Stuff You Should KnowParasocial Relationships: That Podcaster is Your Friend!
Parasocial relationships are fascinating and it turns out Chuck knows what it's like from both sides. Listen in today to your old friends.
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you should know a little close to home edition.
Yeah right. And in two ways. One is that as podcasters we are on one end of the parasocial relationship relationship correct, yeah. And the other is like I have these. I don't know if you do or not, but I have parasocial relationships of my own with podcasts.
I don't have any because I'm saying right, I'm totally kidding. I don't think I have any. No, I don't have any. I think what it is has nothing to do with sanity, my imagination. It's just not that vivid. Oh okay, you know what I mean? Because I think for this to set, you have to be able to imagine yourself, like in the room with the people you're listening to, for example, or what you would do after they stopped filming the TV show or something like.
That, Like any you're big into comedy, any of your big comedian people that you love, you know, never think, like God, we would be friends.
No, I really don't. I don't I feel like deficient because of it. But I genuinely do not have any parasocial relationship that I can bring to mind, and I don't remember ever having that. I think I just assumed that they wouldn't like me, rather than they would like me, which makes it much harder to have a parasocial relationship with somebody you just assume you wouldn't get along with very well.
Well, then by some estimates, you're part of the forty nine percent of people of Americans, that is that do not have parasocial relationships. And if you're yelling at us right now because we haven't defined it yet, just a parasocial relationship is a It's like when you listen to a podcast and you think, I know those guys, they're like my friends. We would be so we would be such good friends. In real life, it's a one sided relationship between a consumer of a thing, a fan of a thing, and a public figure.
Yeah. In one of those papers you sent me, I saw it described rather aptly as a one sided intimacy at a distance.
Yeah.
And in our go go be normal as much as you can type society, that sounds a little like off base, a little weird, a little out there to some people, I should say, to others, you're it's like, well, yeah, of course this is normal life. But we should say like, there's nothing inherently wrong with it. It can go wrong, yeah, as we'll see, but at its base, having a parasocial relationship does not make you a loser, a loner, social misfit, a weirdo. It actually makes you slightly healthier emotionally intellectually in my opinion.
Yeah, And as we'll talk about, studies bear that out that it's you know, I think they put it generally about three to five percent of the time, it can go south, and we'll talk about that kind of stuff, when it becomes obsessive and stuff like that. Dam But yeah, for the other ninety five to ninety eight percent, to people, it actually provides quite a benefit because it makes someone, It makes someone feel good, and it makes people laugh a lot of times, and I feel like comedy a lot of times is what you associate more. I'm sure you can have parasocial relationships with like Peter Jennings or something sure or Dan Rather, I'm sure that.
Happens hard to those we'll see.
You generally think of it in terms of like either a podcast or a TV show when you when you would sit around and you would think about a which friend am I or which sex and the city character, you're such a Miranda, Like, that's the kind of thing that we're talking about here, when people identified so much that it's like a real relationship.
Yes, And I want to say I am in that very unusual and unique position, as are you and as our pastors. Right, I totally am a Miranda. Actually, no, what's the other one's name? Who is married to Kyle McLaughlin. I feel like I identify more with her.
Yeah, Charlotte, Charlotte.
Yeah, I'm a total Charlotte. What I was going to say, though, is I'm in the unique position of being on the opposite side of a parasocial relationship. That's a very rare place to be. And I can tell you that I do enjoy hearing about that, Like when we're at live shows and people tell us like where they think of us as like their friends or whatever. I always love to hear that kind of thing. Yeah, me too. Yeah, so I don't want to I don't engage with them myself, but when they are thrust upon me, I'm like, oh, yeah, I love that.
Yeah, and we feel the same way generally, and most times when we meet listeners who are awesome like that, if we did know each other, there's a good chance we might be friends.
Yeah. I think that's another thing too, is I think that's kind of like that that weirdo view of it, Like the irony of it is they're so far off base that like, if they ever actually did meet the person in real life, they would be horribly crushed and maybe even mocked. I mean, at least from our experience, most people who do come up and tell us that they think of us as friends do seem like people we would probably hang out with in real life.
Totally. There's also an I'll talk about this a little bit, I guess later, But I'm in a situation where a lot of the podcasts that I consume are comedy podcasts where I do kind of know the person. Oh okay, but that's a quasi parasocial relationship because I find myself thinking I'm better friends with them than I am, when in fact they are just industry colleagues that are loose pals. Perhaps, but I think, like, oh yeah, me and Scott Ackermann are like great friends because we have so much in common.
Yeah, he does not think that.
And Scott's a great guy, super nice. He's always been very nice. I'll be on the shows occasionally. We both worked with him a little bit, but we're not great friends, even though I feel like we are because I listen to so much of his stuff.
Okay, I'm glad you let me teck somebody. I was going to ask you who you have parasocial relationships with, but I feel like quasi para social relationship is very niche.
Yeah, probably so, So let's.
Let's begin at the beginning. These things haven't been around forever, mostly because they're a product of media communications. They would not exist otherwise because without media, you would actually be interacting with this person faced. And that's the big rub of the whole thing is that other person is on the other side of a screen, they're in your headphones. They're not there physically, but the way that they present themselves to you tricks us into becoming friends with them or having an affinity for them, just as you would if you met them in real life. And the whole thing is traced back to a couple of sociologists named Donald Horton and Richard Wall who back in the fifties started noticing that people would actually talk back to their TV and that they as sociologists, they said, this is interesting, that's kind of unusual.
And probably new people don't TV.
And I think I'm sure it existed before in radio. But as we'll see, media has added to itself, added to itself, added to itself over the generations, over the last half century or so to make it more likely that you're going to have a parasocial relationship with somebody in me, and a deeper one too. But the whole thing started with TV and people shouting at it, and what they coined was a term called parasocial interactions.
Yeah, and that's I think TV also was all of a sudden you had a couple of other ingredients to the recipe that could spawn a parasocial relationship, which is repeated consistent faces that you're seeing. It's not like, you know, go into a movie, which you could do before the you know, nineteen fifty six, that person being in your house, in your living room every week or even every night was a different thing. And they were talking to you, they were looking at your face, and there were new kinds of media personalities that they hadn't seen before, which is like game show host, talk show host, newscasters, people looking into the camera and talking to you the home audience. And that changed things, and they were fascinated by what they called this relationship between what they dubbed persone who were or you know, the Dan rathers or whatever. I don't know why Dan rather so on the tip of my brain. What's even doing these days? He's writing and stuff, right.
I don't I don't know. It's been a while. I'n't heard from it in a while. He hasn't called me back.
I think he's I think he's pretty active on social media and stuff. Anyway, it was a new thing where there were people in your room, these persona talking to your family, and it was there was a lot of small talk that had never been around before, like on the news when you you know how newscasters are they We've talked about it in the weather Person episode. The change to like the more familiar banter and small talk and you know, let's talk about our lives a little bit. Even all of a sudden, people are being let in.
Yes, and that's a product of the whole thing, Like that's purposeful and what the whole thing creates is the illusion of intimacy. And that's I disagree with by the way, that it's an illusion.
Well yeah, I mean that's what and Wall call that. I think it's a type of intimacy.
Okay, so what would you call it?
Intimacy? One way intimacy?
I guess. Okay, yeah, I'll agree with you on that for sure. I think these guys were just like, what the heck is going on? So, yeah, you're kind they weren't. Yeah, so we'll just call it this type of intimacy or one sided intimacy. And like I was saying, like they purposely cultivated this as they started, not Wall and Horton, but TV producers found out very quickly that like people would write letters to you know, their favorite newscaster or their favorite soap opera character or something like that that was kind of new again. People would yell at the radio, or they would listen to a specific news announcer on the radio or something like that that happened before. But that whole thing of being able to look at you, of being able to talk to you directly, seemingly again, it trigger something in us that radio could never do.
Yeah, And like you said, I think I cut you off. You were talking about the fact that it wasn't an accident. They worked on this. They were told to look directly into the camera lens, and they were told to make small talk and have friendly banter between each other, and to have like a friendly tone. It was all engineered to get people to watch you more. It wasn't engineered so parasocial relationships would form, but that was a byproduct of them trying to get their game show host or their newscaster to connect with an audience, right.
So some other things they would do is characters would be boiled down into kind of thumbnail sketches of a person. So you have like Joey, who's kind of like the ditzy one, or Gracie Allen was the original I think kind of dits on TV. And when she entered the room or when Joey entered a scene, you knew something like hilarious was gonna happen because they were just so ditzy sense you know Joey like you don't know matt LeBlanc at all. You know Joey the character that Matt LeBlanc is playing. Uh, you doing exactly. You know, he's probably going to say something like that, he's going to like go after some girl or something like that. You can predict his actions, which means that you have some sort of relationship with them, and that you recognize his personality and you accept it and you can predict it, and that in and of itself is a level of intimacy.
Yeah, and you don't even necessarily have to identify with that particular character. I think in the case of something like friends or Sex in the City, a lot of people just said, Hey, this is like my group of friends, and Joey is like my friend Josh and Chandler is like my other friend, and that kind of thing.
I got to wait, whom I'm like?
Who I was talking about a different question? Oh okay, I said, you're like Joey, but you're not like any of the friends.
No, No, I'm not.
Maybe a bit of a bit of a Rachel.
I don't know, kind of happy about that. We're going with friends and Sex and the City for the rest of the episode.
Huh, I guess so. Another thing that we did on our own very show was that they did back then to engineer this kind of connection was call in shows, reading fan mail on the air, stuff like that, interacting with the audience, which is obviously ramped up in the day of social media, which we'll get to because that's a whole different bollowax these days.
Yes, And one of the reasons that Horton and Wall created a new term for what the person is who the person is having a parasoxial relationship with persona or a persona is because that's not again, it's not a real person, even if they're not playing a character. And you know, the newscaster is playing himself the newscaster. He's not talking about like the horrible fight he and his wife had the day before. He didn't get much sleep, and he's not really feeling good. He's never going to bring that up. All he's ever gonna show you is at least a neutral mood, if not a positive mood. And so after seeing that time and time and time again, you develop an idealized vision of this person, this persona that can't possibly hold up in reality, and in that sense, that makes the parasocial relationship that much more seductive, because what that persona can offer you is an idealized friend. Dave helps us out with this, and he said that the cheery game show host is never has a bad day in snaps at you, and I would caveat that with except Alex Trebek, but for the most part, all the other ones wouldn't. They're always pleasant, they're always like nice to be around, and they're always making you feel good about yourself. That's one of the reasons parasocial relationships can be so strong.
Should we take a break, Yes, all right, we'll be right back. All right, So let's talk about this. We got the setup with Horton and Wall and then since then, over the decades, things have been pretty interesting as we've moved toward social media, which again we'll get to. But the reason that we form bonds, it sounds like it might be a little weird, even though we explained that it's quite natural, but it's evolutionary in nature. We've talked before plenty about the facts that human beings are hardwired to be social with one another because it helps in their survival. The ability to read someone's tone or read someone's face was very valuable in the age of tuk tuk when they would approach like a new people or something like a new persona and also the fact that it's madeok Took feel good to have a friend. So we are hardwired to be social with one and another, to pick up on social cues and to have wins.
And we do that. We pick up on the social cues largely from facial expressions and tone of voice, both of which come through loud and clear in TV close ups.
Right, exactly for sure?
So what's happening? And again, I don't think this was originally I mean, no one invented TV to do this to people. It was like a surprise. But once people figured out what was going on, they exploited it as quickly as they could. But TV accidentally tricks you into thinking you're interacting with a really great person and that they're interacting with you and they kind of like you, so you like them back.
Right, Because your lizard brain, your evolutionary brain, doesn't know the difference between Dan rather talking to your face on a television and Dan rather really being in front of you in a Starbucks. You don't really know the difference. All you know is you know going back to your brain, goes back to Tiktook's days, and you see a kind face looking you in the eyeball telling you something interesting or funny or what have you.
Right exactly, So, I, like you said, I'm in the forty nine percent that like just don't necessarily feel this way. And the reason why not everyone does this and that other people do it strong more strongly than others supposedly has to do with your natural levels of empathy. That the more you're able to take other people's perspectives onto your own and just kind of imagine yourself in their shoes or understand their struggles or just acknowledging the fact that they probably are struggling in some way, or you're more likely to vibe on somebody in real life and on TV as well, or in social media, as we'll see.
I think you can be highly empathetic, though I can be. It's just two people that you know, know and love, So maybe that's a difference.
I know. I mean I can't be to strangers too, for sure. I just don't know. There's there's some.
Well that's true. I didn't mean it like that. I just meant more, I see where you I see the delineation in your mind.
But that's the thing I'm not aware of it. It feels like there's a short circuit between you know, what I'm capable of, like in with people in real life and people not in real life. Like there's a disconnect between those two. And I'm not sure what it is or where it comes from. But I don't know, because I do. I like to think I'm fairly empathetic too.
Yeah, for sure, I thought you were saying you weren't, so you are.
Well.
I mean also, like, there's not a lot of like podcasts you listen to every day and stuff, is there? No?
But I mean, like I watch a lot of TV too, and I don't have like a parrot social relationship with Jason Vorhees or anything.
I don't a boy that reminds me. I just saw a very funny old Kamil Najianni bit about uh, well, you can look it up about Jason and Freddy. It's probably not something I want to say in the air, Okay, but it's very funny.
I want to know. Well, just google it, okay.
Well, I think I can summarize it best by saying that Freddie in the movie Freddy Versus Jason was racist at one point in one of his little Freddie lines because he talked about a person of color. Uh, and A made sort of a Freddy quip about it, and people he was like in people in the audience coroned. He's like, they really, you know, it's okay that you're murdering children, but like when you made a racist jab, like, that's when we're not on team Freddie anymore. It's pretty funny. Anyway, where was that going with that? Though?
What are you talking about? Yeah, we were moving on that that, Like.
Oh, oh, I know what I was going to say is that I don't really have these with TV people. Podcasting specific is where I get my parasocial relationship.
Yeah, and I'm yeah, I like, I guess I don't know, like I would say that, Like I listened to it a lot of Terry Grid and I've never been like Terry and I would be great friends, you know. I like her. I think she's amazing. I think she's one of the best interviewers walking around right now. But sure, again, they're just that like she is on the radio, she's in Philadelphia, Like I've never met her, I'll never meet her probably, like I've said outside her house, like those those right, and she would not come to the door. Yeah, those qualifications like mean something to me subliminally that keep me from having a parasocial relationship. I think this. We're gonna hammer this out one way or another by the end of this episode. So uh.
There's something called the compensation theory, and that is the idea that people who get in parasocial or who are more inclined to get in a parasocial relationship, are compensating for a lack of real relationships in their life. The like you sort of mentioned earlier, the trope of the lonely person who's socially awkward and doesn't have these relationships in real life, so they dream a relationship with Conan O'Brien or whatever, And studies don't bear this out. Studies have shown that that's not the case. It's just not true. And in fact, they've shown the opposite, that people who are more extroverted and more likely to score higher on test for interpersonal skills are more likely to form these relationships, which it tracks for me. It makes sense if you're more likely to be that way in a real relationship and in real life, then it seems like you would be more likely to do that parasocially.
Yes, but it is controversial, Like, there are definitely two schools of thought. One is that this is inherently a dangerous thing to do socially for yourself and for whoever the object of your parasocial relationship is. And then other people like, no, that's just you guys are there's no data to back this up, right, But that whole compensation theory, there's a model that attempts to explain it called the addiction absorption model, and it basically says that it says that people who seek out parasocial relationships essentially are get like you were saying, like they're awkward, so they have to go find it somewhere else because there's an inherent human drive to make connections, so they're just making them with people that'll never meet in real life that they kind of idolize, and by doing that, they absorb the person's life. They absorb information about the person's life right and effectively get addicted to it because it feels good to be close to that person, and that, like any addiction, they develop a tolerance to a certain level of absorption, so they start getting further and further and deeper and deeper along into this addiction of their favorite person and one day find themselves standing outside of Terry Gross's house hopefully she'll come to the door. That's like, you will eventually reach that level if you follow this path long enough, and that anybody, anyone who's engaged in a or social relationship is at risk of becoming that person that's stalking Terry Gross. I'm sorry, Tory Gross. I know this is just working, So I'm going with it. And that is one camp. They've got the models, but they don't have data that says that, and in fact, yeah, the models are themselves are super questionable, the measures are super questionable, and it seems like that's just a really overstating, you know, the potential risks and dangers of this that for most people, like you said, it's healthy.
I think so because if you're looking at a if these numbers are accurate, and you're looking at like a three to five percent rate of someone who takes things too far, where Terry Gross is like listening to God, what's her show, I'm totally blanking fresh air. Fresh air is the gateway drug. And then that's not enough and then you need you go out and get some fresh air in front of her house. Things can get troubling. That's the same thing as saying, like, anybody who ever takes a sip of alcohol is at risk for becoming an alcoholic. And exactly, like, technically these things are true, because if you never took that sip of alcohol, you wouldn't be an alcoholic. But it's just I think it's a bit much.
Right, Like anyone who smokes a rock of crack is going to get addicted to.
Right, right, Yeah, exactly, So just.
A little more on that model, there's a kind of like the person at the center of the Yeah it's a dangerous thing camp seemingly is a psychologist named Linn McCutchen.
Yeah, this was interesting.
Lin McCutchen in two thousand and two came up with the Celebrity Attitude Scale. And that's not a measure of like which real housewife is more caty than the others, that's right. Instead, it measures your attitude towards celebrities if you're engaged in parasocial relationships. And lin McCutchen broke it out into basically three levels. And again they believe that this is like a stage, like these are stages. This isn't like this per would never get to this stage, like if you started the first win, you're at risk of ending up in the third. Yeah.
And this was, by the way, like twenty eight years ago, twenty one years ago, so it wasn't a couple of years ago, which it sounds like it might be. But the three levels are the entertainment social level, which mccutcheen says, it's like almost everybody, and that's what we've been talking about. When you just it's all good and it's all fun and there's no weirdness going on. Then you get to intense personal and that's when you start to internalize the values of that person and consider them a soul mate. Those to me feel like disparate things, Like.
Yeah, that's a pretty wide window.
Because when I first read it that, I was like, yeah, internalizing the values of like someone doing good things, it's like that's great, But putting that in the same categories considering their soulmate is a big stretch for me. Agreed, Okay. And then the final level borderline pathological. That's the three to five percent, and that's when it's what they call celebrity worship.
That's the one. Yeah, that's the one where well, no Okay, so borderline pathological is like the worst of it. But I think they're all celebrity worship supposedly, and that's a really big problem. Yes, And that's problematic because some of the people who are like, this is not this isn't like an actual like you guys, there's no data suggesting that this is actually dangerous, they're saying in one of the big problems is, you guys are interchanging the term fan with the term celebrity worshiper, right, and yet you've never actually studied fans, Like they've never applied the celebrity attitude scale to groups of fans. They just applied it to random co eds who wanted like extra credit for their psychology class. So when when a media psychologist named Gail Stever or Stever, Gail and Lynn, it's like a it's pat episode up in here. So when when Gail Stever applied the celebrity attitude scale to a group of fans like people who go to convention like.
The bay Hive or the swift Swifties.
Yeah, or who interact with other fans, people who've written letters to a celebrity or something like that, like fans like above average fans. Yeah, they found that most of them didn't even rise to the criteria for that first entertainment social level, right, and that there is a definite distinction between being a fan and being a celebrity worshiper. And anything could tell you that, but you can thank Gail Stever for proving it.
Yeah, so they're interrogating all these swifties and they're like, dude, you're being weird. I just think she's awesome and like her music and go to see her shows, and you know, fans get together and talk like, just back off. You're being very.
Strange, right, But we wouldn't have a great pantheon of creepy movies if it weren't for that. Oh yeah, you know, celebrity worship, the borderline pathology. There's a lot of those, huh yes, but they may be generally made up.
I'm not sure are any of them good. What comes to mind is the Robert de Niro Wesley Snipes one. Because we haven't even talked about sports. That one thing that you sent me that is accurate is when you're at home screaming at a football player for dropping a pass or something that's a parasocial interaction.
Right, So that's a parasocial interaction. You can imad that that player knowing his wife's name and when they got married, that's the beginnings of a parasocial relationship. That's the distinction. Parasocial interaction can be cold out of just about anybody. Sure if you're into whatever you're watching, but that doesn't mean you're going to follow up after the game or the episode is.
Over, right, And don't ever talk back at the movie screen, although it can be funny.
In the theater. Yeah, no, never.
I mean I don't do it, and I think it's rude. But I've also had a pretty good laugh or two when someone timed it out just right. My famous story about the Witch in New York that I won't repeat.
Okay, I'll just tell you what episode, go find it. I forget stuff. Do you want to take a second break.
Yeah, yeah, let's see that. We'll be we'll get back here in a minute, and we'll talk about some of the benefits perhaps, and then the dark side right after this.
Okay. So I think we kind of laid out that there's a really big disagreement on whether this is actually problematic or not. I kind of tend to lean in the camp that not, although for some people it can be okay. Yeah, But there's also like a whole other school of thought that this is actually helpful in some ways, in some surprising ways too, but in ways that you would you would probably guess like that you are physically, emotionally, psychologically getting a benefit out of that parasocial relationship. That if you have a favorite podcast and favorite podcasters and we and you listen to them, you feel like you're hanging out with your friends. You're receiving positive benefits from that. And as long as you're not replacing real life friends, yeah, with podcast friends, because your real life friends are bothering you, they bug you're you're you're getting basically nothing but benefit from it.
Yeah. And some of the other specific benefits are examples of where and you see this more and more of these days with well with all kinds of people, actors and pop stars and stuff. Talking about mental health, people have many many, many people have sought treatment for themselves because their favorite singer has been open and honest about an eating disorder or a mental challenge. I think Dave is the example of Katie Couric years ago when she her husband died of colon cancer, and she did a broadcast where she got a colonoscopy, and the rate of people getting colonoscopies jumped after that. So it literally can help people be physically and mentally healthier because they're taking a queue, Like they may not want to listen to their friend who says, hey, you should get some help, but they'll listen to Edie Brikel what say, Wow, I don't know how that happened, but no question just goes Billie Eilish and Adie Brikell say you know you should you should see ke help if you're having struggles with this certain thing.
Okay, yes, that's a benefit for for all two right, And that doesn't mean that you're like you're just doing what the celebrity you like tells you to. There's a certain amount of I think, just raising awareness that is an accountant for in that as well. Also supposedly, having a parasocial relationship with somebody in an outgroup from you can actually create feelings of empathy towards real life members of that out group totally. There was a twenty twenty study published in Communications Research that had participants watched ten weeks of a show that featured LGBTQ plus people as outgroup people, and over the ten weeks, most of the people developed at least an affinity for the outgroup people, but some people actually developed parasocial relationships with them. And the groups that were the most prejudiced against gay people going into the study had the most growth and actually had lower lessened attitudes of prejudice toward gay people after the study because they were exposed to gay people through TV, through these characters that they developed some form of parasocial relationship with.
Yeah. So, like, I usually don't like homosexuals, but after watching, after being forced to watch Six Feet Under, Keith and Michael's story was so sweet and I just really love those guys. That happens, And that's why, and that's one reason why representation matters. Just one reason.
Go ahead, So, Chuck, speaking of gay love stories, I saw Have you seen The Last of Us? I'm sure you have.
Yeah, yeah, I played the game as well. I was waiting to it.
So the I think episode three the best.
Nikauferman just amazing, dude, It is so amazing.
So if you have a relative who is homophobic, just start watching the Last of Us and they like guns episode yeah, and hate zombies and episode three will spring on them and before they know it, they'll love gay people for the rest of their lives. It's amazingly well done.
Well, you know the story there is in the game. There is a just one brief mention of the partner I can't think of his name now, Yeah, there's only yeah, there's only one mention of Frank when he just says something in the game about like, yeah, I lost a partner a year ago something something, And you don't even know when you're playing the game if it was like a business partner or whatever. And then when they made the TV show, they said, hey, this is like a chance to go off script and to build a richer world and to like make this great episode of this awesome backstory. Yeah, and it was, you know, hal was like one of the best TV episodes of the year of like any show.
Yes, it's so good, amazing. Nick Offerman just did such a great job.
Yeah. And the other guy from White Lotus got he's so good.
I've never seen him before. I've not watched that show.
Oh I think you would like White Lotus.
I've heard, I've heard, I've heard.
Yeah, Murray what's his name, Aby something? F Murray Abraham, No, Murray Bartlett. He's fantastic.
Okay, all right, Has he been in anything else besides White Lotus? I might have seen him in because I've been recognized him, but he had a pretty thick beer.
I don't know he's so good at White Lotus though.
Okay, I'll check it. I'll check he's.
He's been another stuff, and he's certainly like probably more busy than he's ever been now because of those roles.
Okay, so where were we, Chuck? We were talking about.
Well, some of the benefits too. One thing that we've seen over the years is that you're not weird as a forty something year old person to not have a parasocial relationship, because generally speaking, teens and adolescents are more likely to have these than adults do. And for teens it can be kind of like we said before, if there's if Edie Brikel is telling a teen about her struggles with something, it's a really big deal for a teen or an adolescent to know that they're not alone, that they can seek help, and they're not weird because their favorite person, their favorite singer, also has the same thing.
Right, that's incredibly beneficial. Yeah, I mean to help kids that are just feel completely isolated and make them feel less alone. Also, apparently this is an explanation for the trope of young girls, like pre adolescent adolescent girls having crushes on like Scott Bayo or who else that's not a jerk.
The Bay City Rollers.
Yeah, the Bay City Rollers. Of course, everybody went through that that they're actually like the parasocial relationship helps them kind of explore what a real relationship is going to be, like, what their expectations are, what their wants or what their needs are. Yeah, you're kind there.
Yeah, there a.
Significant other to have Bay City Rollers hair.
Yeah, for sure, the aka the best hair.
Yeah.
I said that because I remember when I was a kid very specifically. I have a memory of we had a babysitter over one night, and the babysitter was a girl that was older than my sister. So my sister must have been pretty young because she's six years old than me and she usually was the babysitter by that point. But I remember them sitting around with a bas City Rollers record and spinning it around and dropping their finger on the album and whichever, you know, roller that their finger landed nearest to was the one that they would fall in love with. I'm such a memory of that when I was like five years old or something. It's very funny.
Yeah, did it just blow your mind? Or were you like, what is this crying? No?
I got it, And you know, I famously had My very first crush was Christy McNichol, who is gay. So I don't know what that says about me.
What was she and aiden is it enough?
No? She was in God, I mean she was in movies and stuff. She was sort of just the cute girl next door when we were well, I'm older than you, but when I was.
A kid, I remember. I just don't remember what she was in.
I'm trying to think of something. I mean, she was in movies and stuff like Little Darlings and stuff that I wasn't allowed to watch. But I think she was on a TV show too.
Yeah, I'm familiar with her. I can't remember what.
Oh family it was on that family.
That's why I thought it was eight is enough. It's basically the same.
Thing exactly, there just weren't eight of them.
I think. So again can be very beneficial. Usually very harmless. There is a dark side. That's not to say that there isn't that that parasocial relationships can't go wrong, or that they can be harmful or it can't be harmful. And one of the one of the ways that I said that media is built on itself over and over again. Yeah, kid, going from radio to TV TV. Apparently. Another big crest of this was when reality shows came along, yep, made people even more connected to the people on the screen. And then social media came along, and that is it's it's almost like it was designed to get into your brain and be like, this person is legitimately your friends. They liked your post, they may even like DM back and forth with you, they might respond to your email. They know who you are, they're your friend, and at that point, it being that realistic, it can trick you into forgetting that they aren't your friend, they don't really know you. And this is a parasocial relationship, especially especially for developing minds.
Yeah, absolutely, because all of a sudden, you have twenty four to seven access depending on how active someone is in social media, where they are really sharing their life, and you see a post by someone and you think, oh, my gosh, I have a black main coon cat too, and I had that same tile in your bathroom. You're getting the little glimpses. And I mentioned Tyle because I did the same thing. I saw Melissa McCarthy post something one time and I had the same tile that she did, and I, like a dope, thought, Oh my god, we have the same taste. We would be such good friends.
Well, she's a huge TikTok influencer, so I'm sure that happens still lots of people.
Oh is she really? Oh I don't know.
I don't think so.
I've never been on TikTok.
I see her more on Instagram.
Yeah. Sure. But they classify it as unhealthy when it's disrupts your life, when it disrupts your daily life day to day, and if it's damaging or replacing your real life relationships. That's when it's if you're spending money like the furthest extreme is when all of a sudden you've quit your job because you have to go live in the city where this person is, or you're spending a lot of money collecting expensive memorabilia or buying them gifts and sending them. That's where it gets into the potential stalker realm.
Yes, or that you threaten self harm if they don't respond to you, or yeah, it can be it can get problematic. And again this is exceedingly rare. I don't think it's like a huge thing. To lose sleepover is like no a parent or a concerned person, but it can't happen. And again that just the combination of social media and at developing brains. It's just so dangerous in so many different ways and so potentially harmful in so many different ways. And this is one of those ways that it can happen. One of the other I think risk factors is is it is possible to kind of let your in real life relationships dwindle as because you're putting more and more focus and energy into your parasocial relationship. And that also is kind of like a self defeating thing because there's fewer people to kind of pull you back toward reality and say like, no, no, where are your friends? That person is an influencer, doesn't even know you exist. So let's go get some ice cream and play Fortnite while we do.
Right, that's a nice call up.
You're not even in gamer No, I'm not, but I've heard of Fortnite before on TV.
So there's an article that they found that is really interesting and good, I think from The Guardian from a couple of years ago by Rachel aerost I guess called Tragic but True colon how podcasters replaced our real friends, and Rachel makes a very strong case that podcasting has even up the game even more parasocially speaking, and COVID really helped with that because during COVID, when people were locked in and they weren't seeing their friends face to face anymore, they would have a zoom meetings and phone calls with certainly with their business associates, but also with friends. I mean I did this a few times where I would get on a zoom with a friend from out of town or even in town, and all of a sudden, podcasting increased. I think fifty one percent of podcast listeners say they first started listening during the pandemic, and it grew forty percent from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty two. So not only are more people listening, but they're listening in this very intimate way, and you know, people are in their ear holes and you're looking and interacting the same way you were on like a zoom because you were robbed of contact with your friends. So it's basically there was nothing to distinguish the two except talking back.
What a weird turn of events too, for sure. But the thing is is so the I think that title is very misleading because if you read it, she's not actually really lamenting it. She's more just kind of documenting it. Yeah, I think. And she also makes the point that this was at a time during the pandemic, during like lockdowns, where you were physically unable to interact with friends, and podcasts made a pretty great substitute for a while, and that that in and of itself makes it less harmful. I might be a little biased, but I do think that yes, being in people's ears is one of those triggers, like looking at people in the camera was with TV early on, Like that's a very very intimate to let somebody to let their voice be in your mind and basically take over your mind for that period of time. And that's of course what we're doing everybody, we're experimenting.
Yeah, and the other thing too is podcasting is they found this great Honors thesis by someone named Mikayla Nadora from Portland State University a few years ago called Parasocial Relationships with podcast Hosts, where Mikayla even references stuff you should know, which is very great.
She the whole thing is about stuff you should know, all thirty seven pages. Yeah, I remember her sending this to us when she published.
Oh that's right, God, I totally remember that. Now we get a lot of thesis actually interestingly, but the whole upshot is that with podcasting, anyone can do it. You have to have a small amount of equipment in the Internet, and it's not like you have to, you know, go through the trials and tribulations of someone auditioning for a role to eventually get on TV and stuff like that, and then you're a big star. It's like it's a low barrier to entry. And that means that there's going to be a lot of just sort of everyday people and regular schmos like you and I doing this, and that lends itself even more to people thinking like, of course we're friends, Like I'm not gonna be friends with Carrie Bradshaw or Sarah Jessica Parker because they're just so fabulous. But Chuck and Josh are just Normy's like us, so we would be.
Friends normcore to the max. We are. Another thing that Mikhael and Nadora kind of susted out as a trigger or Q, is that a lot of times people listen to podcasts alone. A lot of people listen and listen to them with other people, but for the I would say the vast majority alone, I think listen to them alone. But they're also listening to them while they're doing other activities like vacuuming or commuting or going to the grocery store. So it's like we're along for the ride. We're keeping you company while you're doing all this stuff. We're just sitting in the backseat having a conversation that you're listening to while you drive us to the grocery store.
Right, and also as we have done over the years, and especially you know, there are all kinds of podcasts, but they found that the ones, I know it makes sense with the strongest parasocial bonds are ones like this where it's sort of people chatting, conversational usually comedy and not like a dramatic like I don't know, true crime. I guess they can have that angle with the hoster have a lot of personality, Yeah, Karen and Georgia, Yeah for sure. But with shows like the ones that we do, you talk inevitably about our lives and a house project we're doing, or Momo or Nico and Charlie or you Me and Emily or Ruby, and people get invested because they know this stuff about us and they know they feel like they know these people, like who gets the biggest applause at any lives when Emily and you Me are there? Emily and you Me, people are thrilled when they're there. And Ruby was at her first live show in Atlanta and people were just like, I mean, people are kind of staring at her, and I didn't get creeped out because people are being super sweet and friendly and they thought it was so sweet that she was at her first show. But people hear these stories, and I get it because I do the same thing with my podcast hosts that I love, and it all just makes sense, like recalling jokes and people have especially with us, have lived fifteen sixteen years with us, and that whole thing where people get mad when their favorite celebrity couple gets a divorce, like it's it's so weird to think about, but Emily and I get mad when Susan Saranon and Tim Robbins split up, and if Emily and I got divorced, people would hate my guts that listen to this show.
So yeah, I think what she kind of sums all that up in is that that's one of the benefits of having a long running podcast or listening to a long running podcast. Little by little, all that stuff comes out and you become immeshed in the other that hosts life, Like you know what's going on in their life, and that's exactly what you do with friends. You know what's going on in their life. You know their dog's name and that their dog is great, and you know their wife's name and their wife is great. You just know this stuff. And it's just another way that media is tricking our brains, which are programmed to seek social connections, into thinking, oh, I've got a social connection going on.
This is pretty great, right, and people don't know that I can be very moody and passive aggressive, like even in a podcast medium like this, where it is real for the most part, you don't want to show that stuff on the air. You put your best self forward. Even in a medium like this, right.
That's why they coin that term persona or persona because yeah, that's it's just no one does that. Maybe what was that horrible punk guy who used to eat his own poop on stage? Yes, maybe gg Allen would do that if he were still alive and had a podcast. But for the most part, no, anybody, no matter who it is, is going to at the very least put some semblance of their best self forward. Even if it's not one hundred percent. It doesn't mean it's made up. It's that you're holding some stuff back because it's just you don't share that with people you've never met before. And in that sense, we the hosts are aware that you can form a parasocial relationship with us, we can't do that with you, So that inherently makes us slightly guarded to some degree or another and creates for you, guys, a persona that is an idealized version of us.
But here's the thing. If I talk about being passive, aggressive, or moody, that ramps up the relationship because people can identify with that. I just can't be that to you on the air, Yeah, because then people would witness the actual act of it and say, well, geez CHUCKSA can be a real moody jerk sometimes.
I know it'd be like the crossword puzzle all over it again. Oh no, oh no, I'm kidding. Great episode, but man, that got everybody up to set, you know, like they were like, what is going on? Like is this the end of stuff you should know? Oh? I know.
I think I took my enthusiasm for crosswords and got weird.
Oh it was fine. I think it's a classic app It was a good one too, but I mean the fact that it has just that little ball of weirdness in there. I love. Sure, classic stuff you should know.
Uh, I mean that's all I got. I think it is super interesting for sure.
This is a what made you choose this? One? That I'm sure everybody wants to know because they'll feel closer to you if you tell them.
I don't Dave might have actually thought of this or no, maybe maybe i'd a because I didn't even know this was a term. I've lived it on both sides, but I never knew people studied it, so, uh, I don't know. Maybe that's where it came from. I just saw the words and I was like, oh wait, that's me. Both times, chuck both ways.
There you go. That comes after the colon from Parasocial Relationship. It's chuck both ways.
Yeah, like a fine dish in a great restaurant. All right, sure you never had that, like scallop two ways or whatever. That's the thing.
I made salad four ways, check salad like a niche wase salad. Okay, what were the other two? Oh? One was like a corn and bean salad.
Okay, sounds good.
And then there was another one, and I was like, my god, I made four salads. Yeah, there's a lot of leftover salad, but it.
Was good salad forward ways.
I like it.
When I came over, he only made me three salads, so I'm a little salty.
I was holding back. I still perfecting the fourth one. I'll make that fourth one for you some other time.
Please.
Well, I feel like we're done with this episode. You said that's all you got, It's all I've got. I'm done talking about salad. So that means it's time for listener mail.
I'm going to call this inspiration. Hey guys, I want to reach out and say that I love your show. My husband discovered it showed it to me. I haven't stopped listening since when I was a stay at home mom feeling lonely, I would turn on the show and feel like I was having a conversation with friends. That's funny, I didn't even preread this one.
No way, really yeahs.
And Kinley says parentheses in the least creepy way possible. I always could to include that. Your show even gave me the inspiration idea to write a daily true crime calendar as a way for me to share my interest with others just like you. In fact, several days in my calendar are inspired by some of your episodes. By getting this idea from you to work on the calendar, it helped me through a postpartum anxiety wow, and helped me feel like I was helping to provide for my new little one. I would love to show my appreciation by sending you each a copy of my calendar. If you would like one, just reply send my address so hey, you can send it. Here's my home address. I'm just kidding. So grateful I was able to discover the show, because I wouldn't be where I would am now if I hadn't keep doing the good work. I'll look forward to hearing from you and that is from ken Lee. Ken Lee, Yeah, Kinley and I Kimle Yeah. I want one of these true crime calendars. I love a daily calendar. I just need to send kin Lee the address.
Yeah, same here, so please spell kim Lee or Kinley's name kay I n l e Y Kinley. Oh yeah, like Mount McKinley, but without the mount or.
The Mitchy exactly.
Kinley, thank you so much for that email. Like I said at the beginning of this episode, we love hearing stuff like that, so we're glad we could help in some way. And I'd love a calendar too. If you want to be like Kinlee and get in touch with us, you can send us an email as well. Send it off to stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
