When Idols Fall
How to prepare for your first parasocial breakup
(In a hurry? Search for the word “actionable” to read just the advice.)
Stop me if you’ve heard this story: a widely beloved Internet personality gets called out for some reprehensible behavior they exhibited in private. Their fans collectively gasp. Some immediately go into denial, defending the accused from any and all accusations. Others experience a solemn déjà vu and quietly cut ties. And for a few unlucky fans, the world has turned upside-down. This is impossible. How could this have been happening under my nose this whole time? How am I supposed to move on?
I can guess with a great deal of certainty that you have heard this story, even if you didn’t know the Internet personality in question. In the last decade, it’s been told and retold across every sizable online community, with little regard for demographics. Musicians, visual artists, journalists, YouTubers, game developers, and social media stars from every platform have been the subject of these stories more times than I can count. The details vary, but the spectators typically fall into the same groups. And every time the story is retold with a new name, all I can think about is how their youngest, most devoted fans must be feeling as they watch in disbelief.
If I’ve successfully reached my target audience, you haven’t experienced this with a personality you care about — yet. I don’t mean to alarm you, but it’s very likely to happen in your future, and it’s more likely to be a personality close to your social circle than some distant celebrity. The collateral damage endured by the offending personality’s biggest fans is no laughing matter; I learned this the hard way a couple years ago. This article is my attempt to provide an easy way.
First, I’m going to explain parasocial relationships — the umbrella term for relationships involving an audience — as they pertain to Internet personalities and creators. Next, we’ll explore some concrete examples of these people abusing the social power they hold over their audiences, both big and small. And finally, I’ll give you my advice for how to engage with the personalities & creators you care about in a way that accounts for this power imbalance. The goal here actually goes beyond minimizing the collateral damage of a future callout; learning to engage with creators in a healthy way has implications for your personal & social life far outside of the worst-case scenario.
From here onward I’m going to refer to the “Internet personalities & creators” that you care about as your idols. Maybe you don’t agree with that term; that’s great! If there’s one thing you should take home from this article, it’s this: in a healthy parasocial relationship, there is no idol.
(As an aside: this is emphatically not an article about “callout culture”. That would be the last Medium post the world needs more of. We will assume any hypothetical future accusations are true because, statistically, they usually are.)
Parasocial networks
When I went through my first “parasocial breakup”, I was devastated. It shook my life for weeks, and the resulting trauma echoed for years. But the problem didn’t start on the day of the callout; I had been setting myself up for this kind of heartbreak since the day they became my idol. I allowed a parasocial relationship to deepen to the point of idolization because I didn’t establish boundaries from the start.
I wasn’t alone in this; we can observe the same behavior in the fanbases of the most popular content creators, particularly YouTubers, and particularly those with a young audience.
Shannon Strucci, a video essayist and film enthusiast, has compiled what I believe to be the most comprehensive documentation of parasocial culture in the viewership of Let’s Play YouTubers like Jacksepticeye and Markiplier. The deep end of these communities can be pretty harrowing to hear about. When kids are shipping their favorite YouTubers with each other in “real person fanfiction”, or having their parents drive them to their favorite creator’s home without prior arrangements, it’s obvious that there’s a lack of understanding of social boundaries at play. ¹
To some extent, this is a consequence of the underlying psychology of parasocial relationships. The vast majority of formal research on the subject focuses on the truly one-way relationships, like TV stars and their audiences. But even without the illusion of reciprocity, “parasocial relationships employ the same social skills and draw upon similar psychological mechanisms” ² as reciprocal relationships (e.g. real friendship). While I don’t have a citation for these next claims, my intuition is that this is a consequence of evolution having no time to catch up to these novel modes of interaction. Fame has only been a human concept for a couple thousand years, and actually seeing or hearing such famous individuals on a regular basis only became possible with the advent of television and radio. I think children act like their idols are their friends because they lack the conscious framework to overcome this subconscious limitation.
Stalking creators is pretty bad, but the boundary issues that come up in these relationships aren’t always as blatant. Strucci shows how the messages these creators receive can reveal a more sinister boundary deficit: lack of emotional boundaries. For instance, jokes about postponing suicide for the length of a new video upload are unfortunately common. But even the positive audience interactions — the fanmail thanking a creator for helping them out of a dark place, or for giving them the illusion of friendship when they have no real friends — come from the same dysfunctional parasocial dynamics. When creators address these messages, they respond overwhelmingly positively… because how else could they possibly respond? ¹
Indeed, the most famous idols have no idea how to handle their suddenly-massive audiences. There is no training on how to facilitate healthy interactions with millions of subscribers, partly because, 15 years ago, none of this was a thing! We’re still in the process of realizing all the new modes of communication the Internet has enabled. Technological progress has been dazzlingly fast, but at the cost of leaving sociological progress in the dust. And while responsibility for fostering healthy modes of interaction should belong to the idols (and maybe the platforms that enabled them to amass such enormous audiences), we already know from experience that too many of them are negligent about establishing healthy boundaries with their fans.
Unfortunately, negligence the best-case scenario when idols are caught violating boundaries. Being on the receiving end of a parasocial relationship — be it television or Internet stardom — yields significant social power. Idols who do not respect the boundaries of their fans can take advantage of their trust by deliberately misusing that power.
Power will be abused
In this section we’ll shift focus to the tangible harm that past idols have done to people in their communities. These examples will deal with creators ranging from the famous to the microfamous, but remember: there is no magic threshold of power where it suddenly becomes dangerous in the wrong hands. Keep those words in your pocket, because most of the stories like the ones we’re about to cover happen far more frequently across hundreds of smaller, more insular communities. Most abusers have no verified checkmark next to their name.
The rest of this section will discuss varying degrees of sexual assault, though not in excessive detail. I recommend reading it if you haven’t personally gone through one of these “parasocial breakups”, but the choice is yours. Skip to the section titled “Establishing healthy boundaries” if you need to.
In 2018, TV actor Bill Cosby was found guilty on 3 counts of sexual assault against one woman. He was accused of rape by dozens more women, with most of the accounts coming to public awareness in 2014 and later. He was best known for his role in The Cosby Show, arguably the biggest TV hit of the 80s. ³ He played the role of Cliff Huxtable, the eponymous father figure. He’s been affectionately named “America’s Dad” by more journalism outlets than I can count. He was a big deal for a lot of people.
What does his tarnished legacy mean to his most devoted fans? Reactions were mixed. Some say that they have chosen to “separate the character from the actor” and will gladly show re-runs of The Cosby Show to their children. Others can’t bear to see his face anymore. One lifelong fan said that Cliff Huxtable was like a father to her, having watched the sitcom from the very first episode as a kid. Now knowing the harm he caused during that time, all she could think about anymore was how Cosby’s TV stardom empowered him to abuse so many women. ⁴
Cosby’s impact predates the Internet, but the publicization of his accusations and the ensuing verdict are fresh in the Internet’s collective memory. He is in prison at the time of writing. ⁵
In 2017, Polygon.com video producer Nick Robinson was accused by various women of predatory behavior, including soliciting nudes from teenagers & attempting to rape a drunk woman at an anime convention. ⁶ Following a quiet investigation by Vox Media, Polygon officially cut ties with him the next weekend. He was known for co-producing multiple popular video & podcast series, including “Car Boys” and “CoolGames Inc.” He had over 80,000 followers on Twitter prior to the allegations. ⁷
The Polygon fanbase’s response to Robinson’s callout is preserved in the top posts of /r/CoolGamesInc, the subreddit for his most popular podcast (which was cancelled amid the allegations). Fans were angry at Nick and frustrated with those who continued to support him. More than anything, though… people were just really sad. “Letting go of Nick sucked,” a top title leads. One member asks the community “please don’t latch onto Pat expecting him to be the ‘new Nick’” — a request that perhaps hints at some broader issues with parasocial relationships within the Polygon viewership. ⁸
Robinson lost more than half of his following from the scandal, ⁹ but has since rebuilt his identity with his personal YouTube channel as the cornerstone of his Internet presence. He continues to make viral YouTube & Twitter content to this day. From what’s publicly known, he has suffered no legal consequences for his misconduct.
As I write this article in July 2020, the Super Smash Bros. community is contending with a series of sexual misconduct allegations against some of its most prominent members and leaders. Nairoby “Nairo” Quezada, D’Ron “D1” Maingrette, Joey “Mr. Wizard” Cuellar, Cinnamon “Cinnpie” Dunson, and Richard “Keitaro” King are among the recently accused members of the Smash community & adjacent fighting game communities. Their roles included players, commentators, and tournament operators; their online followings spanned from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. ¹⁰ ¹¹
Keitaro confirmed the allegations against him in a TwitLonger post (cw: child sexual assault). His side of the story sheds some light on just how easy it is, even from the most charitable perspective, for someone in a leadership role to fail to enforce boundaries:
- Inviting a minor to a house party consisting of adults and alcohol is a failure to enforce boundaries.
- Allowing said minor to partake in drinking games is a failure to enforce boundaries.
- Ignoring said minor’s intoxicated physical advances is, again, a failure to enforce boundaries.
This pattern continues throughout Keitaro’s own account of the events. If he had chosen to set his foot down at any one of these points, the night might have passed uneventfully. One night of sheer willful negligence was all it took for him to destroy his reputation and inflict lifelong trauma on a member of his community.
Many of the named individuals have been removed from their community roles in some way, either by being banned from tournaments, removed from team rosters, or severed from professional roles. ¹⁰ At the time of writing, legal consequences are yet to be seen for any of the involved parties.
You held onto those words, right? The ones I gave you earlier?
There is no magic threshold of power where it suddenly becomes dangerous in the wrong hands.
Cosby used his fame to abuse dozens of women, but personalities with barely a fraction of his fame were able to use what power they had to violate the boundaries of their audiences & communities. Leaders and figureheads of any community have a responsibility to engage with their community safely, free of any ulterior motives. Unfortunately, no one else is there to enforce that responsibility when it matters most.
Establishing healthy boundaries
Interpersonal boundaries are a part of everyday life. They dictate what we choose to talk to different people about, how we act and dress and engage with each other, and what should be withheld in certain scenarios. In fact, you already have boundaries in place with everyone in the world. Why, then, do we need to obsess over boundaries with these idols in our lives? What makes them so different?
Here’s my attempt to answer those questions. Everything from here onward is my personal opinion; citations will be scant.
Power imbalance
The previous section covered this topic in detail, but it bears repeating in the context of boundaries: the Internet personalities that we look up to hold power in and over their audiences. Some might seek to intentionally abuse it, but many more simply don’t know how to contend with the power they have.
We know how to recognize authority in the real world. As young children, our parents hold all the power. In school, the teachers and administrative staff hold the power. In adulthood, for better or worse, the authorities tend to be bosses, landlords, and police officers. But who holds the power on the Internet? We have ad-hoc structures across various websites to denote moderators and administrators, but aside from that, people tend to just be people on the Internet. Or followers, if you ask Twitter; or friends, if you ask Facebook.
Social media collapsing every kind of relationship into a monolithic construct is yet another example of how technology has outpaced sociological concerns. Accurately modeling human relationships isn’t just out of scope for a social platform: it’s out of budget. YouTube, Twitter, and every similar platform all share the capitalistic goal of maximizing engagement. If acknowledgement from your idol gives you dopamine, it stands to reason that any profitable platform will do everything they can to encourage that connection, with little regard for the power discrepancy at play.
Actionable advice: if you ever interact with your idol, remember that they wield significant social power, whether they recognize it or not. Usually this won’t warrant any further action on your part. However, if your idol starts giving you special treatment — maybe by inviting you to a more tight-knit subset of the community, like a private Discord server or group chat — proceed with caution. Think about whether they might have any ulterior motives. This is especially important if they invite you to a physical space like a house party or a hotel room. Don’t be afraid to decline if you sense that anything is “off” about the situation. Even if you don’t think you’re in any danger, would your friend be weirded out if you told them about the way your idol was treating you? Try to be as honest with yourself as you can.
Memetic behavior
This comes up a lot in the communities surrounding famous YouTubers, maybe due in part to the average age of their fans: when kids aren’t sure what boundaries are appropriate in a given situation, they tend to look to each other for answers. If someone does something without repercussions, then you’re probably allowed to do it yourself. Simple enough, right?
Earlier I mentioned the phenomenon of entire genres of fanfiction about real YouTubers. I guarantee you the people who have contributed to these stories didn’t independently come up with the idea; rather, it spread across the community like a meme. What might have been harmless enough as a one-off action snowballed into an entire sub-community of fans who severely misunderstand the social boundaries at play between content creators and their audience. This doesn’t happen to most people because, you know, most people don’t have a whole community dedicated to their work or existence.
There’s a more salient point underneath the extreme “cringe” fandom behavior, which has to do with what I affectionately call “learning how to be a person”. As you mature, you’re expected to develop an internal sense of morality that guides your decisions. You shouldn’t have to lean into herd behavior, not just because the herd might make the wrong choice, but because you owe it to yourself to learn to self-navigate. Being passive in this regard has implications for your entire life, not just your online persona!
Actionable advice: remember that your idol is a real person with a life outside of their Internet presence. While the most serious boundary violations tend to be on the idol’s behalf, their fans can just as easily fail to uphold reasonable social boundaries. Take accountability for your own actions, not just for your idol’s sake, but for your own personal development. If you’re struggling to turn these words into actions, it’s okay. Here’s a starting point: put yourself into your idol’s shoes and imagine them reading your comment / reply / meme / fanfiction. How would you feel? Are you proud of your answer?
Obsessive fanship
Finally, here’s the point that I personally failed to understand with my first idol. I’m biased, but I have reasons to believe that this is the most widespread boundary issue pertaining to parasocial relationships. It tends to go unspoken, and on the occasions when it surfaces, it’s all too easy to write off as a joke.
Obsessing over an idol (either the person or their work) is never a healthy way to engage with them. In the language of boundaries, I would call this a willful violation of one’s own mental boundaries — allowing an idol to occupy too much space in your head for too much time. It’s natural to assign people who you see more often more importance in your mind, but remember that the human brain evolved exclusively for reciprocal relationships. Our subconscious processes can’t compartmentalize our friends and peers who know us personally from the personalities we watch on a screen. We must consciously recognize the distinction, and then correct course based on those acknowledgments. This requires effort!
The deeper end of this issue manifests as obsession to the point of exclusivity. This is what’s happening when fans claim that their idol is their “only friend”, or the closest thing they have to a friend. Much like the aforementioned suicide jokes, these remarks are written to be relatable to fellow subscribers. And, as before, most of them are more sincere than anyone is comfortable acknowledging. ¹ Refusing to accept the inherent limitations of parasocial relationships leads to a life where one’s most prominent relationship is wholly unfulfilling. It goes without saying that a “parasocial breakup” in this situation ends disastrously for the obsessed fan.
In less severe circumstances, a fan might say that the community around their idol is the only community they belong to or care about. I have personally witnessed the effects of this mentality in the worst-case scenario. The idol falls, their fanbase implodes; people seek out other interests and communities and idols. The unlucky fans who invested all of their social energy in the fallen idol’s community are left with nothing but a rapidly disintegrating friend network. It’s heartbreaking to watch, and the root cause is no different than before: allowing fanship to deepen to the point of obsession never ends well for any of the involved parties.
Actionable advice: there’s a lot to cover here, but I think I can sum it up in three parts. Try to answer the following questions:
- “Who are the idols in my life?” Which personalities and creators do you engage with the most? To what extent do those idols reciprocate? For that matter, to what extent can they reciprocate? I would encourage you not to factor in how “genuine” an idol appears; authenticity can be manufactured ¹² and, in the context of parasocial relationships, it ultimately serves to maintain the illusion of a friendship.
- “How much energy do I invest into my biggest idols?” This includes time spent consuming their content, interacting with fellow fans, discussing them or their work, and even time just spent thinking about them. There’s no widely agreed upon rubric for what counts as obsessive, but here’s my personal rule: if you can’t remember the last day that went by without seeing or thinking about your idol, you’re probably in too deep.
- “Where else can I divert that energy?” The easiest way to reduce an idol’s presence in your mind is to redirect it to other things. Watching a broader variety of creators is a start, but I would encourage you to be more ambitious in your approach. Find interests that don’t revolve around a single person! Pick up a videogame with an active community. Try out some creative hobbies, like art or music. Look outside of the Internet for options, too; as limitless as the World Wide Web might seem, the outside world can engage your senses in ways that a screen of pixels physically can’t.
Conclusion
We’re all trying to process orders of magnitude more information than we’re equipped to handle. I have no qualms about ending this article with a basic recap.
- Parasocial relationships break our brains in subtle ways, and the idols we follow are more often than not unprepared to deal with the consequences of this psychological fact.
- The power imbalance inherent to a parasocial relationship is exceptionally easy for the idol to exploit, in many ways precisely because of the novelty and weirdness of parasocial relationships.
- You owe it to your idols, your peers, and above all else to yourself to establish boundaries that accurately reflect the one-way nature of your parasocial relationships.
- Protecting yourself from malicious idols requires boundaries that address not only direct interactions, but how you engage with their content in general.
- In a healthy parasocial relationship, there is no idol.
References
¹ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLA-uFKjQ-g (relevant timestamps include 36:21, 41:19, 58:27, 1:08:37, 1:30:36)
² Dibble, J. L., & Rosaen, S. F. (2011). Parasocial interaction as more than friendship: Evidence for parasocial interactions with disliked media figures. Journal of Media Psychology: Theories, Methods, and Applications, 23(3), 122.
³ https://www.tvguide.com/tvshows/cosby/cast/100456/
⁴ https://www.ajc.com/lifestyles/after-verdict-fans-struggle-with-bill-cosby-guilt-guile/PezUzcG370RXfEtAGZNrbL/ (cw: rape)
⁵ https://globalnews.ca/news/6219439/bill-cosby-1st-interview-since-sentencing/ (cw: rape)
⁶ https://padlet.com/watney/w7d4bchyeb3s (cw: sexual harassment, attempted rape & more)
⁷ https://web.archive.org/web/20170801044844/https://twitter.com/babylonian
⁸ https://www.reddit.com/r/CoolGamesInc/top/?sort=top&t=all
⁹ https://web.archive.org/web/20181222100943/twitter.com/Babylonian
¹⁰ https://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/29399607/sexual-abuse-allegations-surface-fighting-game-community (cw: child sexual assault & more)
¹¹ https://dotesports.com/fgc/news/super-smash-bros-commentator-keitaro-admits-to-having-sexual-relations-with-a-minor (cw: child sexual assault)
