Season 2, E4: What The Hell Is Up With Parasocial Relationships - Healthy or Weird with Journalist Sadaf Ahsan

We're back for our fourth full-length episode of S2! For this week's episode, we get into one of the hottest trends of 2021: parasocial relationships. No matter where you go on the Internet, it's all everyone is talking about. From the social and entertainment-kind, intense-personal, and borderline-pathological. 

Between us and our special guest for the week, Toronto-based arts and culture writer and editor Sadaf Ahsan, Ameema, and Ama analyze everything to do with parasocial relationships and even make a case for why some might even be healthy! So many people, from influencers to celebs, broadcast all the mundane aspects of their lives. From their new outfits to the latest restaurants they've tried and even the packages they open, practically nothing is off-limits.  So we explore:

• What exactly is a parasocial relationship?

• The power dynamics in fandom culture

• How the three of us each grew up in fandoms and participated in fan culture

• How fans have such high expectations of the people they are in relationships with and is it fair?

• Why boundaries between celebs and fans is important

• Finally, Sadaf names our official podcast fandom

• Then during the last 15-minutes, Ama reads out the names of certain fandoms to Sadaf and Ameema as we try to play a game. Shout out to our listeners in the Navy ;)

If you liked what you heard, maybe think about rating us!  You can also find all our social links by visiting our Lnk.Bio page. Heck, if you want - leave us a voicemail. We love to answer questions from our listeners or make suggestions about what you'd like us to cover. Maybe we'll even feature it in a future show!  Hell, if you even want to support us (we're a small team and a lot of work goes into what you hear today) then we would love it if you send us a few bucks via our Ko-Fi! All the money helps us with production costs and creating the podcast you hear today.

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Further Reading on this Topic!

1. YouTubers Are Not Your Friends - The Verge

2. Too close for comfort: the pitfalls of parasocial relationships - The Guardian

3. Meet the stans who DM their faves about their day - Mashable

4. When Grown-Ups Have Imaginary Friends - The New York Times

5. Bo Burnham’s Inside begs for our parasocial awareness - Polygon

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Support the show (https://ko-fi.com/highlowbrowpod)

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Click here for the full episode transcript.