By Chloe Thomas-Evans

In a media saturated world such as ours, the ways in which people can use the media are plentiful. Those who put it to good use are often rewarded with public recognition and some sort of fanbase that idolises their public image. Their content is re-distributed and edited by adoring fans who claim that they feel inspired or understood and their brand is maintained through the consistency of them ÔÇ£just being themselves.ÔÇØ The content which they produce is not only consumed passively through views, but also actively through interactions such as likes, comments and shares. This is important to note as it tells us that there are different levels of engagement and that fans may feel more intensely connected based on the level of engagement that they receive.┬á

For those who feel intensely connected, parasocial relationships may occur. This means that the supporter may develop a one-sided relationship with the person that they support and start believing that they know them personally. The level to which this may occur differs, with psychologists Giles and Maltby (2006) suggesting that the least intense are entertainment-social, the moderately intense are intense-personal and the most intense are borderline-pathological. 

Entertainment-social relationships are those relationships where a fan follows a celebrity for entertainment and social interactions. These relationships are the most common as they contain casual and infrequent consumption of content and less significance around being noticed. An example of this may be a Taylor Swift fan that collects her CDs and attends a few of her concerts but has no interest in keeping up with the gossip surrounding her love life or interacting with her on social media. Their knowledge of Taylor Swift may be fragmented and so they may not claim to be a hardcore fan. 

Intense-personal relationships are relationships that involve fans who claim to know everything about a celebrity, even the seemingly insignificant and minor details. They may invest large amounts of time, money, and energy in showing their support and they are likely to consume content extensively. Examples may include those who have fan accounts that they use to edit, re-distribute, and advertise their favourite celebrity. They are often viewed as obsessive in many cases and so they are often confused with the third and final type of parasocial relationship which is borderline-pathological.

Borderline-pathological relationships are relationships that appear to cross the boundary between reality and delusion. Fans in this kind of relationship tend to believe that they are more than the average supporter and so they are either platonically or romantically involved with the celebrity or are able to be. They may be very forward with their attempts to gain fan encounters and online interactions as they want to legitimise the relationship they believe they have. 

There is a risk that an intense-personal relationship can become a borderline-pathological one as small interactions can lead fans to believe that they are being noticed on an individual basis. This can have negative effects for both parties as the fan can depend on the celebrity for gratification, while the celebrity can be hounded by an overbearing fan that demands more than they are willing to provide. 

Within the parameters of the last two relationships outlined above, it is interesting to note the ways in which fandoms will support a creator no matter the costs. They will use the connections they supposedly have and argue against all criticism by either rejecting the claims made or spinning them into something more favourable. The reason for this is unknown but I would like to suggest that it comes from the ways in which parasocial relationships are formed and maintained.

Unlike other relationships, parasocial relationships are made through indirect and mediated interactions. This means that the ÔÇ£negative,ÔÇØ aspects of a celebrity’s personality are edited out┬áto project a perfect image. The problem with this is that many celebrities often donÔÇÖt deny that their perfect image is an illusion, as they claim to be the same way off camera. This misleads fans into being idealistic and believing that creators can never be anything but the online versions of themselves.┬á