A ball is tossed in the air. Players rush to grab it, smacking each other in the process. The star football player runs, and by an inch misses it. There’s a roar across the room as watchers yell at them every which way in their home.
We engage in parasocial relationships all the time. A parasocial relationship is when you have a connection with someone who doesn’t know you. For example, yelling at the TV when a football player misses a catch or getting mad at a celebrity couple who you don’t know at all.
Parasocial relationships are not a bad thing; they can be a way for people to understand each other better. However, there is the opposite side of parasocial: the anti-parasocial relationship. The anti-parasocial relationship is where people hate someone they don’t know.
In the age of the internet, there is so much more that we know about people. People don’t have to slip through pages of highly filtered interviews to look into celebrities’ live streams, Instagram and X. They can find out what food they like, their political stance and even what their favorite influencer’s kitchen tiles are made out of.
People are geared back toward personal and intimate details. They want to feel like these stars are just like them. This feeling doesn’t happen to just celebrities but ordinary people too.
Take for instance a viral TikTok story where single mom, Morgan Bailey, discussed her life as a single parent. She says how the father of her child who she described as “a random man in Atlanta” abandoned her and hasn’t done much to support their child. She also found out after posting that video that he has six other baby mamas.
People then started to harass Bailey about being a single mom. Commentators asked her what made her think she was superior to his other baby mothers and would be his wife. They also blamed her for not picking the right person to have a child with saying that the signs were already there.
Bailey is an example of an ordinary person facing harassment due to her relationship. She faces all the backlash and brutality because of the father of her child’s other relationships.
She’s not the only one. Take for instance the popular Reddit thread AITA. In the thread, people discuss whether or not the person in the situation is wrong or if they are justified. While the concept is fine, it’s how people treat the person who commented on the post that reveals the truth about society.
People think they can get a general attitude from society from a random stranger sharing their life. What started out as a thread to offer community advice has turned into a thread of harassment. The focus shouldn’t be on ordinary people as the brunt of social grievances.