Renee DiResta

And that is harmful to my bottom line, because if I did have parasocial relationships, I could be a lot more financially successful.

I could grow the audience better.

I can create an us versus them mentality.

And intrinsically, this wasn't a really thoughtful decision.

I didn't like it.

I didn't like creating that relationship.

I saw a lot of harm from it.

And I always viewed it with a air of disingenuousness.

where you aren't really talking about what you stand for.

You're just weaponizing a military online.

Do you ever sense that from certain creators that they're doing that?

It's gamified to some degree.

Sam is the meme person.

Oh, they're eating the dogs and the cats.

Eating the pets was our immigrants from Haiti.

Maybe I'm asking you to play psychologist and that's unfair.

Why do you think that this whole parasocial and creating teams feels so uncomfortable to a physician?

It's not very realistic.

I even think about, I did, I guess you could call it a debate.

I sat surrounded by 17 people who were vaccine skeptical, perhaps anti-vax.