Parasocial romance is why we're alone

In a recent post, On the quiet power of becoming nobody I touched on how social media fragments our ability to connect with others in the real world, and what it means to finally find oneself outside of it. I'm going to extend those thoughts here.

The longer I stay off social media and dating apps, the less anxious I feel about being alone. When those mindless habits and behaviours fell away, my mind reestablished patterns of engaging with slowness and the tactility of the real world. Dating is kinda the last thing I care about until I'm in a situation where I have to.

The difference of this mode is so stark. The old world we yearn for is still here, it's just much emptier now that most people are in the platforms.

Out here, the clarity and calmness of mind is shocking. Everything is so rich. I have so much more time to think. My days feel longer but in a chill way. I'm more able to handle little upsets, and when things go wrong I'm less prone to painting myself the victim, because omg, I have empathy again. Something I didn't even realize I was short on until distance from that mode made me realize how detached I was.

Now I see my face in the mirror and rather than immediately compare it critically to the insta-perfect version of myself, I just see myself. Just me. Right there. Flossing or whatever. And we're fine.

And now it's wild to observe how phone-addicted people are really a different type of people. They can't pay attention to anything for longer than a minute, maybe a few minutes if the content is good. And I've noticed that if I act more like content – animated, concise – they pay attention longer.

But I can especially see it when I look back at how I managed romantic relationships, and I think I have a pretty tight theory about why that is.

Yesterday I came across a paper by Danah Boyd called Social Media is Now Parasocial Media, where she argues "we need to stop presuming that these tools are “social media” and begin recognizing that they are now “parasocial media”". From the paper:

"Today’s social media platforms are no longer centered around sociable activities. Instead, most platforms offer us a broadcast medium and invite us to learn how to game the algorithms so that we too can create assets for the major corporations (Cotter, 2019). Since scale is valorized in this platform economy, we are encouraged to curate ourselves in pursuit of fame and attention."

"For many people, the benefits of joking around with friends on social media doesn’t feel worth the potential privacy risks, reputational risks, and social risks. Scrolling is easier. Sending funny videos to friends via text message feels safer than reposting.

Because of these shifts, we now live in a world of parasocial media. Parasocial relationships are one-sided connections, where individuals keep tabs on the lives and movements of people – like celebrities – who do not know us and feel no pressure to reciprocate. In a parasocial world, people dedicate their attention and emotions to tracking the dramas of individuals who exist at a distance. Parasocial relationships can be emotionally intense, but they do not produce the kinds of social fabric that anchor us when we are struggling."

Parasocial relationships are one-sided relationships, and it makes sense that parasocial media would embed a mode of parasocial behaviour among regular users. Boyd notes:

"Social media companies keep altering their algorithms to incentivize (and punish) creators as they wish, always with an eye on nudging users to scroll more, even if they post less (Are & Briggs, 2023; Caplan & Gillespie, 2020; Wu et al., 2021).

"Friendship requires reciprocity and compassion. Parasocial media creates the conditions for people to objectify one another at a distance as mediatized objects, helping realize the different layers of toxicity that social media scholars document (Bailey, 2022; Banet-Weiser & Miltner, 2016; Suarez Estrada et al., 2022; Wong et al., 2025). So when people opt to devote their energy to tracking the latest TikTok star or scrolling content instead of nurturing interpersonal relationships, they are effectively amusing themselves to death.²"

The paper didn't reveal anything I didn't already believe, but the term "parasocial" diagnoses the issue well, and offers a foundation for talking about parasocial romance.

But first let's also establish that in a parasocial relationship the most pleasant position is the object of attention. Receiving. The same concept extends to parasocial communities. The best examples we used to have of those were monarchies, cults and celebrities.

So now we have countless online communities of followers and the followed. A total binary. This is why follower counts don't grow organically anymore, everyone has grown accustomed to their role as giver or receiver, and few still do both. Givers are targeted by advertisers, receivers soak up the attention and pump value back into the platforms.

And outside of online communities, I'd argue parasocial behaviour under a marketized system goes beyond just 'one-sided relationships' and enters transactional dependence. I'll do this thing for you, because it might raise my status and increase my value.

People are literally objectifying themselves, calling it "community building" while cultivating a steady, one-way flow of parasocial attention. They rarely extend that energy reciprocally, and then they wonder why they feel alone.

Now move this into the realm of dating and relationships. My god, what a mess.

If you act more like content they pay attention longer, but no one can sustain a performance forever.

I honestly believe people – not just "other" people, you and me people – have been conditioned by the platforms into parasocial modes that have spilled over into our real world lives. Not just occasional bad habits. Not just cycles of heavier use with little breaks here and there. I truly think regular users of social media have had the synapses in their minds rewired by the platforms to view themselves as objects and others as funnels for attention. This parasocial mode has caused users to dehumanize themselves and each other in subtle but cumulatively critical ways.

And I can't repeat this enough: heavy social media usage exacerbates ADHD and erodes empathy, with the common side effect of supercharged sexual impulses. Social media addiction > disconnection > objectification. It's pretty fucking simple.

So no shit people can't find love on dating apps anymore. No shit online flirtations don't lead to anything substantial. No shit romances max out at three months, when the dissonance between the performative and real selves becomes overwhelming, and no shit users dutifully return to the apps when those relationships crash out, consistently painting themselves victims of the heartless injustices imposed by the other.

And of course the other was caught in the very same mode of parasocial fragmentation – follower or followed, there's no in-between – in the current dating world everyone is navigating their role as follower or followed while at the same time trying to balance their digital selves with their real world selves, then imploding in the intimate real-world presence and pressure of another person.

I know the feeling of thinking my real world self was somehow lesser – during the years I was regularly on social media there were many times I thought "if he could just see who I am over here". And if he had no interest in that version of me it felt like rejection, like he didn't care enough about my "whole self".

And in many ways the real life version of myself was lesser, because I'd offloaded the best parts of myself to the apps. The memories, the witty charms, the sharp intellect, my interests, face and body presented so artfully, with so much love and care – what did I have left to share with someone who wasn't in those spaces? What was I bringing to the table that two people actually sit together at?

This is the self I'm now working to rebuild. The self who exists here. In me.

When we've offloaded our entire universes to a parasocial, commercialized digital aether, what is left of our real world selves but husks programmed to think in post formats and jabber away about content? Programmed to consume, always, either as the follower or the followed.

And I'm not clear of it yet either. After so many years cultivating my "online presence" during the peak of high-value Instagram engagement, finding greater success the more I honed and refined that presence – I still find "being perceived" in real life deeply uncomfortable; a strong anxiety when being observed in high res chaos, no edits. But I can recognize it now, and I know how why it's there, which means I can resist it.

I'm still rebuilding my sense of self after detoxing from Meta products (now tentatively reengaging, via desktop only, to revive my business, but luckily flowers are much prettier than me). I'll say again that desktop is a way healthier user mode in our current era of UX. They don't invest nearly as much in desktop UX, because people don't have their desktops on them at all times. Your brain is much safer on a desktop than in a phone.

And now that I'm living in a completely new place to boot, the version of myself other people observe while I'm out and about isn't actually someone I'm familiar with. It's an odd feeling that I'm taking very slowly. I think it's also why I've been dragging my feet launching my business – I'm anxious about new people seeing the version of myself I barely know. Even though the truth is interacting with others is the very thing that defines a person; our world effecting theirs, like in quantum physics how a particle only exists in a state of interaction – that's us! I love thinking of emotions and feelings as quantum phenomena; they don't exist until an interaction brings them into being. That's the web we're all part of.

How we make others feel and the micro-level real world impact we have every day is exponentially more profound and enduring than any mic drop on Threads that gets buried in the feed immediately after it's posted.

Now I'm extremely conscious of my behaviour and how it affects the people around me. Not in an insecure way like when I was still coupled with the apps, just an awareness I didn't have access to before (or at least not since 2013-ish). Before I definitely would've called myself an empathetic person, and my online 'communities' would have agreed, but on a person-to-person basis I was so disconnected from emotional cues I thought it must be autism. And yeah I'm on the spectrum of divergence, but I can now see clearly that the factor disrupting my ability to connect wasn't my neurotype, it was the erosion of empathy caused by (para)social media.

I don't know how to spell this message out any clearer, but I guess I'll keep finding new ways to talk about it: social media (specifically the "Big Six"; Facebook, Youtube, Linkedin, X, Snapchat and Instagram – the platforms that survived because they monopolized and cheated) is ruining our lives. They stole our ability to connect. They made us depressed and anxious. They siloed us and used psychological research to refine the addictiveness of their products. And now they're stealing truth from us. And we're letting them.

Single friends: we're not going to find love in this mode. We're not going to find honest presence or selfless hearts. People who can only hold an irl charge for three months can't offer real world happiness, because they can't pay attention long enough to see it.

So yeah. Parasocial romance has become the norm for online singles and it's preeeetttty bad.

BUT I'm going on a local cypripedium walk (lady slipper orchids) in a couple weeks and I'm feeling lucky (just had a close call with a tiny gardening injury wherein my finger started going zombie but I'm feeling great now after two days of antibiotics and a tetanus boost), maybe one of my fellow walkers will be under 65 😏.

I'd rather eat my zombie finger than join another dating app. At this point I'd seriously prefer a fella who spent the last 20 years in a seaside shack and is known as "that guy". Not only would he have some incredible stories but he'd probably have the freshest oysters. Whoever that guy is, he's undeniably real.