Your 2025 Resolution? Stop Treating Celebrities Like Your Best Friend
Think about what you’re doing: furiously defending billionaires in Twitter threads, dissecting celebrity breakups like they’re your own family drama, knowing every detail of a streamer’s life down to their coffee order, and fighting endless wars with other fans over people who don’t know you exist.
Now imagine spending those same hours building real friendships, learning actual skills, creating something of your own, or just living your own fucking life instead of watching someone else pretend to live theirs.
The problem isn’t celebrities, content creators, or public figures.
They’re just doing their jobs, making videos, building businesses, entertaining audiences.
The problem is the fantasy of intimacy we’ve constructed around them — the parasocial relationship that exists entirely in our minds.
The Intimacy Illusion
Let’s be clear about what parasocial relationships actually are: one-sided emotional attachments manufactured by our brains’ inability to distinguish between real social connections and carefully curated content.
Our psychology evolved for small tribes where knowing intimate details about someone meant you actually knew them. We haven’t adapted to algorithmic feeds and parental sub-donations.
The math makes this painfully obvious. Your favorite creator might have millions of followers. Even if they wanted to form real connections with their audience, it’s physically impossible. There aren’t enough hours in a human lifespan to forge genuine relationships with millions of people.
The Cost
Parasocial relationships extract a heavy toll:
They consume the emotional bandwidth you need for real relationships. Every hour spent feeling genuine emotional pain over a stranger’s Twitter drama is an hour not invested in actual friendships.
They distort your understanding of normal human connections. Real relationships are messy, complex, and two-sided. Parasocial bonds create the illusion of intimacy without any of the actual work of human connection.
They keep you in a state of perpetual emotional adolescence. Instead of developing mature relationships with equals, you’re stuck in a one-sided pattern of idealization and projected intimacy.
They prevent personal growth by providing a simulation of achievement. Why work on yourself when you can live vicariously through your parasocial mentor’s carefully edited highlights reel?
Modern platforms have perfected the art of manufacturing parasocial attachment. They understand exactly how to trigger our social bonding mechanisms:
Regular content drops become virtual hangouts. Subscriber badges become tribal markers. Parasocial communities form around shared delusions of intimacy. The entire ecosystem is designed to monetize your natural desire for connection.
This isn’t a conspiracy. It’s just business.
But understanding the mechanics doesn’t make the emotional impact any less real.
Leaving it Behind
You’re not friends with these people. You’re consuming their content. That’s fine — but call it what it is.
Think about what you’re actually getting from these one-sided relationships:
- A sense of belonging
- Emotional investment
- Vicarious achievement
- Social identity
- The illusion of intimacy
Now imagine redirecting all that energy into:
- Building real communities
- Developing genuine relationships
- Creating your own work
- Finding actual mentors
- Living authentically
I’m not demonizing content creators or their platforms.
God knows as a writer, I’d be tarring myself with the same damned brush.
You can still enjoy content. You can still learn from people you admire. You can still participate in online communities. But you can do it without the fantasy of personal connection with people who don’t know you exist.
The trick is maintaining perspective. When you feel the urge to defend someone famous in a Twitter thread, ask yourself: Would they do the same for you? When you’re about to spend hours analyzing their latest life decision, consider: Could this energy go somewhere more meaningful?
Your favorite creator isn’t your friend. Your parasocial mentor isn’t your parent. Your comfort streamer isn’t your therapist.
This isn’t their fault — they never signed up to fulfill these roles in your life in the first place. But continuing to project these relationships onto them isn’t healthy for anyone.
The dopamine hit from a creator “responding to your comment” isn’t worth the hours you spent crafting it. The parasocial high of being a “day one supporter” isn’t worth the relationships you’re neglecting. The false intimacy of knowing every detail about a stranger’s life isn’t worth losing touch with your own.
This isn’t about them. This isn’t even about social media. This is about you choosing the comfortable illusion of connection over the messy reality of actual human relationships.
Real connections take work, vulnerability, reciprocation, and showing up when it’s inconvenient. They can’t be bought with a $5 monthly subscription or maintained through one-sided patreon tiers.
Here’s your wake-up call: That creator you’re obsessing over? They’re at dinner right now with their actual friends. That streamer you moderate for? They’re building real relationships while you police their chat for free.
Log off. Touch grass. Build something. Create art. Have real conversations. Make actual friends. Deal with genuine human conflict instead of parasocial proxy wars.
The world doesn’t need another parasocial cheerleader. It needs you — the real you, not the chronicler of someone else’s carefully curated existence.
Time to choose: Are you going to keep living in their narrative, or start writing your own?
