Leslie John

And so it's precisely because it's risky that there is reward.

Okay.

Yeah, I like this.

That's at the heart of parasocial relationships.

A parasocial relationship being a one-sided, often between people in the media, celebrities, and someone who's not a celebrity.

feeling this real sense of emotional connection to the person, but the famous person doesn't even know of the person's existence.

We're so wired towards social relationships, right?

And our brains are kind of a little lazy.

We take shortcuts.

And so most of the relationships we have, or at least our brains think that most of them that we have,

are two-sided.

But now there's so much more opportunity for one-sided with social media, but our brains kind of haven't adapted to that.

And so we use this heuristic of like, oh, if I know a lot about them, they must know a lot about me.

Yeah.

If you think of, like, the Caesars, there were parasocial relationships, I'm sure, there.

But the scope of this has just exploded because you have so much access to these people.

Like, revealing a lot about themselves, which revealing we know makes you feel like you know them and they know you and trust.

That's really the accelerant of these relationships.

There is something very real about them because there are real feelings involved.

Oh, yeah, yeah.