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Right now you and I are having a parasocial relationship. Or what else would you call internet forums? Theirs just pays better.

dvt 6y ago
> Right now you and I are having a parasocial relationship. Or what else would you call internet forums? Theirs just pays better. We aren't. Parasocial relationships are characterized by being unilateral (i.e. subject → object) and idealized (where there's an illusory personal connection). I doubt either of us feels that way :)
- bawolff 6y ago
  Sometimes famous tech people comment on hn. That makes me feel like im rubbing shoulders with giants in the field, while in practice its a unilateral and illusory connection.
  - chii 6y ago
    In a sense yes. But the main difference here is that on HN, the tech celebrity does not specifically target themselves to people who would like to be rubbing virtual shoulders with celebrities.
    - bawolff 6y ago
      Maybe not, but pretty much every /IAMA foo AMA/ thread on reddit meets your criteria
  - polytely 6y ago
    This, posting on this site lets me interact with people who would probably never give me the time of day in real life. It feels like being a handyman who gets to hang around engineers. It's like getting a little taste of what being successful in this field feels like.
- timwaagh 6y ago
  Although the term parasocial relationship originally refered to people viewing mass media, this does not strictly seem to be the case for onlyfans. So we're stretching the definition in any case. Although onlyfans is a little bit more of a one way street. What I meant is internet forums fill a similar need for illusory interaction. My relationship to HN is definitely of the illusory personal connection type. I can fool myself into believing that my words actually matter. Yet the hivemind does not even register what I write. Your experience might be entirely different. But if you don't have any type of emotional investment into this, why do you write?

dvt 6y ago

> Right now you and I are having a parasocial relationship. Or what else would you call internet forums? Theirs just pays better. We aren't. Parasocial relationships are characterized by being unilateral (i.e. subject → object) and idealized (where there's an illusory personal connection). I doubt either of us feels that way :)

bawolff 6y ago
Sometimes famous tech people comment on hn. That makes me feel like im rubbing shoulders with giants in the field, while in practice its a unilateral and illusory connection.
- chii 6y ago
  In a sense yes. But the main difference here is that on HN, the tech celebrity does not specifically target themselves to people who would like to be rubbing virtual shoulders with celebrities.
  - bawolff 6y ago
    Maybe not, but pretty much every /IAMA foo AMA/ thread on reddit meets your criteria
- polytely 6y ago
  This, posting on this site lets me interact with people who would probably never give me the time of day in real life. It feels like being a handyman who gets to hang around engineers. It's like getting a little taste of what being successful in this field feels like.
timwaagh 6y ago
Although the term parasocial relationship originally refered to people viewing mass media, this does not strictly seem to be the case for onlyfans. So we're stretching the definition in any case. Although onlyfans is a little bit more of a one way street. What I meant is internet forums fill a similar need for illusory interaction. My relationship to HN is definitely of the illusory personal connection type. I can fool myself into believing that my words actually matter. Yet the hivemind does not even register what I write. Your experience might be entirely different. But if you don't have any type of emotional investment into this, why do you write?