What Are Parasocial Relationships?

And why should you care?

Jyssica Schwartz
6 min readApr 18, 2023
Image courtesy of Coppell Student Media.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve noticed Taylor Swift and Netflix’s Love Is Blind all over the internet recently.

The Swiftie’s world has been rocked by the news that Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn have broken up after 6 years of dating.

Some fans are ready to grab pitchforks and torches and ride at dawn to take down Joe; others are brokenhearted and intensely examining all the lyrics on recent albums to try to understand what went wrong.

As for Love Is Blind, aside from the ridiculous drama that was Netflix’s unequivocal failure of a live-streamed reunion, viewers are quick to label ‘villains’ and root for their favorite couples.

Ultimately, we all want the tea.

We want to know everything because we, as fans and viewers, feel that we’ve come to know the people we watch.

I’m not immune to it, either.

What are parasocial relationships?

More than ever before, we feel as though we know social media influencers, actors, singers, and other celebrities.

After all, Taylor Swift shares her life, love, heartbreak, and insecurities in her music. She writes about her life, weaving stories that…

--

--

Jyssica Schwartz

Manging editor. entrepreneur, writer, editor, cat lover, weirdo, optimist. Author of “Write. Get Paid. Repeat.” & “Concept to Conclusion.” jyssicaschwartz.com