The Parasocial Manifesto
Everyone who uses social media actively does so while acknowledging the problem with it. That despite being “more connected than ever,” there's a loneliness epidemic. But if it's supposed to be SOCIAL media, then where is the disconnect? Why aren't we actually in communication with each other?
Well, under the guise of helping people “share what their up to,” these tech conglomerates have created an environment that is as addicting as it is terrifying. The average user, despite having hundreds or thousands of these friends ALSO using these apps, doesn’t want to share ANYTHING. Because if you post, you’ll be perceived. Your friends and family will see you, your coworkers will see you, that girl from high school will see you. So we recluse and stalk which in turn defeats the entire point. And all that remains is perfectly curated portraits of who we want to be.
Isn’t that strange? The audience we're most afraid of showing up for is the only audience that already loves and knows us. But instead we're out here trying to perform for strangers who will scroll past in half a second.
Now this is not new information by any means and in no way am I attempting to get people off these apps. That’s unrealistic if not impossible. These platforms have spent MILLIONS psychologically designing their UI’s to keep people on there for as long as possible, because it's a giant massive market and there's no incentive to change that basically ever.
Regardless, let’s talk about parasocial relationship for a second.
Firstly, people act like the word is bad and that “overly fanbasis” are ruining the internet. And YES in some cases, it’s very strange. A prime explain being D4VD defenders. How can people connect to one person they’ve never met so much that they would blatantly ignore the 40TB of police-collected evidence presented against him. But, leaving ethics aside, isn't that kinda impressive? Well, sort of.
See if we take a look at the history of parasocial relationships, they’re not new. They’re older than the internet; older than media itself. Consider Michael Jackson. 0 social media with around the world reach, people defending questionable photos and acts.
And while insane talent comes into play, their perception did not happen by accident. It’s what happens when you drop that fear everyone else holds on to.
You don’t even need to make traditional media to do it either. You have parasocial relationships with dead authors, dead philosophers; any rare soul that telegraphed their authenticity in a way that connected with you. In some cases those people have shaped you more than the actual humans in your life.
So the question was never "should parasocial relationships exist?" They always will. The question is who is worth being shaped by? And sadly, the main answer right now for most people is some guru in a rented mansion telling them to grind harder.
Which brings us to the topic of attention.
Attention is the new oil rush. Except oil built cities and slop is building a culture of people who are scared to be themselves.
There’s been a subtle trend over the years regarding a concept known as “content buckets.” Where people, under the farce of “copying what works,” complete rip off brands to a point where no one benefits.
Basically the cycle is as follows:
Creative person does a cool thing that performs very well. We’ll call them P1.
Less creative, lazier person copies said thing because they know it works. We’ll call them P2.
P2 gets the traction their looking for, repeats step 2. A lot.
Then, because P2 is copying P1 over and over, their brand dilutes down to nothing more than an extension of P1’s. So while they look like their growing, they’re just contributing to P1’s legacy.
And because it’s never just one P2, we have things like “The Mr. Beast-ification” of Youtube. Facilitated by P3-500.
It’s also important to note that this harms P1 eventually. They have to continually out do themselves AND the clones while fighting the sped up audience fatigue.
It’s why, no matter what niche or platform, when someone does something unique there will always be thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people, using the same fonts, formats, thumbnail, etc.
Nobody wants to be the P1, they just want to copy what's working and ride it until it stops.
The messed up part is that the inverse can happen as well, it’s why Wendy's X account sounds like a 16-year-old girl on tiktok. Large creators will see the counter culture and P2 on that BUT because it’s literally a multi-millon dollar conglomerate they out slop the slop. And it’s weird we just accepted it because the algorithm rewarded it.
But then of course, it gets even more malicious.
There’s the hustle grind bro culture and thousands of “creators” telling you that “It’s easy bro!! Anyone can do this!”
But most of the time, at least from my experience. They're not selling real content or business advice, what you’re buying is the the feeling of being someone who's about to make it. For example, I’d always been entrepreneurial growing up but never took it seriously. However when i got to college I decided that it was stupid and that I wanted to do my own thing. And when I tell you in less than a month from watching my first “How to make money online” Youtube video I had purchased a $1200 membership into a community that sold air. (Purchased is a strong word, I went into four figure debt, loaned to me by my roommate who had the money. Shoutout to Hunter though, my day 1 believer.)
What’s sad is I did my due diligence as well. The guy I bought it from had the YouTube, had the case studies, all the proof and, why would he lie right?
What’s worse is it felt good. I got the hit of "Damn I DO THIS, just invested in my future LET’S GO.” And that feeling is what 99% of the internet is selling. Hustle culture’s perfect ICP is themselves.
So while yes, technically anyone can make content. Should they?
Let’s walk through the cycle of someone who want’s to “start content.”
They start casual, maybe liking 1-2 content tip videos that explain a cool viral hook that got them or something.
They get drip-fed into a content guru’s marketing funnel of doom.
They spend a scary amount on a course, coaching program, etc.
They make the garbage slop trash being produced with said service.
They quit because it doesn’t work.
Or they’re the 1/1000 for whom it does work and they get paraded around like a trophy to perpetuate the cycle and again that “anyone can do this.”
But again, not blaming the consumer. I just think we need to do better. Because the biggest problem right now isn’t the cycle above, it’s that people aren’t willing or don’t have the time to spend on artistic work that has the short self life that content does. It’s a bold face lie to say where in this creator economy renaissance. We’re in a death spiral.
A real renaissance has patrons, tastemakers, and craftsmen. Social media killed those patrons, killed the tastemakers, and turned every craftsman into a "creator." And we let it happen.
It’s why the Beast-miester ships 47 videos a week while the Medici funded four years for Michelangelo to paint a single ceiling. With the caveat being those videos last for two weeks and we still talk about that ceiling 500 years later.
This short shelf life is interesting though as the average person checks their phone 144 times a day. So shouldn't cool things just rise to the top and stay present, pushed forward but our shared addiction?
Unfortunately, no. because while everyone is consuming, we’re not sitting with anything anymore. We intake so much information that we’re physically incapable of remembering it all.
However there’s actually an angle there, a way to stop being P2 or spending thousands on perfectly manfuctured feelings. Because if you make content that requires understanding, that requires a second viewing…
You're forcing people to slow the fuck down.
You're training their taste back into existence by going against the grain and giving them something to sit with.
So our mission at my creative direction company, Parasocial, is to fix this. We’ve dropped the commoditized tips and replaced them with systems and support to creator more P1’s. We don’t want more overnight viral followings, video performance does not equal quality, ever. “High views” is a metric while quality is an aesthetic judgment. However, the algorithm only knows the first one, so we collectively forgot the second one exists. Taste is a muscle and we've been atrophying it for 15 years. If our goal is to get people redevelop that taste, we need to make art.
We want intention to be baked into every single choice made in collaboration with a brand. Because intention transforms into authenticity, and authenticity is the only thing that actually moves humans. And while the algorithm can be tricked, people can't, at least not forever.
Think about the bits of media you actually remember. I would put money on the fact that they were made with some kind of intention, even if it seemed random or effortless.
Now imagine if an entire brand was pieces like that.
ARE YOU PICKING UP WHAT WE’RE PUTTING DOWN.
We're not building accounts. We're building art that happen to scale.
This allows us to prop people up, tell their stories, all while their following becomes ten times more tightly knit than anyone else's. We create fans who are there for the worldview, the visual language, the taste, the depth. 10,000 followers who love you will always beat 1,000,000 people who scrolled past you.
Because the algorithm is not god, a follower count is not your soul and engagement rate is not your worth. We are on a floating rock in space hurtling through a void at 67,000 miles per hour.
Nothing actually matters except what you make and who you make it for. This should be freeing, not nihilistic. if nothing matters, make the thing. Then make it so good the you're proud to leave it behind.
art over algorithm, bitch.