At 7 pm (Peninsular time) on August 26, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce announced that they were getting married. The pop star and athlete shared the news on Instagram, but with the publication closed to comments — like all of the singer’s, and there must be a reason. The minutes, hours and days following the engagement were filled with news about the couple, including reactions from friends, like Selena Gomez and Patrick Mahomes, and not-so-friends, like Donald Trump. Social networks were also filled with thousands of comments and reaction videos from fans who celebrated the news as if their sister was getting married. “I’m so happy for my dear friend, Taylor Swift!” wrote a user X — who describes himself as “Fast full time” – minutes after the announcement “Did I just scream in my office?! “They had to come and see what was happening to me!” I shared another one. There were those who didn’t understand such enthusiasm: “Maybe you should rethink your life and see if you can change it with a new one”, one user replied to another who claimed to be “screaming, crying” and even “vomiting” with emotion.
Sincere compliments from rapid from the link, as if the artist had called them bridesmaids, there is the definition of parasocial. The Cambridge Dictionary just chose this term, which describes the “connection someone feels between themselves and a famous person they don’t know,” as its word of the year. According to the dictionary’s editor-in-chief, Colin McIntosh, it “reflects the spirit of the times”. “The number of searches for the word in the Cambridge Dictionary and on Google has skyrocketed multiple times this year (one of them following Swift and Kelce’s engagement),” he noted after announcing the pick. “And it’s interesting linguistically how it went from being an academic term to the one used by ordinary people on their social networks,” he explained.
The term academic was coined by sociologists Donald Horton and Richard Wohl in 1956 when, in the early days of television, they needed to explain the deep bonds that viewers were beginning to feel with those actors who appeared in the living rooms of their homes. Nearly 70 years later, the omnipresence of celebrities goes far beyond that. They themselves share their private lives on social networks. Now, 24 hours a day, anyone can witness the birthday party, the marriage proposal or even the birth of the child of their favorite artist almost live, increasingly blurring the thin line that separates healthy admiration from obsessive fanaticism. “People feel like they really know celebrities, and it’s not unreasonable for them to feel that way, but it has consequences when lines aren’t distinguished,” summarizes Mel Stanfill, a professor at the University of Central Florida and author of Fandom is bad: Online harassment in participatory culture (Fandom is bad: Online harassment in participatory culture), from 2025.
Stanfill cites K-pop stars as a particularly clear example of idols promoting these types of parasocial relationships. His success lies in the fact that the fan phenomenon is not limited to his music, but to an entire universe created around him. “They try to connect with their fans by providing a lot of information, even counting the hotel room they are in. People are not just BTS fans (group of boys South Korean), is that of each singer in particular. That they know things about them and see them in their real life is part of the structure of that product,” explains the expert. “I think that’s an important change: Before, you were a fan of something you liked, whether it was the band, the music, the series, or the character. But now there is no longer a marked difference between liking the media (an album, a film) and liking the people who create it, which lends itself to the fanaticism that becomes attached to a celebrity with all the good and bad that entails,” he warns.
Let’s start with the good. These asymmetric relationships can emulate positive characteristics that occur in reciprocal relationships, such as admiration, affection, or happiness. “In an era in which isolation grows hand in hand with hyperconnection, these interactions can act as a refuge from loneliness,” believes clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst José Ramón Ubieto, professor at the University of Barcelona and author of books such as Addicts or lovers? Keys to digital mental health (2023). It gives the famous person loyal followers which translates into sponsorships, contracts and lots of money; and the fan, in exchange, receives – or, at least, perceives – a bit of company. “It can be a source of great joy and give meaning to people’s lives,” says Stanfill.
The bad thing is when these emotions intensify and others emerge, such as obsession or sadness. “They can generate isolation and emotional dependence, especially in people who are vulnerable, isolated or with low self-esteem, who often have a real feeling of being a partner or a friendship,” says Ubieto about parasocial interactions, which also designate those generated between a person and an artificial intelligence, such as chatbots. The vulnerability of these people can also give rise to deliberate deception, as demonstrated by the media cases of the fake Brad Pitts who swindled thousands of euros from several women, making them believe that the actor was having a romantic relationship with them.
For celebrities there are also negative consequences. A recent example is Ariana Grande’s incident with Johnson Wen, an alleged fan who pounced on her on November 13 at the premiere of Wicked: Part II in Singapore. Wen, sentenced to nine days in prison for rowdy conduct, had said on his social networks that he was preparing to meet his “best friend Ariana Grande”. “They can lead to a misperception of reality and cases of harassment,” warns Stanfill. “But this is not inherent in parasocial relationships, it is the combination of them with someone who may have mental health issues or experience extreme loneliness,” he clarifies.
62.4% of adolescents Spaniards between the ages of 11 and 17 follow at least one influencer which they perceive as a source of inspiration, and 26% comes to feel like a friend, according to a 2023 report by Fundación Mapfre and UNIR. “It is very important to distinguish between connection and bond. Parasocial is a connection that is also one-sided: you believe that Ibai Llanos is your friend, but Ibai Llanos has no idea who you are. Bond is another different type of bond that requires the presence of the body and spending time together. If you just connect, there is no bond, it something else,” he explains. Ubieto.
The Cambridge Dictionary used as an example to explain the word “parasocial” the genuine empathy aroused by Lily Allen’s new album, in which she vents about her love failures – after the breakup with the actor David Harbour. Suddenly there was a wave of people interested in every detail of the British singer’s love life, driven by the need to demonstrate their complicity with her. The other great example cited by the dictionary editor was Taylor Swift. “Traditionally, fans have been thought of as in the Beatles era, you know, screaming teenage girls, right? But fans are simply people who care about audiovisual content, and care a lot about it, and often form communities with other people who care too,” Stanfill clarifies.
Of course, parasocial relationships are not exclusive to teenage girls yelling at community members. group of boys On duty it is enough to see the heartbreaking tears of many fans when their favorite footballer suffers. Once the word is known, its presence is recognized everywhere. It’s hard to escape when the loyalty strategy of celebrity fans is based on involving them in their lives, and when every day a new artificial intelligence emerges seemingly capable of understanding us better than anyone else. “The problem comes when you trust that this relationship will help fill a void instead of filling it with real relationships,” Ubieto recalls. Parasocial interaction is not harmful, it is even understandable; What is harmful is not seeing beyond it, forgetting the rest and believing that you don’t need a good friend, a real one, to warn you about it.
