were logged into in the time.
David: Ok
Shawn: So it had the year making model and it had the license plate number. Or the VIN, I you could look it up by the VIN too. Anyhow, sorry.
David: We finally figure out 'cause the car's nowhere that anyone can detect, that it was stolen.
Shawn: Ugh.
David: Shawn went out to where the car had been, and sure enough there was glass from where the rear passenger window had been broken into. And they stole our car.
Shawn: So we had to get a rental car to get through the weekend, and we were very fortunate to be able to do that. And when I was talking to the police to file the police report, at the end of all their questions that they asked me, and they're like, Okay, do you have any questions for me? And I said, Well, yeah, I have, you know, the one question everybody asks you, and the officer's like, What? I said What are the odds we're actually gonna get our car back? Because I'm thinking we're never gonna see our car again. But he was actually very encouraging. He's like, actually, we usually find them. It's usually kids steal the car, go joy riding in it until it's out of gas, and then they park it and they leave it, and then we find it. So sure enough, late Sunday morning, we get a call from Henrico County Police. stating, We found your car and here's where you can come pick it up so we went and picked it up.
David: Henrico's about what, thirty minutes from where we are.
Shawn: That part of it, yeah. So we went and picked it up, you know, all the broken glasses, you know, inside the car on the seats and they used the cup holder as an ashtray for their blunt and they popped the ignition off of course, which David, you know, popped back in so he could start the car and we could drive it.
David: But they took all the protection around the column they must have thrown that away 'cause it's not anywhere.
Shawn: yeah, I'm sure they just chucked it out. Anywho, because that had their fingerprints all over it, I'm sure they chucked that out the window somewhere where it won't be found. so good news we got our car back. Now we're just waiting for the insurance claim to go through to tell us where to go get it repaired, what shop they want us to take it to. Could have been way worse.
David: yeah.
Shawn: So grateful to have gotten it back, but what a stressful weekend of worry. Poor Bessie.
David: Mm. We like that car a lot.
Shawn: so worried about her. And then
David: We bought a club for it.
Shawn: and then the university police actually contacted David because they had video of our car on their campus.
David: they theorized that our car was used to transport people around their campus looking for more cars to steal.
Shawn: Bessie, not even good enough to be stolen and kept.
David: when the guy picked me up from Enterprise to go get our rental car. I was talking to him and we're just chatting back and forth. And told him I was under no delusion that our car was on its way to, you know, Saudi Arabia or something.
Shawn: No. not gonna be a hot commodity.
David: Yeah, or a chop shop's not gonna be cutting that up for parts because Although we had did just have new tires put on it, so that was
Shawn: Yeah, glad we got those back.
David: 'cause that was seven hundred, eight hundred bucks, something like that.
Shawn: So the topic of today, we're gonna be talking about, celebrities and fame and our relationship to that. And we can all sort of in varying degrees relate to it. Even if you are not into social media. Even if you are not one of those people who just spends all your time online, you know, following various influencers and whatnot, we all have famous people we know but who don't know us, right?
David: Absolutely.
Shawn: I mean that that god awful cringy video that Gal Gadot made at the beginning of COVID, the Imagine, and she got all the other celebrities to sing Imagine with her. yeah. We're just like you. No, you're not, sweetie. You don't have to go to work in a grocery store because what you do isn't essential. In fact, you can afford to have groceries delivered to you. You're not like us. Don't try to pretend like you're like the rest of us. then There's those celebrity moments where we actually admire that celebrity for doing something wonderful. You know, we can all imagine our favorite athletes at the FIFA World Cup or in the Olympics, and great plays that they made or wonderful, things that they did,
David: Yeah, you'll hear celebrities that went way above Yeah,
Shawn: Above and beyond.
David: Johnny Depp, a target that everyone likes to make, but he puts on his Captain Jack from the Pirates of the Caribbean and makes unannounced visits to hospitals, no PR, no publicity
Shawn: How do you know then? There's some PR and there's some publicity.
David: Because the people that he visits talk about it. And
Shawn: okay.
David: the nurses.
Shawn: But yeah, even if there is some PR and some publicity, I don't have a problem with that. You're going to a hospital in character to, you know, cheer up sick kids. Fine. Yeah. I think that's great.
David: You'll hear about stuff like that periodically of different artists who just like I say go way above what you would expect.
Shawn: here's where I'm gonna question my initial statement where I said they're not like us, but yeah they are because all of humanity has the potential to do something kinda generous and the potential to be assholes.
David: Absolutely.
Shawn: I'm an asshole on the daily, so it's not like I think I'm better than Gal Godot or something. I'm just jealous that she's got money and I don't. I've never been jealous of fame. I have never ever ever wanted fame. I don't want people looking at me I would never feel comfortable in the public eye. That's not something I have ever wanted. Money, hell yeah! I'd love to have a lot of money, but fame, no. Not something I have ever aspired to. Did you ever want to be famous?
David: Yeah, I mean when I was in college the goal was, you know, to be a rock star.
Shawn: Well that was just so you could get laid though. Okay.
David: Well, not always. yeah, I had the vision of being a rock star. Unfortunately I didn't have the vision of practicing and learning the skill properly.
Shawn: As we've talked about, there's lots of very talented people who never make it in their field. In their chosen arts, so
David: I There are very talented people that never make it in their field. Right.
Shawn: Yeah.
David: I think my friend J.R., bass player extraordinaire, plays in local bands in Ohio and
Shawn: Freaky talented, never famous.
David: never famous.
Shawn: And there's more people like that than there are people who I'm not saying that people who are famous for whatever don't have talent, but they also had a lucky break helped them along the way. The Pareto principle. Yeah.
David: They go back to the print Prater principle well yeah.
Shawn: It's not that those people aren't talented or hardworking or whatever. It's just they also had a lucky break. Luck plays a role in it. what we're gonna dip our toe into to start with is the digital panopticon. A world where the average human spends roughly forty percent of their waking life nodding at a glowing rectangle, convinced that a 22-year-old in an ergonomic gaming chair is their bestie. So to an uninitiated observer, Perhaps a particularly confused time traveler from the 14th century. This would appear to be mass psychological collapse. We have fancy labels for it now. Scrolling, content consumption. Or the more disparaging brain rot. That does sound gross. I'm just picturing like brain matter oozing out through my ear. Like those creepy worms in the Wrath of Khan.
David: or in brain dead.
Shawn: Yes, previously on brain dead. however, those of us in the Ivory Tower of digital anthropology prefer a term that sounds slightly more like a diagnosable condition. We call it parasocial interaction. And the strategic reality of our era is that our modern obsession with influencers is not a glitch in the human software caused by a stray line of code in the TikTok algorithm. It is a legacy feature of the human species. We have always been voyeurs, lurking at the edges of lives more glamorous, violent, or visible than our own. Long before the first like button was forged in the fires of Silicon Valley, humans were deeply, pathologically invested in the lives of people they would never actually meet. This is the eternal quest for fame, a concept of public reputation. That has served as the social and legal currency of humanity since the first Roman decided he'd rather watch a gladiator bleed in the dust than fix the leaking roof of his own insula.
David: Ok
Shawn: we all know this to be true just instinctively. fame and celebrity didn't start with the internet.
David: No, absolutely not. I mean there've been fan people and fanatics and stuff probably since the dawn of time, I mean...
Shawn: Right.
David: just in our lifetime, you can look back at the Beatles. I guess Frank Sinatra had a similar thing where everyone just went nuts over him.
Shawn: somewhere on a cave wall in Lasco is one of those warriors and there's people around them and there's little like flashbulbs of paparazzi. If you've ever felt a visceral pang of grief when your favorite YouTuber was canceled, or if you find yourself trusting a stranger's skincare routine more than the clinical advice of a board-certified dermatologist, you were caught in the one-sided besti scenario. This illusory experience, first clinicalized by Donald Horton and Richard Wall in nineteen fifty six, describes a psychological state where the audience interacts with a persona. This could be a talk show host, a fictional character, doesn't even have to be a real person, or a digital creator, as if they were engaged in a reciprocal relationship. We project intimacy into a void, and when the void stares back with a prerecorded smile, we call it a connection. the feeling we feel for a celebrity isn't even necessarily required to have another living human on the other end of it. Anyone who reads fiction, you might have a favorite fictional character that you've always enjoyed. And that person is a celebrity in your mind. It has the same status for you. Mine's Granny Weatherwax from the Discworld. Well there's there's so many.
David: Yeah, I have
Shawn: Breck of the Imperial Ratch. I mean just so many.
David: Yeah, I have quite a few.
Shawn: Who are some of your favorite fictional characters?
David: Well I was always fascinated by Gandalf.
Shawn: Yeah! Everybody wants to be a powerful wizard. Yeah.
David: What's not to like there?
Shawn: So the technology has certainly evolved, moving from the permanence of stone to the fragility of vellum and finally to the ephemeral glow of liquid crystal, but the underlying drive remains stubbornly identical. We're wired to seek companionship in the figures that dominate our public squares. So to understand the modern follower, we cannot simply look at the screen, we must look at the men who fought for fame in the dirt of the Roman arena. where the clout was quite literally a matter of life and death. Were there any female gladiators?
David: Not they come to mind.
Shawn: Yeah, it seems kinda unusual to have a female gladiator, I would think. So you had talked about ancient fanboys, and in the classical world, fama was not merely a byproduct of success, it was a form of property. It was a social asset, and most importantly, for our sardonic purposes, legally admissible evidence. In ancient Rome, and well into the Middle Ages, your public reputation was a tangible fact. That could determine the outcome of a criminal trial. If the collective gossip of the city, the FAMA, deemed you a drunkard or a hero, the court treated that consensus as a legal reality.
David: So not much different today.
Shawn: Mmm, true. So imagine, if you will, a modern courtroom where the judge decides your fate based on your Instagram engagement or the ratio of your last controversial tweet. The Romans were effectively living in a world where cancel culture was the primary mechanism of the judiciary. And yeah, we're not far off that mark now.
David: we talked that billionaires don't go to prison, if a normal person did it, they'd go to jail.
Shawn: Racial profiling's very real.
David: Even among celebrities.
Shawn: Yeah, even among celebrities, racial profiling is very real. So the Roman gladiator in this context was the original creator in the digital Colosseum. These men were often infames, social outcasts who technically lacked the rights of a full citizen. Yet they commanded a level of celebrity that would make a modern influencer weep. They were the subjects of intense visual rhetoric. Successful gladiator stables understood the power of the brand long before the first marketing degree was conferred. Gladiators had stage names, carefully curated personas designed to evoke fear, strength, or exoticism. And they were advertised on posters throughout the city. These advertisements weren't just functional. They were the first iteration of the for you page, capturing the attention of the masses and promising a spectacle of intimacy and blood.
David: Great combination. Sounds like pro wrestling.
Shawn: Yeah, very much so.
David: Only they don't fight to the death.
Shawn: Yeah, Dwayne Johnson is a flashy wrestling name. Call him the rock.
David: Hulk Hogan.
Shawn: Yeah.
David: Stone Cold Steve Austin. Yeah,
Shawn: Rowdy rowdy pipe.
David: those are the only four I know. Let's go way back.
Shawn: I was gonna say, you know at least another one? Andre the Giant.
David: man, Andre. Does anybody want to peanut Andre, yeah.
Shawn: And in ancient times it was similar. Successful athletes were immortalized on pottery, frescoes, and votive offerings. A Roman citizen might drink from a cup adorned with the likeness of his favorite fighter, a physical precursor to the modern influencer's branded coffee mug. And this wasn't just fandom, it was identity curation. To own a piece of gladiator memorabilia was to signal one's own participation in the cultural zeitgeist. Consider the evolution of the herm. In ancient Greece, these were stone pillars topped with the head of Hermes and adorned with anatomically prominent phallic markers. Originally, they served a religious utility, marking boundaries and warding off evil. However, as the Republic transitioned into the Empire, the Herm underwent a fascinating secularization of the By the time of the late empire, the phallic markers had retreated, and the head of Hermes was frequently replaced by the busts of philosophers, politicians, and orators. Like we see those busts of like Socrates and Aristotle that would have replaced the head of Hermes, for example. And this is the so what layer of ancient fan culture. The Romans were effectively posting their interests to bolster their own social standing. Placing a bust of Cicero in your garden was the classical equivalent of putting civics and stoicism in your social media bio. It was a display of association. You weren't just a citizen, you were a citizen who followed the right thinkers. While the Romans were forced to carve their obsession in marble, a process that at least required a modicum of effort and time, the coming of the Renaissance would soon grant us the technology to put our psychological dependencies on paper. Less permanent, but also faster.
David: yeah. And you can do a whole bunch of way quicker than you can carve a statue.
Shawn: Absolutely. Wood blocks?
David: Yeah, that's a mass marketing right there.
Shawn: Movable type once that was established?
David: yeah, by Gutenberg.
Shawn: And the Renaissance itself was the ultimate rebrand for the human ego. It was a strategic pivot from a church-centered worldview where the only light that mattered was from the divine, to a humanist philosophy that celebrated the individual. This rebirth fueled an insatiable demand for a secular fame economy. If the Middle Ages were a time of collective anonymity under the shadow of the cathedral, The Renaissance was the era when everyone decided they wanted to be a star. Again, except for people like me who just really don't want to be looked at or scrutinized. And into this arena steps Johannes Gutenberg in fourteen forty-five. Before his printing press, a book was a luxury object made of parchment, which is scraped animal skin, and hand copied by monks who likely didn't appreciate the humor in the chivalry romances they were duplicating. Although those monks put their own humor in those books, and those bits are really funny. When you find like their own little personal touches added in. Books were so expensive, they were essentially the private property of the hyper-elite and the clergy. Gutenberg's press acted as a digital guillotine for the traditional gatekeepers of knowledge, plummeting the cost of content and allowing the emerging middle class to claim their own intellectual fiefdoms. This new middle class, the bankers, merchants, and accountants of the 15th century, found themselves with something dangerous: leisure time.
David: Boy is that dangerous.
Shawn: Idol hands are the devil's tools. Were you idle a lot? Me
David: I tried to be.
Shawn: too. As their fortunes improved, these middle class people moved beyond the basic needs of food and shelter and began to desire exotic delicacies. They wanted fine art and books for pleasure. They didn't want to read Latin liturgies. They wanted chivalry romances, travel books, and almanacs. This literacy boom fueled a new kind of secular celebrity. Figures like Leonardo da Vinci and William Shakespeare were Became the archetypal Renaissance men, individuals whose names were mass-produced on a scale previously reserved for saints.
David: That's interesting. I don't think I was aware that Leonardo was as famous as he was in
Shawn: In his own life.
David: his own lifetime. now everyone knows who he is, The Mona Lisa and everything. But I didn't realize he was that famous during his lifetime.
Shawn: Well, he was famous in his region and among people who could go to see his works of art. They might inquire about it. I presume. Well Shakespeare in particular was haunted by the concept of literary immortality. In Sonnet 55, he famously boasted that his powerful rhyme would outlive the gilded monuments of princes. That was him freestyling. bragging about his rhymes, his powerful rhymes. He understood that the human body was a poor vessel for fame, but a printed word could act as a permanent record of one's existence. He was terrified of the wounded name, a reputation that outlives the person, but remains tarnished by gossip or failure. In Hamlet, the dying prince's final act is not a prayer for his soul, but a plea to Horatio to tell my story to the harsh world. Wanted to be viewed sympathetically.
David: Yeah, yeah.
Shawn: I don't want people to think ill of me even after I'm dead.
David: that's powerful. And so true today. I mean that's people want to leave a legacy so they're not forgotten. People want to be immortal.
Shawn: People and fame is a way to do that.
David: Now lots of people also think having kids is the way to extend your But for me the the insanity stops with me, so
Shawn: Yep, insanity dies with me. the concept of fame from a worldly distraction into a substitute for the Christian notion of immortality. Once the printing press turned the human ego into a mass-produced commodity, the path was cleared for the clinical mind to eventually categorize our ancient yearnings as modern pathologies. We were no longer just admirers of greatness, we were consumers of it, and the stage was set for a one way street of intimacy that would eventually be paved with fiber optic cables. So let's talk about this one-way street and give a better definition to what I mentioned at the beginning of this, the parasocial interaction.
David: All right.
Shawn: In 1956, while the rest of the world was preoccupied with the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation, Donald Horton and Richard Wall were busy observing a different kind of fallout. The way people were talking back to their television sets, they identified parasocial interaction as an illusory experience where the media user acts as though they are involved in a typical social relationship with a persona. How many times do I talk to the characters on the television screen and they never listen to me?
David: No matter how many times you watch it
Shawn: I know, right?
David: And you keep telling them every time, I know, don't open that door.
Shawn: Do not go in there, you fool
David: And yet they always do, they never listen.
Shawn: They never listen. I'll be shouting the answer to the quiz that they're trying to complete. They can't hear me. Not only can they not hear me through space, they can't hear me through time. Because this was recorded how freaking long ago.
David: Absolutely.
Shawn: But I'm sitting here shouting the answer like,
David: I will say that you do that more than I do. I don't usually don't talk to the TV, but every now and then I will if I they're really hitting something.
Shawn: I talk to the characters and that's where my echo lallia always really kicks in too.
David: Okay.
Shawn: Like I I don't do it out loud, but I'll be sitting there repeating the line that someone just said while I'm watching something that I'm interested in. So it's vital to distinguish between the two core tenets of this phenomenon. Parasocial interaction is the one-sided process of perception that occurs during exposure. It's the fleeting sensation that the talk show host is looking directly at you, that their jokes are intended for your specific ears, and that your laughter is part of a shared moment.
David: And that's such an art. remember reading an article that Paul McCartney was a master of zooming into the camera that was filming and looking straight at the audience, making it feel like they were part
Shawn: Looking straight down the camera.
David: Yeah. Paul McCartney w I guess was just incredible naturally about it too. It's not like someone prompted him. He just knew that instinctively, I guess.
Shawn: that connection with the audience.
David: Yeah.
Shawn: Great for him. The other part of it is the parasocial relationship. And that's the cross-situational bond that develops over time. It's the imagined friendship that exists in the viewer's mind between episodes. It's the feeling that you know a character or a creator so well that you can predict their reactions to real-world events. The part of this that I have always found fascinating. Is people who are sports fans because I don't follow sports ball. We
David: Yeah, we won the game.
Shawn: won the game, we were robbed, we whatever, you know, we put on a good show, but we just couldn't get there. You were in no way, shape, or form involved in any of that. But they refer to themselves, the fans will refer to themselves as we like they were on the field. On the sideline, even in the stadium, whatever.
David: Yeah. You didn't take that hit.
Shawn: You y you even if you were in the stadium, there's still no we. You're just a spectator. There's no we, you are not involved.
David: Well you also not only in sports, but you'll hear celebrities talk that people are frequently disappointed that they're not like the characters that they portray.
Shawn: Well and and this whole concept is where the phrase never meet your heroes comes from.
David: yeah.
Shawn: Because we have an idea of what we think someone is like in real life based on their books that we've read, based on their movies that they've made, based on their whatever. But that's that's not who they are, that's the work they've produced.
David: Right.
Shawn: So meeting that person in real life is almost always going to be less than what you imagine it to be. And they're just a person. If they didn't do anything to you, they're just a person, just like you.
David: Yeah, they're just not meeting the expectation that you build up based on an artificial relationship that you have that you
Shawn: You imagine
David: Yeah.
Shawn: And so when we're talking about these two types of connections, the parasocial interaction, which happens during the exposure, and the parasocial relationship, which is the ongoing imagined relationship
David: Okay.
Shawn: in in the mind of the unfamous person towards the famous character or famous person.
David: I think it's from the play The Tree with Blue Leaves, but it might be another one. But the I remember the lead woman who had some mental health issues. That her big question was Do celebrities dream of us?
Shawn: No they do not.
David: But I thought it was an interesting take. You know, because so many people fixate on the other way. do celebrities dream about just being a normal person?
Shawn: They might dream about being unfamous, but they don't dream of us.
David: Yeah, but what they specifically don't know us.
Shawn: so just like you or I might dream well not me, just like you might dream about being a famous rock star. But in that dream you're not imagining individual fans, right?
David: No.
Shawn: So somebody who is a famous rock star who maybe yearns for privacy might have a dream about just going to the grocery store and not being accosted by everybody around them.
David: Right. I think she was using the us as a royal we type of thing. You know, meaning just
Shawn: Again, no they don't because that fantasy of I want to have privacy and not be famous, that dream is about if if I'm the celebrity, that dream's about me. About
David: Okay, I've got a lot.
Shawn: the fans. It's about me wanting to be able to go about my life normally and not have to, you know, put on a hat and sunglasses and try to hide.
David: Okay.
Shawn: So what are the things that can predict the strength of these bonds? And the primary driver is, okay, and I'm gonna try to pronounce this homophily?
David: Sure.
Shawn: Which is our tendency to like people who are similar to us in attitude, background, or physical appearance. We also call this confirmation bias when we're talking about attitudes specifically, people who agree with our point of view. Yes. And we look for mediated friends who act as digital mirrors. However, there's a fundamental strangeness that never evaporates in these relationships. In a face-to-face interaction, the initial strangeness fades as mutual disclosure occurs. In a parasocial relationship, the media persona becomes increasingly intimate to the viewer while the viewer remains a total stranger to the persona. It is a relationship where the getting to know you phase is a permanent one way street. This clinical lab work eventually moved from the observation of radio listeners to the analysis of the living room, where we began to realize that the most potent parasocial bonds aren't formed in the hearts of lonely adults, but in the developing brains of children who haven't yet learned to distinguish between a friend and a puppet.
David: Ooh, that's interesting. Yeah.
Shawn: So now let's talk about early childhood and the elmo effect.
David: I just gonna say Sesame Street full of puppets.
Shawn: well yeah.
David: And kids just love those puppets.
Shawn: Right. This thought just occurred to me. The great thing about puppets Is A puppet is not a human face that changes over time, ages, and eventually dies. A puppet is a more
David: Yeah.
Shawn: So when thinking about early childhood as a laboratory of the parasocial, we can consider that long before a human being can grasp the concept of monetization or content strategy, they are forming intense identity-shaping bonds with fictional characters. Media plays a strategic role in early development, often acting as a social trainer for children who are learning the norms of interaction.
David: Well, especially since the sixties when parents just set kids in front of T Vs
Shawn: Right.
David: as babysitters.
Shawn: Shows like Dora the Explorer are masterclasses in strategic parasocial engineering. By using the pseudo conversation where the character pauses, looks at the camera, and waits for a response, the show creates a social simulation. The toddler isn't just a passive observer, they're a participant in a one sided dialogue.
David: I never thought about that, but yeah.
Shawn: Yeah. So this isn't just entertainment. It's the training ground for the loyal community expectations of the future. And the research here is staggering. In a landmark twenty eleven study, infants were taught a sequencing task by two different characters, Elmo, who is an American icon, and Dodo, who is a character popular in Taiwan but unknown in the United States. The children learned significantly better from Elmo. Why? Because they already had a socially meaningful relationship with him. They trusted the source because they knew him and This suggests that learning outcomes in children are directly tied to the strength of the parasocial bond.
David: Now that's interesting.
Shawn: Isn't it though?
David: I think we have preschool and grade school kids be taught by puppets or by famous things that they would be aware of.
Shawn: Characters or animations. Yeah. You know what I think is wonderful? Australia has banned marketing directly to children.
David: wow. I wasn't aware that.
Shawn: Yeah! Brilliant!
David: Yeah, 'cause so many a advertisements are geared right towards
Shawn: Australia, you're my heroes.
David: Yeah, banned guns or made it very strict to own guns.
Shawn: Yeah, you had to have you have to have a purpose, you have to get licensed and you have to get recertified and relicensed every single year. Y it's not a one off, and now it's yours, go off and live the rest of your life.
David: And they got rid of advertising to kids. Go Australia.
Shawn: Yeah. So back to the whole children learning from these characters, we can see this even more clearly with the leapfrog MyPal dolls. Have you seen these My Pal dolls? I have not seen them.
David: No, I'm familiar with Leapfrog. I mean they make a lot of educational toys but I'm not familiar with my pal.
Shawn: So yeah, so one of so one of their educational tools are these dolls called MyPal. And when these toys were personalized to say the child's name and share their favorite colors, the children nurtured the toys more and learned from them more effectively. this emotional nurturing isn't just cute, it's a psychological hook. We are essentially teaching children that the most effective teachers Are those who simulate a personal relationship with them?
David: I agree with that. I think as I look back on my education, the places where I feel I learned the most were from teachers that I felt I had a bond with.
Shawn: And classroom size has only gotten. It was pretty good size when I was a kid. Classroom size was like 30 kids in a classroom. And it's only gotten bigger and bigger. So yeah, maybe a child being able to form this parasocial bond with an inanimate. Well not inanimate. Animated character.
David: Yeah.
Shawn: Can really help learning because the teacher can't form that personal social connection with thirty kids or sometimes more in a classroom. I mean I was always the standoffish kid. I was always the kid, on the outside looking in. So unless a teacher really wanted to work hard to make a connection with me, and they don't, because they don't have time. There were some teachers I liked better than others, but I can't say I really felt a a close connection with any of my grade school teachers.
David: Now we talked about me having aphantasia last episode I think, which means that I don't remember large sections of my life. especially school. I can't name all my elementary school teachers, but I remember two of And it was due to connections that I made with them. one fostered my interest in Japan and Asia in general. 'cause for it seemed like a long time, but it was probably just a couple of weeks. We studied Japan and learned some of the language, learned about the Japanese tea parties and all this stuff and I was just fascinated by it. And I had a good relationship with her because she knew well that I enjoyed it.
Shawn: Do you mean tea ceremony, which is very different from what tea party?
David: well, tea ceremony, yeah.
Shawn: And then I think of a tea party as well, what an English tea party.
David: Yeah, no, it's more it's more formal than that.
Shawn: Yeah. Okay,
David: And then the other one was I think my fifth grade teacher, and I just captivated by her accent. She was Scottish. And also was interested in stamps and stuff that I was starting to get interested in.
Shawn: You dirty little philatelist.
David: So yeah, those two teachers are really the only two that I have any real memory of.
Shawn: I remember all my teachers, but yeah, I can't say I felt I clicked with any of them. Not ever. Never in all my life did I click with a teacher.
David: Yeah, those two I clicked with.
Shawn: But that's yeah, that's not unusual. I don't click with anybody.
David: Right.
Shawn: And so yeah, for a school teacher to try and reach out to the weird kid on the edge that's me, they they can't. They just can't. And so the question of so what here in this instance is chilling. By fostering these pseudo-conversations early, we're conditioning a generation to prioritize the feeling of a relationship over its actual reciprocity. We're training them to be loyal communities before they can even tie their own shoes. When these children grow up, they don't look for experts, they look for mediated friends like Elmo, but with a brand deal. And a ring light.
David: Ooh.
Shawn: Furthermore, there's the issue of wishful identification. Studies show that boys often pick favorite characters based on perceived intelligence and power, while girls may lean toward attractiveness.
David: Batman for me as a kid.
Shawn: If a child perceives a character as having social realism, that's the plausibility that they could exist, the bond becomes unbreakable. We're creating a world where the most persuasive figures in a person's life are those who don't actually exist in the same physical space as them.
David: Okay. Like I said, growing up for me was Batman. And of course when I was young Young Batman was definitely possible. As I got older, the realism of Batman became distanter and distanter
Shawn: Studies show that boys often pick favorite characters based on perceived intelligence and power. That makes sense. While girls may lean toward attractiveness. So you've asked the boys what they perceived and why they liked a certain character. But you're guessing that the girls may lean toward attractiveness? What's that based on?
David: Got me. Maybe it's that urgency or willingness to pigeonhole them into to roles.
Shawn: So I guess what the experts are saying here is that a little kid knows by a certain age they realize Elmo was not a person. So at some point they want to imagine that this person could exist in real life. So while Dora the Explorer is an animated cartoon, it's a cartoon of a human girl who could exist. That's my take, right? Does that sound about right?
David: I can go with that. I mean without reading the actual studies, it's kinda hard to know where they're at, but that sounds about right.
Shawn: Alright, so now we're gonna delve a little bit deeper.
David: And I think it also shows The imprinting of sexual roles and stereotypes which are s slowly starting to change. Right. That's why I think it says that girls tend to lean towards beauty 'cause
Shawn: may may lean toward attractiveness. Like what? Y you don't know why they picked certain characters?
David: Like I said, without reading the whole study, it's kinda hard to
Shawn: Yeah.
David: But my guess is that they're talking about them liking people who are girly and doing girly things, especially after they grow out of that tomboy phase if they do that. and boys I mean, we've always been pushed to looking for power and strength
Shawn: That's why Bluey is such a good male role model for boys, 'cause he's a dad and he takes care of his kids.
David: Today's generation, that's a great role model.
Shawn: Yeah. So the advent of web two point acted as a digital guillotine for the traditional media gatekeeper. In the old days you needed a network executive's blessing to be seen. Today all you need is a smartphone and a lack of debilitating shame. No shame in your game. Platforms like TikTok and Twitch have created a digital third place, an informal public get-together that serves as the foundation for building a community. Twitch in particular has pioneered the digital parasocial thing by monetizing intimacy on a massive scale. Streamers use direct address and self-disclosure to To blur the lines between performer and friend. They greet viewers by their username in the chat, creating an immediate sense of reciprocity and temporal proximity. Because you feel like there's someone on the other end speaking to you right now, like when a streamer says your name, it feels like a reward. A small hit of dopamine that validates your existence in their digital fiefdom. The critic Cecilia D'Anastasio once provocatively compared Twitch streamers to digital age geisas. They host, they entertain, they listen, and they respond. They perform their skill, often gaming, from behind a thick veneer of familiarity. They allow viewers into their homes, creating a candidacy that feels authentic but is in reality a polished performance. This geisha analogy fits perfectly. It is the professional management of intimacy for a fee. You aren't paying for the game, you are paying for the company.
David: Wow. And that jumps right back up to where we were near the beginning at. the closer it looks like a relationship, the more powerful it is.
Shawn: And the engine under the hood is becoming even more efficient. Automated parasociality. AI driven personalization and predictive analytics now characterize users to develop custom tailored personas that can engage millions of people simultaneously. These algorithms simulate intimacy and authenticity, offering a non-judgmental companionship that's available twenty four seven. This is the ultimate goal of the digital merchant, an AI that can persuade you more effectively than your real life friends because it knows your content preferences and emotional triggers better than you do.
David: Yeah, those algorithms that they're developing now are just unbelievable.
Shawn: And this makes digital creators more persuasive than real life friends. A real friend might judge your midnight snack choices or your questionable dating life. The algorithm driven creator is always there, always supportive, and always ready to sell you a product that completes your lifestyle. Do you know people can marry artificial intelligences now?
David: I did not know that, but it doesn't surprise me.
Shawn: Yeah, you can have relationships with artificial personalities and it's a tiered subscription and the more intimacy you want with the artificial personality, the more you pay.
David: And I can see there being a market for it. I remember when Siri first came out
Shawn: You can have a casual friend for a certain fee. You want to ramp it up to a lifelong friend, somebody that's known you forever, you know, that's a higher fee. You wanna start romantically dating this person, this artificial intelligence, that's another tier. You can commit to them and actually wedding ceremony and be married to this artificial intelligence.
David: Hm. Well, like I said, I remember when Siri first came out, you know, people were developing relationships with Siri, which wasn't even that advanced compared to stuff that they're coming out with now. But I can definitely see people getting locked in because a lot of the AI is geared and aimed towards pleasing you. That's why you you gotta be somewhat careful when you're working with AI and in your prompting because it'll tend to tell you what it thinks you wanna hear. Cause it wants to keep you happy.
Shawn: Spending money.
David: And sell yourself, yeah.
Shawn: And this strategic shift from traditional celebrity endorsements to influencer marketing is built entirely on the back of Parasocial Interaction. younger generations like Gen Z and Millennials explicitly value parasocial interaction over traditional credibility. They don't care if a scientist says a product works. They care if their quote unquote friend on Instagram whose life they've followed for three years says it works. The personal attachment to the influencer carries more weight than the actual quality of the product. The K pop fandom system is is the gold standard of this mass produced mass intimacy. Through applications like the Wii Verse and V Live, Idols connect with followers in real time in a text simulated environment. This is parasocial kinship, where idols are treated as objects of familial affection and adulation. Access to their exclusive paid content through memberships creates a sense of exclusive closeness. This isn't just a fan club, it's a corporate engineered family.
David: And some of those influencers bring in huge bucks.
Shawn: Yeah they do, and in this parasocial kinship model, the idols aren't just stars, they're objects of responsibility. Fans engage in collaborative projects to market their idols. Streaming songs, running support projects, and voting in awards, Because they feel a personal duty to ensure their bestie succeeds. It is the most effective sales force in history, one that doesn't realize it's being sold to. And this isn't just for individual people. Companies and CEOs have realized that a corporate logo doesn't trigger a PSI, but a funny fast food Twitter account does. By using comedy and edgy humor, these brands foster one-sided friendships with consumers. A 2013 study found that customers have higher loyalty intentions and are more likely to provide personal information. When a brand fosters these PSIs. When a brand acts like a person, we treat it like a friend, and we don't let our friends down when it's time to choose a lunch spot.
David: And Wendy's I think was the master at that. whoever their social media person was or their advisor was hilarious.
Shawn: Yeah.
David: Wendy's really cornered that for a while. I haven't seen lately, but a couple of years back they were the king of that.
Shawn: Mm. And what I'm gonna call the hangover from our digital binge is undeniable, and the emotional consequences are real despite the imaginary nature of the bond. The constant exposure to muscular superheroes and perfect influencers leads to upward social comparison. This distorts our actual and ideal body images, leading to decreased self-esteem. If you spend five hours a day watching someone with a filter That hides every human flaw, you will eventually begin to see your own humanity as a defect. Then there's the parasocial breakup. This occurs when a show goes off the air, as seen with the intense grief at the end of Friends or the Australian soap opera Neighbours, or when a creator is cancelled. The distress felt during these breakups is remarkably similar. to a real life separation. So what is the primary predictor of the intensity of this grief? Age. Research by Cohen shows that young people under the age of 20 are significantly more susceptible to strong symptoms of parasocial breakup. At that developmental stage, the lines between mediated and authentic social relationships are at their thinnest. Furthermore, your attachment style plays a massive role. So going to talk about a few of these different types of styles. Anxious attachment are individuals who suffer the most during a parasocial breakup. They invest heavily in these one-sided bonds as a way to find the security they lack in real-life relationships. Avoidant attachment. These individuals may prefer parasocial bonds precisely because they are one-sided and low risk. allowing them to maintain a sense of control. And then secure attachment. These are individuals who tend to have the healthiest perspective, viewing the interaction as companionship rather than a primary source of identity. On platforms like Twitch, this can escalate into romantic entitlement and a torrent of dehumanizing harassment, particularly for female streamers. Obsessive fans After spending thousands of hours in a streamer's presence, often believe they're entitled to a real life reciprocation of the intimacy they've felt. When the streamer fails to recognize them in that well lit room, the fans' grief can quickly turn to aggression.
David: Yeah, I've heard that a lot. Twitch is notorious for harassment of women.
Shawn: Like, you think you're too good to talk to me, you bitch?
David: Yeah.
Shawn: Yeah, I don't fucking know you. Are you kidding me? I've been following you for three years and you think you're too good? Yeah, you've been following me. I ain't been following you. I don't know you. I don't bear you any ill will, but I just don't know you.
David: in their mind, that relationship is there.
Shawn: That's scary. So we're now entering the era of the parasocial compensation hypothesis. This theory suggests that as real world social outlets decrease due to urban isolation or global pandemics, we use parasocial relationships to fill the void. During the COVID-19 pandemic, podcasters effectively replaced real friends for many listeners, providing a companionship that was indistinguishable from From the real thing in the brain's social centers. Our mediated friends are no longer just on a flickering screen in the living room, they're in our pockets, they're in our earbuds, and they sleep in our beds. As we move toward automated parasociality with AI, we face a future where human social bonds may be entirely replaced by customized, nonjudgmental digital entities. An AI friend will never forget your birthday, it'll never disagree with your politics, and never be too busy to listen to your problems. It's the perfect parasocial partner. And that is exactly why it is so dangerous.
David: Absolutely, I agree with that.
Shawn: here's what I wonder. When we talk about age being a factor in who is most dependent upon these relationships to replace actual human contact. Young people now are digital native. When
David: Yeah, they grew up on this.
Shawn: they get to be our age, will their parasocial relationships still be as important to them? Is it just age because they're young or is it age because their exposure has been constant from birth? Is my question.
David: Yeah, I think Like you said, they're digital natives. They grew up in this. Right. So this is reality to them. Now older people who didn't grow up in this, pretty new, the only people I think get as involved are people who are suffering from severe isolation or loneliness. Because since they can't make real contact with real people, they're reliant on these artificial means which like I said are so effective at tapping into your triggers.
Shawn: Yeah.
David: they usually know what you want before you do.
Shawn: Right. Because in celebrity culture, separate from the internet as we talked about historically, this has always been a thing where the person who is not famous imagines a connection between themselves and the celebrity. Right. I have a friend who feels very connected to celebrities. Not a digital native. So remember when the Beatles broke up? How people just flipped out. You know, girls were crying and boohooing like a beloved boyfriend just dumped them. These are people who don't know you. It's not personal. I have a friend who is not a digital native whose reactions aren't that strong, but she feels a stronger connection and relationship to celebrities than do I. So knowing that I'm a Star Trek fan. I got a phone call at work from her because she had heard the news that Leonard Nimoy had died. And she called me out of concern for my feelings because she thought that I would be upset. I was not. I don't know him personally.
David: same here.
Shawn: I'm sorry for his family. You know, th fri you know, people who loved him lost someone, but I didn't personally lose someone.
David: And it's a loss of talent. But yeah, I don't have an investment in it.
Shawn: But yeah, he lived a life, you know, was able to earn a good living as an actor. You know, lots of people don't get to do the thing that they want to do and make a good living at it. And it's not like I had conversations with him on the daily. I don't know him. Right. He might have been a dick in real life for all I know.
David: I don't know anything about him.
Shawn: So I don't feel a connection to celebrities on a personal level, even if I admire their work or enjoy the work they've put out into the world.
David: I can't get that motivated. Right.
Shawn: Of kindness because she does feel more of a connection to celebrities. She called me because she was worried I would be upset. And I was like, no, I mean thanks for sharing the news, but yeah, I'm I'm I'm okay. Thanks for caring about my feelings, but no, I'm fine. But so not being a digital native, she's an example of the kind of person who Feels a stronger connection to a celebrity.
David: Right.
Shawn: Everybody's feeling of connection isn't as strong. So I'm wondering if people who are in their twenties now, when they get to be 60 years old, are they still going to be as upset when an influencer they've been following for a while gets canceled? Who knows? We'll we'll know. There's nothing for it but time.
David: Well I was gonna say on with your friend, did she have that from early on till n her age now?
Shawn: She's been like that ever since I've known her. So she's always celebrities that she admires, performers. She's always felt a stronger connection to them than than I have felt to celebrities.
David: So yeah, my expectation would be that those who built the strongest youngest are gonna carry it through the rest of their lives.
Shawn: Yeah, I think that's probably probably a fair assessment. I don't
David: Like you, there are lots of people that I'm in awe of, especially like if I see them like perform live, musicians of course are one of mine. some actors, but yeah, I don't have an investment in them. If I s see someone, you know, playing incredible guitar, I'm moved at that moment. But since I don't know them
Shawn: My current favorite science fiction author is a woman named Anne Lucky. I know what she looks like. If I ever ran into her in real life It would depend on the circumstance. I might say something to her like, I've really enjoyed your work. Thank you for sharing your talent with the world. And I'd roll on. That's it. Because she's a person and she's going about her daily life. I met Buzz Aldrin at a conference. He had delivered the keynote address. After his speech, and it just turns out he was staying in the same hotel I was staying in. And this was in New Orleans, and I had walked back to the hotel, and of course, you know, he had an escort that was, you know, driving him all over the place. And I was walking across the marble lobby and I saw him and his wife walking directly towards me. And I was just like, my god, it's Buzz Aldrin. And he walked right up to me and I was like, I was and I said to him, I said, I w I just saw your speech. I just listened to your keynote speech. Thank you so much for coming to speak to us. You know, it was really wonderful. I was like, you know, may I shake your hand. This is pre COVID and you can shake people's hands, of course. I was like, may I shake your hand? And I was shaking his hand and of course I'm just blal just gobsmacked that I'm, you know, shaking the hand of a man who has walked on the moon, right? And he said he said, you got back here really quick meaning got back to the hotel really quick and I and I was shaking his hand and I was like, Yes sir, I walk very fast
David: Very fast.
Shawn: Just just just just blithering idiot. Couldn't put a coherent sentence together. But I didn't like I didn't hit him up for an autograph. I didn't ask him, Can we take a picture together? You know, it that wasn't the thing. I just wanted to just stop him and Say thank you for coming to speak to us. May I shake your hand. And that was it. That was it. And I think I would have a similar thing if I met some other people I
David: And that's celebrated.
Shawn: liked. I'd be like, wow, I've really enjoyed your work. You know, thank you for sharing, you know, your whatever talent, your writing, your acting, your d whatever, whatever it is you do. Thank you so much for sharing your talent with the world. It's really contributed to, you know, whatever. But then I'd roll on. I wouldn't be all I wouldn't feel like I know this person. And I don't want to be a jerk while they're going about their life, right? But again, that's me at my age, not a digital native. And that's and again also who I am. I if I met who's a really big celebrity right now, somebody famous, a famous actor or a famous George Clooney musician. If I ran into George Clooney I'd be like, you're shorter than I thought.
David: Ha ha ha.
Shawn: But I I you know. I'd probably smile and say, I know who you are. I really enjoy your movies. And he'd probably say, get up get the fuck out of my way or thank you very much. And and we'd both roll on. I wouldn't be like, can I take a selfie with you? Mr. Clooney, can I have your outer ground? That Even if I'm gobsmacked at running into this world famous celebrity, I'm probably gonna say something stupid like I did to Buzz Aldrin, but I'm not gonna
David: Yeah, I can see me doing that with musicians.
Shawn: Yeah, I'm not gonna be I'm not gonna try to waylay them like I feel some kind of connection to them. Or I expect them to feel a connection to me. They don't know me for
David: less of us feeling like we have a relationship with them as we have a respect for them or for what they do.
Shawn: Yeah.
David: I don't equate admiring like Joe Bonamasa or Jesse Wells as having a relationship with them. If I met I'd be overwhelmed just because of how well they do what they do.
Shawn: Right. I really admire your talent.
David: And not I have a relationship with you. It yeah. We're connected somehow. Yeah, yeah. Bonamasa could care less if I like his stuff, I'm sure.
Shawn: Yeah, I don't I don't want anything else from you. I don't want your autograph, I don't want a selfie.
David: Yeah, it's a resist
Shawn: Yeah, you've contributed your talent to the world and thank you. I appreciate it.
David: Yeah, I think that's the differentiation is that
Shawn: Yeah.
David: ours is more less about the person than it is for what they do.
Shawn: And appreciation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's fair. I love that video where Buzz Aldern punches that guy out for saying the moon landing was fake.
David: I had that on loop for a while.
Shawn: That is hilarious. I don't care who you are. That's funny right there.
David: And he w he was getting up there in age when he did that.
Shawn: yeah, you got knocked the out by a white-haired old man.
David: Ha ha
Shawn: You little bitch, stay down. Anywho, In the end, we're not so different from the Romans who put marble busts of philosophers in their gardens to signal their virtues. We're the same lonely species, looking for someone to admire, someone to follow, and someone to tell us our story, we are the same lonely species looking for someone to admire, someone to follow, and someone to tell us our story so we don't have to face the silence alone. Whether it's a gladiator in the dust of the Colosseum, a Renaissance poet seeking immortality in ink, or a Twitch streamer in a neon-lit bedroom. The drive for Fama remains the ultimate obsession. We are still just trying to find a one-sided bestie to keep the dark at bay, even if we know deep down that they wouldn't recognize us if we stood right in front of them. And topics like this. for me just serve to emphasize weird I am and how different I am from other people. I listen to podcasts, I consume media, music, books, movies.
David: But when they end, you move on.
Shawn: All the things that everybody else does. And I enjoy them. And I might admire a celebrity for whatever contribution they make. I don't ever feel connected to them in any way. And the concept that people are trying to find a one sided bestie relationship is also foreign to me. And perhaps it's because I'm always the weirdo, the outsider, I cannot fathom a celebrity wanting to be my friend. Can't imagine it. And I think that's probably the kicker for me. I might admire somebody's work, but there's no way that person would be interested in talking to me or having a friendship with me. Cause I'm a weirdo.
David: Well, you never know. They might be weirdos too.
Shawn: They might be weirdos too.
David: And if your kind of weird is the same as their kinda weird,
Shawn: We might click.
David: might click. That's how friendships begin.
Shawn: That's true. That is true. You're my kind of weirdo.
David: Thank you. You're my kind of weirdo Weirdo.
Shawn: Thank you. We're Hey everybody, drop us a line at classy as hell atoutlook.com and tell us who your favorite celebrity is and why.
David: And whether you have a relationship with them in your head.
Shawn: So if you've been enjoying Classy as Hell, if this is the first episode you've listened to or if you've listened to others, please remember to rate, review, and subscribe for free on whatever platform you use to listen. It really helps us out.
David: All right. And we appreciate you listening.
Shawn: Thank you so much for listening, and until next time, don't try to keep it classy.
David: Keep it real.
Shawn: Piece that together however you can. Thank you.
David: I'm David.
Shawn: So David, you wanna talk about our tragedy this week?
David: What was it? Friday morning.
Shawn: Early Friday morning, two thirty.
David: before we found out it was two thirty, Shawn had a doctor's appointment and she went out to get in the car to go to the doctor's appointment and the car wasn't there. At first we thought maybe it was towed, so we called the towing yard. We checked the website all the tow companies list what cars they've towed and where they towed them to, which is actually very user friendly.
Shawn: Actually no, It's City of Richmond Police. Was the site that showed the cars that they had impounded and which impound lot they were logged into in the time.
David: Ok
Shawn: So it had the year making model and it had the license plate number. Or the VIN, I you could look it up by the VIN too. Anyhow, sorry.
David: We finally figure out 'cause the car's nowhere that anyone can detect, that it was stolen.
Shawn: Ugh.
David: Shawn went out to where the car had been, and sure enough there was glass from where the rear passenger window had been broken into. And they stole our car.
Shawn: So we had to get a rental car to get through the weekend, and we were very fortunate to be able to do that. And when I was talking to the police to file the police report, at the end of all their questions that they asked me, and they're like, Okay, do you have any questions for me? And I said, Well, yeah, I have, you know, the one question everybody asks you, and the officer's like, What? I said What are the odds we're actually gonna get our car back? Because I'm thinking we're never gonna see our car again. But he was actually very encouraging. He's like, actually, we usually find them. It's usually kids steal the car, go joy riding in it until it's out of gas, and then they park it and they leave it, and then we find it. So sure enough, late Sunday morning, we get a call from Henrico County Police. stating, We found your car and here's where you can come pick it up so we went and picked it up.
David: Henrico's about what, thirty minutes from where we are.
Shawn: That part of it, yeah. So we went and picked it up, you know, all the broken glasses, you know, inside the car on the seats and they used the cup holder as an ashtray for their blunt and they popped the ignition off of course, which David, you know, popped back in so he could start the car and we could drive it.
David: But they took all the protection around the column they must have thrown that away 'cause it's not anywhere.
Shawn: yeah, I'm sure they just chucked it out. Anywho, because that had their fingerprints all over it, I'm sure they chucked that out the window somewhere where it won't be found. so good news we got our car back. Now we're just waiting for the insurance claim to go through to tell us where to go get it repaired, what shop they want us to take it to. Could have been way worse.
David: yeah.
Shawn: So grateful to have gotten it back, but what a stressful weekend of worry. Poor Bessie.
David: Mm. We like that car a lot.
Shawn: so worried about her. And then
David: We bought a club for it.
Shawn: and then the university police actually contacted David because they had video of our car on their campus.
David: they theorized that our car was used to transport people around their campus looking for more cars to steal.
Shawn: Bessie, not even good enough to be stolen and kept.
David: when the guy picked me up from Enterprise to go get our rental car. I was talking to him and we're just chatting back and forth. And told him I was under no delusion that our car was on its way to, you know, Saudi Arabia or something.
Shawn: No. not gonna be a hot commodity.
David: Yeah, or a chop shop's not gonna be cutting that up for parts because Although we had did just have new tires put on it, so that was
Shawn: Yeah, glad we got those back.
David: 'cause that was seven hundred, eight hundred bucks, something like that.
Shawn: So the topic of today, we're gonna be talking about, celebrities and fame and our relationship to that. And we can all sort of in varying degrees relate to it. Even if you are not into social media. Even if you are not one of those people who just spends all your time online, you know, following various influencers and whatnot, we all have famous people we know but who don't know us, right?
David: Absolutely.
Shawn: I mean that that god awful cringy video that Gal Gadot made at the beginning of COVID, the Imagine, and she got all the other celebrities to sing Imagine with her. yeah. We're just like you. No, you're not, sweetie. You don't have to go to work in a grocery store because what you do isn't essential. In fact, you can afford to have groceries delivered to you. You're not like us. Don't try to pretend like you're like the rest of us. then There's those celebrity moments where we actually admire that celebrity for doing something wonderful. You know, we can all imagine our favorite athletes at the FIFA World Cup or in the Olympics, and great plays that they made or wonderful, things that they did,
David: Yeah, you'll hear celebrities that went way above Yeah,
Shawn: Above and beyond.
David: Johnny Depp, a target that everyone likes to make, but he puts on his Captain Jack from the Pirates of the Caribbean and makes unannounced visits to hospitals, no PR, no publicity
Shawn: How do you know then? There's some PR and there's some publicity.
David: Because the people that he visits talk about it. And
Shawn: okay.
David: the nurses.
Shawn: But yeah, even if there is some PR and some publicity, I don't have a problem with that. You're going to a hospital in character to, you know, cheer up sick kids. Fine. Yeah. I think that's great.
David: You'll hear about stuff like that periodically of different artists who just like I say go way above what you would expect.
Shawn: here's where I'm gonna question my initial statement where I said they're not like us, but yeah they are because all of humanity has the potential to do something kinda generous and the potential to be assholes.
David: Absolutely.
Shawn: I'm an asshole on the daily, so it's not like I think I'm better than Gal Godot or something. I'm just jealous that she's got money and I don't. I've never been jealous of fame. I have never ever ever wanted fame. I don't want people looking at me I would never feel comfortable in the public eye. That's not something I have ever wanted. Money, hell yeah! I'd love to have a lot of money, but fame, no. Not something I have ever aspired to. Did you ever want to be famous?
David: Yeah, I mean when I was in college the goal was, you know, to be a rock star.
Shawn: Well that was just so you could get laid though. Okay.
David: Well, not always. yeah, I had the vision of being a rock star. Unfortunately I didn't have the vision of practicing and learning the skill properly.
Shawn: As we've talked about, there's lots of very talented people who never make it in their field. In their chosen arts, so
David: I There are very talented people that never make it in their field. Right.
Shawn: Yeah.
David: I think my friend J.R., bass player extraordinaire, plays in local bands in Ohio and
Shawn: Freaky talented, never famous.
David: never famous.
Shawn: And there's more people like that than there are people who I'm not saying that people who are famous for whatever don't have talent, but they also had a lucky break helped them along the way. The Pareto principle. Yeah.
David: They go back to the print Prater principle well yeah.
Shawn: It's not that those people aren't talented or hardworking or whatever. It's just they also had a lucky break. Luck plays a role in it. what we're gonna dip our toe into to start with is the digital panopticon. A world where the average human spends roughly forty percent of their waking life nodding at a glowing rectangle, convinced that a 22-year-old in an ergonomic gaming chair is their bestie. So to an uninitiated observer, Perhaps a particularly confused time traveler from the 14th century. This would appear to be mass psychological collapse. We have fancy labels for it now. Scrolling, content consumption. Or the more disparaging brain rot. That does sound gross. I'm just picturing like brain matter oozing out through my ear. Like those creepy worms in the Wrath of Khan.
David: or in brain dead.
Shawn: Yes, previously on brain dead. however, those of us in the Ivory Tower of digital anthropology prefer a term that sounds slightly more like a diagnosable condition. We call it parasocial interaction. And the strategic reality of our era is that our modern obsession with influencers is not a glitch in the human software caused by a stray line of code in the TikTok algorithm. It is a legacy feature of the human species. We have always been voyeurs, lurking at the edges of lives more glamorous, violent, or visible than our own. Long before the first like button was forged in the fires of Silicon Valley, humans were deeply, pathologically invested in the lives of people they would never actually meet. This is the eternal quest for fame, a concept of public reputation. That has served as the social and legal currency of humanity since the first Roman decided he'd rather watch a gladiator bleed in the dust than fix the leaking roof of his own insula.
David: Ok
Shawn: we all know this to be true just instinctively. fame and celebrity didn't start with the internet.
David: No, absolutely not. I mean there've been fan people and fanatics and stuff probably since the dawn of time, I mean...
Shawn: Right.
David: just in our lifetime, you can look back at the Beatles. I guess Frank Sinatra had a similar thing where everyone just went nuts over him.
Shawn: somewhere on a cave wall in Lasco is one of those warriors and there's people around them and there's little like flashbulbs of paparazzi. If you've ever felt a visceral pang of grief when your favorite YouTuber was canceled, or if you find yourself trusting a stranger's skincare routine more than the clinical advice of a board-certified dermatologist, you were caught in the one-sided besti scenario. This illusory experience, first clinicalized by Donald Horton and Richard Wall in nineteen fifty six, describes a psychological state where the audience interacts with a persona. This could be a talk show host, a fictional character, doesn't even have to be a real person, or a digital creator, as if they were engaged in a reciprocal relationship. We project intimacy into a void, and when the void stares back with a prerecorded smile, we call it a connection. the feeling we feel for a celebrity isn't even necessarily required to have another living human on the other end of it. Anyone who reads fiction, you might have a favorite fictional character that you've always enjoyed. And that person is a celebrity in your mind. It has the same status for you. Mine's Granny Weatherwax from the Discworld. Well there's there's so many.
David: Yeah, I have
Shawn: Breck of the Imperial Ratch. I mean just so many.
David: Yeah, I have quite a few.
Shawn: Who are some of your favorite fictional characters?
David: Well I was always fascinated by Gandalf.
Shawn: Yeah! Everybody wants to be a powerful wizard. Yeah.
David: What's not to like there?
Shawn: So the technology has certainly evolved, moving from the permanence of stone to the fragility of vellum and finally to the ephemeral glow of liquid crystal, but the underlying drive remains stubbornly identical. We're wired to seek companionship in the figures that dominate our public squares. So to understand the modern follower, we cannot simply look at the screen, we must look at the men who fought for fame in the dirt of the Roman arena. where the clout was quite literally a matter of life and death. Were there any female gladiators?
David: Not they come to mind.
Shawn: Yeah, it seems kinda unusual to have a female gladiator, I would think. So you had talked about ancient fanboys, and in the classical world, fama was not merely a byproduct of success, it was a form of property. It was a social asset, and most importantly, for our sardonic purposes, legally admissible evidence. In ancient Rome, and well into the Middle Ages, your public reputation was a tangible fact. That could determine the outcome of a criminal trial. If the collective gossip of the city, the FAMA, deemed you a drunkard or a hero, the court treated that consensus as a legal reality.
David: So not much different today.
Shawn: Mmm, true. So imagine, if you will, a modern courtroom where the judge decides your fate based on your Instagram engagement or the ratio of your last controversial tweet. The Romans were effectively living in a world where cancel culture was the primary mechanism of the judiciary. And yeah, we're not far off that mark now.
David: we talked that billionaires don't go to prison, if a normal person did it, they'd go to jail.
Shawn: Racial profiling's very real.
David: Even among celebrities.
Shawn: Yeah, even among celebrities, racial profiling is very real. So the Roman gladiator in this context was the original creator in the digital Colosseum. These men were often infames, social outcasts who technically lacked the rights of a full citizen. Yet they commanded a level of celebrity that would make a modern influencer weep. They were the subjects of intense visual rhetoric. Successful gladiator stables understood the power of the brand long before the first marketing degree was conferred. Gladiators had stage names, carefully curated personas designed to evoke fear, strength, or exoticism. And they were advertised on posters throughout the city. These advertisements weren't just functional. They were the first iteration of the for you page, capturing the attention of the masses and promising a spectacle of intimacy and blood.
David: Great combination. Sounds like pro wrestling.
Shawn: Yeah, very much so.
David: Only they don't fight to the death.
Shawn: Yeah, Dwayne Johnson is a flashy wrestling name. Call him the rock.
David: Hulk Hogan.
Shawn: Yeah.
David: Stone Cold Steve Austin. Yeah,
Shawn: Rowdy rowdy pipe.
David: those are the only four I know. Let's go way back.
Shawn: I was gonna say, you know at least another one? Andre the Giant.
David: man, Andre. Does anybody want to peanut Andre, yeah.
Shawn: And in ancient times it was similar. Successful athletes were immortalized on pottery, frescoes, and votive offerings. A Roman citizen might drink from a cup adorned with the likeness of his favorite fighter, a physical precursor to the modern influencer's branded coffee mug. And this wasn't just fandom, it was identity curation. To own a piece of gladiator memorabilia was to signal one's own participation in the cultural zeitgeist. Consider the evolution of the herm. In ancient Greece, these were stone pillars topped with the head of Hermes and adorned with anatomically prominent phallic markers. Originally, they served a religious utility, marking boundaries and warding off evil. However, as the Republic transitioned into the Empire, the Herm underwent a fascinating secularization of the By the time of the late empire, the phallic markers had retreated, and the head of Hermes was frequently replaced by the busts of philosophers, politicians, and orators. Like we see those busts of like Socrates and Aristotle that would have replaced the head of Hermes, for example. And this is the so what layer of ancient fan culture. The Romans were effectively posting their interests to bolster their own social standing. Placing a bust of Cicero in your garden was the classical equivalent of putting civics and stoicism in your social media bio. It was a display of association. You weren't just a citizen, you were a citizen who followed the right thinkers. While the Romans were forced to carve their obsession in marble, a process that at least required a modicum of effort and time, the coming of the Renaissance would soon grant us the technology to put our psychological dependencies on paper. Less permanent, but also faster.
David: yeah. And you can do a whole bunch of way quicker than you can carve a statue.
Shawn: Absolutely. Wood blocks?
David: Yeah, that's a mass marketing right there.
Shawn: Movable type once that was established?
David: yeah, by Gutenberg.
Shawn: And the Renaissance itself was the ultimate rebrand for the human ego. It was a strategic pivot from a church-centered worldview where the only light that mattered was from the divine, to a humanist philosophy that celebrated the individual. This rebirth fueled an insatiable demand for a secular fame economy. If the Middle Ages were a time of collective anonymity under the shadow of the cathedral, The Renaissance was the era when everyone decided they wanted to be a star. Again, except for people like me who just really don't want to be looked at or scrutinized. And into this arena steps Johannes Gutenberg in fourteen forty-five. Before his printing press, a book was a luxury object made of parchment, which is scraped animal skin, and hand copied by monks who likely didn't appreciate the humor in the chivalry romances they were duplicating. Although those monks put their own humor in those books, and those bits are really funny. When you find like their own little personal touches added in. Books were so expensive, they were essentially the private property of the hyper-elite and the clergy. Gutenberg's press acted as a digital guillotine for the traditional gatekeepers of knowledge, plummeting the cost of content and allowing the emerging middle class to claim their own intellectual fiefdoms. This new middle class, the bankers, merchants, and accountants of the 15th century, found themselves with something dangerous: leisure time.
David: Boy is that dangerous.
Shawn: Idol hands are the devil's tools. Were you idle a lot? Me
David: I tried to be.
Shawn: too. As their fortunes improved, these middle class people moved beyond the basic needs of food and shelter and began to desire exotic delicacies. They wanted fine art and books for pleasure. They didn't want to read Latin liturgies. They wanted chivalry romances, travel books, and almanacs. This literacy boom fueled a new kind of secular celebrity. Figures like Leonardo da Vinci and William Shakespeare were Became the archetypal Renaissance men, individuals whose names were mass-produced on a scale previously reserved for saints.
David: That's interesting. I don't think I was aware that Leonardo was as famous as he was in
Shawn: In his own life.
David: his own lifetime. now everyone knows who he is, The Mona Lisa and everything. But I didn't realize he was that famous during his lifetime.
Shawn: Well, he was famous in his region and among people who could go to see his works of art. They might inquire about it. I presume. Well Shakespeare in particular was haunted by the concept of literary immortality. In Sonnet 55, he famously boasted that his powerful rhyme would outlive the gilded monuments of princes. That was him freestyling. bragging about his rhymes, his powerful rhymes. He understood that the human body was a poor vessel for fame, but a printed word could act as a permanent record of one's existence. He was terrified of the wounded name, a reputation that outlives the person, but remains tarnished by gossip or failure. In Hamlet, the dying prince's final act is not a prayer for his soul, but a plea to Horatio to tell my story to the harsh world. Wanted to be viewed sympathetically.
David: Yeah, yeah.
Shawn: I don't want people to think ill of me even after I'm dead.
David: that's powerful. And so true today. I mean that's people want to leave a legacy so they're not forgotten. People want to be immortal.
Shawn: People and fame is a way to do that.
David: Now lots of people also think having kids is the way to extend your But for me the the insanity stops with me, so
Shawn: Yep, insanity dies with me. the concept of fame from a worldly distraction into a substitute for the Christian notion of immortality. Once the printing press turned the human ego into a mass-produced commodity, the path was cleared for the clinical mind to eventually categorize our ancient yearnings as modern pathologies. We were no longer just admirers of greatness, we were consumers of it, and the stage was set for a one way street of intimacy that would eventually be paved with fiber optic cables. So let's talk about this one-way street and give a better definition to what I mentioned at the beginning of this, the parasocial interaction.
David: All right.
Shawn: In 1956, while the rest of the world was preoccupied with the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation, Donald Horton and Richard Wall were busy observing a different kind of fallout. The way people were talking back to their television sets, they identified parasocial interaction as an illusory experience where the media user acts as though they are involved in a typical social relationship with a persona. How many times do I talk to the characters on the television screen and they never listen to me?
David: No matter how many times you watch it
Shawn: I know, right?
David: And you keep telling them every time, I know, don't open that door.
Shawn: Do not go in there, you fool
David: And yet they always do, they never listen.
Shawn: They never listen. I'll be shouting the answer to the quiz that they're trying to complete. They can't hear me. Not only can they not hear me through space, they can't hear me through time. Because this was recorded how freaking long ago.
David: Absolutely.
Shawn: But I'm sitting here shouting the answer like,
David: I will say that you do that more than I do. I don't usually don't talk to the TV, but every now and then I will if I they're really hitting something.
Shawn: I talk to the characters and that's where my echo lallia always really kicks in too.
David: Okay.
Shawn: Like I I don't do it out loud, but I'll be sitting there repeating the line that someone just said while I'm watching something that I'm interested in. So it's vital to distinguish between the two core tenets of this phenomenon. Parasocial interaction is the one-sided process of perception that occurs during exposure. It's the fleeting sensation that the talk show host is looking directly at you, that their jokes are intended for your specific ears, and that your laughter is part of a shared moment.
David: And that's such an art. remember reading an article that Paul McCartney was a master of zooming into the camera that was filming and looking straight at the audience, making it feel like they were part
Shawn: Looking straight down the camera.
David: Yeah. Paul McCartney w I guess was just incredible naturally about it too. It's not like someone prompted him. He just knew that instinctively, I guess.
Shawn: that connection with the audience.
David: Yeah.
Shawn: Great for him. The other part of it is the parasocial relationship. And that's the cross-situational bond that develops over time. It's the imagined friendship that exists in the viewer's mind between episodes. It's the feeling that you know a character or a creator so well that you can predict their reactions to real-world events. The part of this that I have always found fascinating. Is people who are sports fans because I don't follow sports ball. We
David: Yeah, we won the game.
Shawn: won the game, we were robbed, we whatever, you know, we put on a good show, but we just couldn't get there. You were in no way, shape, or form involved in any of that. But they refer to themselves, the fans will refer to themselves as we like they were on the field. On the sideline, even in the stadium, whatever.
David: Yeah. You didn't take that hit.
Shawn: You y you even if you were in the stadium, there's still no we. You're just a spectator. There's no we, you are not involved.
David: Well you also not only in sports, but you'll hear celebrities talk that people are frequently disappointed that they're not like the characters that they portray.
Shawn: Well and and this whole concept is where the phrase never meet your heroes comes from.
David: yeah.
Shawn: Because we have an idea of what we think someone is like in real life based on their books that we've read, based on their movies that they've made, based on their whatever. But that's that's not who they are, that's the work they've produced.
David: Right.
Shawn: So meeting that person in real life is almost always going to be less than what you imagine it to be. And they're just a person. If they didn't do anything to you, they're just a person, just like you.
David: Yeah, they're just not meeting the expectation that you build up based on an artificial relationship that you have that you
Shawn: You imagine
David: Yeah.
Shawn: And so when we're talking about these two types of connections, the parasocial interaction, which happens during the exposure, and the parasocial relationship, which is the ongoing imagined relationship
David: Okay.
Shawn: in in the mind of the unfamous person towards the famous character or famous person.
David: I think it's from the play The Tree with Blue Leaves, but it might be another one. But the I remember the lead woman who had some mental health issues. That her big question was Do celebrities dream of us?
Shawn: No they do not.
David: But I thought it was an interesting take. You know, because so many people fixate on the other way. do celebrities dream about just being a normal person?
Shawn: They might dream about being unfamous, but they don't dream of us.
David: Yeah, but what they specifically don't know us.
Shawn: so just like you or I might dream well not me, just like you might dream about being a famous rock star. But in that dream you're not imagining individual fans, right?
David: No.
Shawn: So somebody who is a famous rock star who maybe yearns for privacy might have a dream about just going to the grocery store and not being accosted by everybody around them.
David: Right. I think she was using the us as a royal we type of thing. You know, meaning just
Shawn: Again, no they don't because that fantasy of I want to have privacy and not be famous, that dream is about if if I'm the celebrity, that dream's about me. About
David: Okay, I've got a lot.
Shawn: the fans. It's about me wanting to be able to go about my life normally and not have to, you know, put on a hat and sunglasses and try to hide.
David: Okay.
Shawn: So what are the things that can predict the strength of these bonds? And the primary driver is, okay, and I'm gonna try to pronounce this homophily?
David: Sure.
Shawn: Which is our tendency to like people who are similar to us in attitude, background, or physical appearance. We also call this confirmation bias when we're talking about attitudes specifically, people who agree with our point of view. Yes. And we look for mediated friends who act as digital mirrors. However, there's a fundamental strangeness that never evaporates in these relationships. In a face-to-face interaction, the initial strangeness fades as mutual disclosure occurs. In a parasocial relationship, the media persona becomes increasingly intimate to the viewer while the viewer remains a total stranger to the persona. It is a relationship where the getting to know you phase is a permanent one way street. This clinical lab work eventually moved from the observation of radio listeners to the analysis of the living room, where we began to realize that the most potent parasocial bonds aren't formed in the hearts of lonely adults, but in the developing brains of children who haven't yet learned to distinguish between a friend and a puppet.
David: Ooh, that's interesting. Yeah.
Shawn: So now let's talk about early childhood and the elmo effect.
David: I just gonna say Sesame Street full of puppets.
Shawn: well yeah.
David: And kids just love those puppets.
Shawn: Right. This thought just occurred to me. The great thing about puppets Is A puppet is not a human face that changes over time, ages, and eventually dies. A puppet is a more
David: Yeah.
Shawn: So when thinking about early childhood as a laboratory of the parasocial, we can consider that long before a human being can grasp the concept of monetization or content strategy, they are forming intense identity-shaping bonds with fictional characters. Media plays a strategic role in early development, often acting as a social trainer for children who are learning the norms of interaction.
David: Well, especially since the sixties when parents just set kids in front of T Vs
Shawn: Right.
David: as babysitters.
Shawn: Shows like Dora the Explorer are masterclasses in strategic parasocial engineering. By using the pseudo conversation where the character pauses, looks at the camera, and waits for a response, the show creates a social simulation. The toddler isn't just a passive observer, they're a participant in a one sided dialogue.
David: I never thought about that, but yeah.
Shawn: Yeah. So this isn't just entertainment. It's the training ground for the loyal community expectations of the future. And the research here is staggering. In a landmark twenty eleven study, infants were taught a sequencing task by two different characters, Elmo, who is an American icon, and Dodo, who is a character popular in Taiwan but unknown in the United States. The children learned significantly better from Elmo. Why? Because they already had a socially meaningful relationship with him. They trusted the source because they knew him and This suggests that learning outcomes in children are directly tied to the strength of the parasocial bond.
David: Now that's interesting.
Shawn: Isn't it though?
David: I think we have preschool and grade school kids be taught by puppets or by famous things that they would be aware of.
Shawn: Characters or animations. Yeah. You know what I think is wonderful? Australia has banned marketing directly to children.
David: wow. I wasn't aware that.
Shawn: Yeah! Brilliant!
David: Yeah, 'cause so many a advertisements are geared right towards
Shawn: Australia, you're my heroes.
David: Yeah, banned guns or made it very strict to own guns.
Shawn: Yeah, you had to have you have to have a purpose, you have to get licensed and you have to get recertified and relicensed every single year. Y it's not a one off, and now it's yours, go off and live the rest of your life.
David: And they got rid of advertising to kids. Go Australia.
Shawn: Yeah. So back to the whole children learning from these characters, we can see this even more clearly with the leapfrog MyPal dolls. Have you seen these My Pal dolls? I have not seen them.
David: No, I'm familiar with Leapfrog. I mean they make a lot of educational toys but I'm not familiar with my pal.
Shawn: So yeah, so one of so one of their educational tools are these dolls called MyPal. And when these toys were personalized to say the child's name and share their favorite colors, the children nurtured the toys more and learned from them more effectively. this emotional nurturing isn't just cute, it's a psychological hook. We are essentially teaching children that the most effective teachers Are those who simulate a personal relationship with them?
David: I agree with that. I think as I look back on my education, the places where I feel I learned the most were from teachers that I felt I had a bond with.
Shawn: And classroom size has only gotten. It was pretty good size when I was a kid. Classroom size was like 30 kids in a classroom. And it's only gotten bigger and bigger. So yeah, maybe a child being able to form this parasocial bond with an inanimate. Well not inanimate. Animated character.
David: Yeah.
Shawn: Can really help learning because the teacher can't form that personal social connection with thirty kids or sometimes more in a classroom. I mean I was always the standoffish kid. I was always the kid, on the outside looking in. So unless a teacher really wanted to work hard to make a connection with me, and they don't, because they don't have time. There were some teachers I liked better than others, but I can't say I really felt a a close connection with any of my grade school teachers.
David: Now we talked about me having aphantasia last episode I think, which means that I don't remember large sections of my life. especially school. I can't name all my elementary school teachers, but I remember two of And it was due to connections that I made with them. one fostered my interest in Japan and Asia in general. 'cause for it seemed like a long time, but it was probably just a couple of weeks. We studied Japan and learned some of the language, learned about the Japanese tea parties and all this stuff and I was just fascinated by it. And I had a good relationship with her because she knew well that I enjoyed it.
Shawn: Do you mean tea ceremony, which is very different from what tea party?
David: well, tea ceremony, yeah.
Shawn: And then I think of a tea party as well, what an English tea party.
David: Yeah, no, it's more it's more formal than that.
Shawn: Yeah. Okay,
David: And then the other one was I think my fifth grade teacher, and I just captivated by her accent. She was Scottish. And also was interested in stamps and stuff that I was starting to get interested in.
Shawn: You dirty little philatelist.
David: So yeah, those two teachers are really the only two that I have any real memory of.
Shawn: I remember all my teachers, but yeah, I can't say I felt I clicked with any of them. Not ever. Never in all my life did I click with a teacher.
David: Yeah, those two I clicked with.
Shawn: But that's yeah, that's not unusual. I don't click with anybody.
David: Right.
Shawn: And so yeah, for a school teacher to try and reach out to the weird kid on the edge that's me, they they can't. They just can't. And so the question of so what here in this instance is chilling. By fostering these pseudo-conversations early, we're conditioning a generation to prioritize the feeling of a relationship over its actual reciprocity. We're training them to be loyal communities before they can even tie their own shoes. When these children grow up, they don't look for experts, they look for mediated friends like Elmo, but with a brand deal. And a ring light.
David: Ooh.
Shawn: Furthermore, there's the issue of wishful identification. Studies show that boys often pick favorite characters based on perceived intelligence and power, while girls may lean toward attractiveness.
David: Batman for me as a kid.
Shawn: If a child perceives a character as having social realism, that's the plausibility that they could exist, the bond becomes unbreakable. We're creating a world where the most persuasive figures in a person's life are those who don't actually exist in the same physical space as them.
David: Okay. Like I said, growing up for me was Batman. And of course when I was young Young Batman was definitely possible. As I got older, the realism of Batman became distanter and distanter
Shawn: Studies show that boys often pick favorite characters based on perceived intelligence and power. That makes sense. While girls may lean toward attractiveness. So you've asked the boys what they perceived and why they liked a certain character. But you're guessing that the girls may lean toward attractiveness? What's that based on?
David: Got me. Maybe it's that urgency or willingness to pigeonhole them into to roles.
Shawn: So I guess what the experts are saying here is that a little kid knows by a certain age they realize Elmo was not a person. So at some point they want to imagine that this person could exist in real life. So while Dora the Explorer is an animated cartoon, it's a cartoon of a human girl who could exist. That's my take, right? Does that sound about right?
David: I can go with that. I mean without reading the actual studies, it's kinda hard to know where they're at, but that sounds about right.
Shawn: Alright, so now we're gonna delve a little bit deeper.
David: And I think it also shows The imprinting of sexual roles and stereotypes which are s slowly starting to change. Right. That's why I think it says that girls tend to lean towards beauty 'cause
Shawn: may may lean toward attractiveness. Like what? Y you don't know why they picked certain characters?
David: Like I said, without reading the whole study, it's kinda hard to
Shawn: Yeah.
David: But my guess is that they're talking about them liking people who are girly and doing girly things, especially after they grow out of that tomboy phase if they do that. and boys I mean, we've always been pushed to looking for power and strength
Shawn: That's why Bluey is such a good male role model for boys, 'cause he's a dad and he takes care of his kids.
David: Today's generation, that's a great role model.
Shawn: Yeah. So the advent of web two point acted as a digital guillotine for the traditional media gatekeeper. In the old days you needed a network executive's blessing to be seen. Today all you need is a smartphone and a lack of debilitating shame. No shame in your game. Platforms like TikTok and Twitch have created a digital third place, an informal public get-together that serves as the foundation for building a community. Twitch in particular has pioneered the digital parasocial thing by monetizing intimacy on a massive scale. Streamers use direct address and self-disclosure to To blur the lines between performer and friend. They greet viewers by their username in the chat, creating an immediate sense of reciprocity and temporal proximity. Because you feel like there's someone on the other end speaking to you right now, like when a streamer says your name, it feels like a reward. A small hit of dopamine that validates your existence in their digital fiefdom. The critic Cecilia D'Anastasio once provocatively compared Twitch streamers to digital age geisas. They host, they entertain, they listen, and they respond. They perform their skill, often gaming, from behind a thick veneer of familiarity. They allow viewers into their homes, creating a candidacy that feels authentic but is in reality a polished performance. This geisha analogy fits perfectly. It is the professional management of intimacy for a fee. You aren't paying for the game, you are paying for the company.
David: Wow. And that jumps right back up to where we were near the beginning at. the closer it looks like a relationship, the more powerful it is.
Shawn: And the engine under the hood is becoming even more efficient. Automated parasociality. AI driven personalization and predictive analytics now characterize users to develop custom tailored personas that can engage millions of people simultaneously. These algorithms simulate intimacy and authenticity, offering a non-judgmental companionship that's available twenty four seven. This is the ultimate goal of the digital merchant, an AI that can persuade you more effectively than your real life friends because it knows your content preferences and emotional triggers better than you do.
David: Yeah, those algorithms that they're developing now are just unbelievable.
Shawn: And this makes digital creators more persuasive than real life friends. A real friend might judge your midnight snack choices or your questionable dating life. The algorithm driven creator is always there, always supportive, and always ready to sell you a product that completes your lifestyle. Do you know people can marry artificial intelligences now?
David: I did not know that, but it doesn't surprise me.
Shawn: Yeah, you can have relationships with artificial personalities and it's a tiered subscription and the more intimacy you want with the artificial personality, the more you pay.
David: And I can see there being a market for it. I remember when Siri first came out
Shawn: You can have a casual friend for a certain fee. You want to ramp it up to a lifelong friend, somebody that's known you forever, you know, that's a higher fee. You wanna start romantically dating this person, this artificial intelligence, that's another tier. You can commit to them and actually wedding ceremony and be married to this artificial intelligence.
David: Hm. Well, like I said, I remember when Siri first came out, you know, people were developing relationships with Siri, which wasn't even that advanced compared to stuff that they're coming out with now. But I can definitely see people getting locked in because a lot of the AI is geared and aimed towards pleasing you. That's why you you gotta be somewhat careful when you're working with AI and in your prompting because it'll tend to tell you what it thinks you wanna hear. Cause it wants to keep you happy.
Shawn: Spending money.
David: And sell yourself, yeah.
Shawn: And this strategic shift from traditional celebrity endorsements to influencer marketing is built entirely on the back of Parasocial Interaction. younger generations like Gen Z and Millennials explicitly value parasocial interaction over traditional credibility. They don't care if a scientist says a product works. They care if their quote unquote friend on Instagram whose life they've followed for three years says it works. The personal attachment to the influencer carries more weight than the actual quality of the product. The K pop fandom system is is the gold standard of this mass produced mass intimacy. Through applications like the Wii Verse and V Live, Idols connect with followers in real time in a text simulated environment. This is parasocial kinship, where idols are treated as objects of familial affection and adulation. Access to their exclusive paid content through memberships creates a sense of exclusive closeness. This isn't just a fan club, it's a corporate engineered family.
David: And some of those influencers bring in huge bucks.
Shawn: Yeah they do, and in this parasocial kinship model, the idols aren't just stars, they're objects of responsibility. Fans engage in collaborative projects to market their idols. Streaming songs, running support projects, and voting in awards, Because they feel a personal duty to ensure their bestie succeeds. It is the most effective sales force in history, one that doesn't realize it's being sold to. And this isn't just for individual people. Companies and CEOs have realized that a corporate logo doesn't trigger a PSI, but a funny fast food Twitter account does. By using comedy and edgy humor, these brands foster one-sided friendships with consumers. A 2013 study found that customers have higher loyalty intentions and are more likely to provide personal information. When a brand fosters these PSIs. When a brand acts like a person, we treat it like a friend, and we don't let our friends down when it's time to choose a lunch spot.
David: And Wendy's I think was the master at that. whoever their social media person was or their advisor was hilarious.
Shawn: Yeah.
David: Wendy's really cornered that for a while. I haven't seen lately, but a couple of years back they were the king of that.
Shawn: Mm. And what I'm gonna call the hangover from our digital binge is undeniable, and the emotional consequences are real despite the imaginary nature of the bond. The constant exposure to muscular superheroes and perfect influencers leads to upward social comparison. This distorts our actual and ideal body images, leading to decreased self-esteem. If you spend five hours a day watching someone with a filter That hides every human flaw, you will eventually begin to see your own humanity as a defect. Then there's the parasocial breakup. This occurs when a show goes off the air, as seen with the intense grief at the end of Friends or the Australian soap opera Neighbours, or when a creator is cancelled. The distress felt during these breakups is remarkably similar. to a real life separation. So what is the primary predictor of the intensity of this grief? Age. Research by Cohen shows that young people under the age of 20 are significantly more susceptible to strong symptoms of parasocial breakup. At that developmental stage, the lines between mediated and authentic social relationships are at their thinnest. Furthermore, your attachment style plays a massive role. So going to talk about a few of these different types of styles. Anxious attachment are individuals who suffer the most during a parasocial breakup. They invest heavily in these one-sided bonds as a way to find the security they lack in real-life relationships. Avoidant attachment. These individuals may prefer parasocial bonds precisely because they are one-sided and low risk. allowing them to maintain a sense of control. And then secure attachment. These are individuals who tend to have the healthiest perspective, viewing the interaction as companionship rather than a primary source of identity. On platforms like Twitch, this can escalate into romantic entitlement and a torrent of dehumanizing harassment, particularly for female streamers. Obsessive fans After spending thousands of hours in a streamer's presence, often believe they're entitled to a real life reciprocation of the intimacy they've felt. When the streamer fails to recognize them in that well lit room, the fans' grief can quickly turn to aggression.
David: Yeah, I've heard that a lot. Twitch is notorious for harassment of women.
Shawn: Like, you think you're too good to talk to me, you bitch?
David: Yeah.
Shawn: Yeah, I don't fucking know you. Are you kidding me? I've been following you for three years and you think you're too good? Yeah, you've been following me. I ain't been following you. I don't know you. I don't bear you any ill will, but I just don't know you.
David: in their mind, that relationship is there.
Shawn: That's scary. So we're now entering the era of the parasocial compensation hypothesis. This theory suggests that as real world social outlets decrease due to urban isolation or global pandemics, we use parasocial relationships to fill the void. During the COVID-19 pandemic, podcasters effectively replaced real friends for many listeners, providing a companionship that was indistinguishable from From the real thing in the brain's social centers. Our mediated friends are no longer just on a flickering screen in the living room, they're in our pockets, they're in our earbuds, and they sleep in our beds. As we move toward automated parasociality with AI, we face a future where human social bonds may be entirely replaced by customized, nonjudgmental digital entities. An AI friend will never forget your birthday, it'll never disagree with your politics, and never be too busy to listen to your problems. It's the perfect parasocial partner. And that is exactly why it is so dangerous.
David: Absolutely, I agree with that.
Shawn: here's what I wonder. When we talk about age being a factor in who is most dependent upon these relationships to replace actual human contact. Young people now are digital native. When
David: Yeah, they grew up on this.
Shawn: they get to be our age, will their parasocial relationships still be as important to them? Is it just age because they're young or is it age because their exposure has been constant from birth? Is my question.
David: Yeah, I think Like you said, they're digital natives. They grew up in this. Right. So this is reality to them. Now older people who didn't grow up in this, pretty new, the only people I think get as involved are people who are suffering from severe isolation or loneliness. Because since they can't make real contact with real people, they're reliant on these artificial means which like I said are so effective at tapping into your triggers.
Shawn: Yeah.
David: they usually know what you want before you do.
Shawn: Right. Because in celebrity culture, separate from the internet as we talked about historically, this has always been a thing where the person who is not famous imagines a connection between themselves and the celebrity. Right. I have a friend who feels very connected to celebrities. Not a digital native. So remember when the Beatles broke up? How people just flipped out. You know, girls were crying and boohooing like a beloved boyfriend just dumped them. These are people who don't know you. It's not personal. I have a friend who is not a digital native whose reactions aren't that strong, but she feels a stronger connection and relationship to celebrities than do I. So knowing that I'm a Star Trek fan. I got a phone call at work from her because she had heard the news that Leonard Nimoy had died. And she called me out of concern for my feelings because she thought that I would be upset. I was not. I don't know him personally.
David: same here.
Shawn: I'm sorry for his family. You know, th fri you know, people who loved him lost someone, but I didn't personally lose someone.
David: And it's a loss of talent. But yeah, I don't have an investment in it.
Shawn: But yeah, he lived a life, you know, was able to earn a good living as an actor. You know, lots of people don't get to do the thing that they want to do and make a good living at it. And it's not like I had conversations with him on the daily. I don't know him. Right. He might have been a dick in real life for all I know.
David: I don't know anything about him.
Shawn: So I don't feel a connection to celebrities on a personal level, even if I admire their work or enjoy the work they've put out into the world.
David: I can't get that motivated. Right.
Shawn: Of kindness because she does feel more of a connection to celebrities. She called me because she was worried I would be upset. And I was like, no, I mean thanks for sharing the news, but yeah, I'm I'm I'm okay. Thanks for caring about my feelings, but no, I'm fine. But so not being a digital native, she's an example of the kind of person who Feels a stronger connection to a celebrity.
David: Right.
Shawn: Everybody's feeling of connection isn't as strong. So I'm wondering if people who are in their twenties now, when they get to be 60 years old, are they still going to be as upset when an influencer they've been following for a while gets canceled? Who knows? We'll we'll know. There's nothing for it but time.
David: Well I was gonna say on with your friend, did she have that from early on till n her age now?
Shawn: She's been like that ever since I've known her. So she's always celebrities that she admires, performers. She's always felt a stronger connection to them than than I have felt to celebrities.
David: So yeah, my expectation would be that those who built the strongest youngest are gonna carry it through the rest of their lives.
Shawn: Yeah, I think that's probably probably a fair assessment. I don't
David: Like you, there are lots of people that I'm in awe of, especially like if I see them like perform live, musicians of course are one of mine. some actors, but yeah, I don't have an investment in them. If I s see someone, you know, playing incredible guitar, I'm moved at that moment. But since I don't know them
Shawn: My current favorite science fiction author is a woman named Anne Lucky. I know what she looks like. If I ever ran into her in real life It would depend on the circumstance. I might say something to her like, I've really enjoyed your work. Thank you for sharing your talent with the world. And I'd roll on. That's it. Because she's a person and she's going about her daily life. I met Buzz Aldrin at a conference. He had delivered the keynote address. After his speech, and it just turns out he was staying in the same hotel I was staying in. And this was in New Orleans, and I had walked back to the hotel, and of course, you know, he had an escort that was, you know, driving him all over the place. And I was walking across the marble lobby and I saw him and his wife walking directly towards me. And I was just like, my god, it's Buzz Aldrin. And he walked right up to me and I was like, I was and I said to him, I said, I w I just saw your speech. I just listened to your keynote speech. Thank you so much for coming to speak to us. You know, it was really wonderful. I was like, you know, may I shake your hand. This is pre COVID and you can shake people's hands, of course. I was like, may I shake your hand? And I was shaking his hand and of course I'm just blal just gobsmacked that I'm, you know, shaking the hand of a man who has walked on the moon, right? And he said he said, you got back here really quick meaning got back to the hotel really quick and I and I was shaking his hand and I was like, Yes sir, I walk very fast
David: Very fast.
Shawn: Just just just just blithering idiot. Couldn't put a coherent sentence together. But I didn't like I didn't hit him up for an autograph. I didn't ask him, Can we take a picture together? You know, it that wasn't the thing. I just wanted to just stop him and Say thank you for coming to speak to us. May I shake your hand. And that was it. That was it. And I think I would have a similar thing if I met some other people I
David: And that's celebrated.
Shawn: liked. I'd be like, wow, I've really enjoyed your work. You know, thank you for sharing, you know, your whatever talent, your writing, your acting, your d whatever, whatever it is you do. Thank you so much for sharing your talent with the world. It's really contributed to, you know, whatever. But then I'd roll on. I wouldn't be all I wouldn't feel like I know this person. And I don't want to be a jerk while they're going about their life, right? But again, that's me at my age, not a digital native. And that's and again also who I am. I if I met who's a really big celebrity right now, somebody famous, a famous actor or a famous George Clooney musician. If I ran into George Clooney I'd be like, you're shorter than I thought.
David: Ha ha ha.
Shawn: But I I you know. I'd probably smile and say, I know who you are. I really enjoy your movies. And he'd probably say, get up get the fuck out of my way or thank you very much. And and we'd both roll on. I wouldn't be like, can I take a selfie with you? Mr. Clooney, can I have your outer ground? That Even if I'm gobsmacked at running into this world famous celebrity, I'm probably gonna say something stupid like I did to Buzz Aldrin, but I'm not gonna
David: Yeah, I can see me doing that with musicians.
Shawn: Yeah, I'm not gonna be I'm not gonna try to waylay them like I feel some kind of connection to them. Or I expect them to feel a connection to me. They don't know me for
David: less of us feeling like we have a relationship with them as we have a respect for them or for what they do.
Shawn: Yeah.
David: I don't equate admiring like Joe Bonamasa or Jesse Wells as having a relationship with them. If I met I'd be overwhelmed just because of how well they do what they do.
Shawn: Right. I really admire your talent.
David: And not I have a relationship with you. It yeah. We're connected somehow. Yeah, yeah. Bonamasa could care less if I like his stuff, I'm sure.
Shawn: Yeah, I don't I don't want anything else from you. I don't want your autograph, I don't want a selfie.
David: Yeah, it's a resist
Shawn: Yeah, you've contributed your talent to the world and thank you. I appreciate it.
David: Yeah, I think that's the differentiation is that
Shawn: Yeah.
David: ours is more less about the person than it is for what they do.
Shawn: And appreciation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's fair. I love that video where Buzz Aldern punches that guy out for saying the moon landing was fake.
David: I had that on loop for a while.
Shawn: That is hilarious. I don't care who you are. That's funny right there.
David: And he w he was getting up there in age when he did that.
Shawn: yeah, you got knocked the out by a white-haired old man.
David: Ha ha
Shawn: You little bitch, stay down. Anywho, In the end, we're not so different from the Romans who put marble busts of philosophers in their gardens to signal their virtues. We're the same lonely species, looking for someone to admire, someone to follow, and someone to tell us our story, we are the same lonely species looking for someone to admire, someone to follow, and someone to tell us our story so we don't have to face the silence alone. Whether it's a gladiator in the dust of the Colosseum, a Renaissance poet seeking immortality in ink, or a Twitch streamer in a neon-lit bedroom. The drive for Fama remains the ultimate obsession. We are still just trying to find a one-sided bestie to keep the dark at bay, even if we know deep down that they wouldn't recognize us if we stood right in front of them. And topics like this. for me just serve to emphasize weird I am and how different I am from other people. I listen to podcasts, I consume media, music, books, movies.
David: But when they end, you move on.
Shawn: All the things that everybody else does. And I enjoy them. And I might admire a celebrity for whatever contribution they make. I don't ever feel connected to them in any way. And the concept that people are trying to find a one sided bestie relationship is also foreign to me. And perhaps it's because I'm always the weirdo, the outsider, I cannot fathom a celebrity wanting to be my friend. Can't imagine it. And I think that's probably the kicker for me. I might admire somebody's work, but there's no way that person would be interested in talking to me or having a friendship with me. Cause I'm a weirdo.
David: Well, you never know. They might be weirdos too.
Shawn: They might be weirdos too.
David: And if your kind of weird is the same as their kinda weird,
Shawn: We might click.
David: might click. That's how friendships begin.
Shawn: That's true. That is true. You're my kind of weirdo.
David: Thank you. You're my kind of weirdo Weirdo.
Shawn: Thank you. We're Hey everybody, drop us a line at classy as hell atoutlook.com and tell us who your favorite celebrity is and why.
David: And whether you have a relationship with them in your head.
Shawn: So if you've been enjoying Classy as Hell, if this is the first episode you've listened to or if you've listened to others, please remember to rate, review, and subscribe for free on whatever platform you use to listen. It really helps us out.
David: All right. And we appreciate you listening.
Shawn: Thank you so much for listening, and until next time, don't try to keep it classy.
David: Keep it real.
Shawn: Piece that together however you can. Thank you.
