Bibliography of links on the evolution of parasocial relationships online: more than social media acquaintances or influencer-consumption, less than true social relationships, typically with money involved somewhere; implications for the future of human relationships/media and artificial intelligence?
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“Mass Communication and Para-Social Interaction: Observations on Intimacy at a Distance”, 1956 (Lonesome Gal)
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“The Comforting Fictions of Dementia Care: Many facilities are using nostalgic environments as a means of soothing the misery, panic, and rage their residents experience”; “What Robots Can—and Can’t—Do for the Old and Lonely: For elderly Americans, social isolation is especially perilous. Will machine companions fill the void?”
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Targeted Individuals: “United States of Paranoia: They See Gangs of Stalkers”
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Munchausen Syndrome: “The Lying Disease: Why Would Someone Want to Fake a Serious Illness on the Internet?”; The boy who convinced his friend to murder him via false online identities
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Stans: “Obsessed Benedict Cumberbatch Fans Tried to Have Me Fired: My encounter with internet fandom, and the rise of the celebrity relationship conspiracy theory”; “How a Fake Baby Is Born: For years, women on the internet have been writing conspiracy theories about celebrity pregnancies. What sparks them?”; “[Adam Driver Standom] Adam Driver Makes Fun of a Fan’s Gift in the New Yorker”; see also the British monarchy, “Babygate”/Sarah Palin
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“Violence and the Sacred: College [and mimetic desire] as an incubator of Girardian terror”, Dan Wang
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Economics:
- “1000 True Fans”, Kevin Kelly
- Cameo: “How Cameo Turned D-List Celebs Into a Monetization Machine”; “How Cameo Blew Up During Quarantine”
- Eugene Wei: “Status as a Service”; “TikTok and the Sorting Hat”; “Seeing like An Algorithm”
- Turner Novak: “The Rise of TikTok and Understanding Its Parent Company ByteDance”, “Pinduoduo and Vertically Integrated Social Commerce”;
- Non-fungible token: “When the Stagnation Goes Virtual”
- “Making is Show Business now”, Alex Danco
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Streaming:
- “The Blurred Lines of Parasocial Relationships: The disappearing divide between ‘followers’ and ‘friends’”; “Why Can’t We Be Friends: Podcasts and other forms of “parasocial” media reframe friendship as monetized self-care”
- “How to Get Rich Playing Video Games on Twitch: For the stars of the streaming service Twitch, success means working around the clock”
- “Ice Poseidon’s Lucrative, Stressful Life as a Live Streamer”
- “The Chinese Farmer Who Live-Streamed Her Life and Made a Fortune”
- “The app that lets you pay to control another person’s life”
- “Caught in the Study Web: Exploring Gen Z’s Ambitious and Anxiety-Fuelled Pursuit of Straight A’s Across YouTube, TikTok, Discord, and Twitter”
- “The Weird World of Vegan YouTube Stars Is Imploding: Rawvana, Bonny Rebecca and Stella Rae are eating animal products, triggering outrage and an identity crisis”
- “The Rise of the $10 Million Disc Golf Celebrity: How much can athletes really make in niche sports? A whole lot more than you might think. Disc golfer Paul McBeth set a new standard by signing an eight-figure endorsement contract—and his deal might only be the beginning”
- People’s Republic of Desire
- “The Twitching Generation: Around the world, doctors have noticed teenage patients reporting the sudden onset of Tourette’s tics. Is this the first illness spread by social media?”
- “On Discord, Music Fans Become Artists’ Besties, Collaborators, and Even Unpaid Interns: Originally launched as a messaging app for gamers, the platform has become an intimate place for artists and fans to connect and build community. Can this fragile ecosystem last?”
- Virtual Youtuber: “The overworked humans behind China’s virtual influencers: Hidden behind the perfect faces of China’s $16 billion virtual celebrity industry is an angry, overworked labor force.”; Kizuna AI/Hololive Production/Nijisanji/VShojo
- Chess: “How Magnus Carlsen Turned Chess Skill Into a Business Empire”/“The New Economics of Chess”; “Chess.com finds streaming success”; “The Most Popular Chess Streamer on Twitch: The former chess prodigy Hikaru Nakamura was widely disliked on the professional circuit. Then he started streaming”; “The [Alexandra] Botez Gambit: An enterprising chess streamer finds her opening”
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Porn:
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ASMR: “How A.S.M.R. Became a Sensation: The brain-tingling feeling was a hard-to-describe psychological oddity. Until, suddenly, it was a YouTube phenomenon.” (cf. Lonesome Gal); “Inside the secretly vibrant business of porn MP3s: Video sites like Pornhub and OnlyFans get all the attention, but audio smut is a surprisingly profitable enterprise.”
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AI Dungeon; Replika (eg.); “How it feels to have your mind hacked by an AI”; Xiaoice (eg.)
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“In Defense of Chatbot Romance”, Kaj Sotala
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Only Fans: “Porn Takes On a Personal Touch in the Pandemic”; “When Influencers Switch Platforms—and Bare It All”; “A day in the life of an OnlyFans creator [Aella] who makes up to $100,000 a month off explicit content”; “The ‘E-Pimps’ of OnlyFans: Clever marketers have figured out how easy it is to simulate online intimacy at scale, ventriloquizing alluring models with cheap, offshore labor”; “The Sugar Babies of Stanford University: from overnight social media fame to sugar-baby side hustles, America’s elite young women are changing the rules of sex and class”; “Dispatches from the Rap Wars: My 18 months inside one of Chicago’s most notorious gangs”
One can note that the result of 2022 Stable Diffusion democratizing human-level art & porn has been many artists (existing & new) adopting it secretly to save their labor, and angry fans/commissioners exposing them. But as the tools get better and t Homo hypocritus will find a way, whether it’s ‘farm-to-table’, ‘bean-to-bar’, ‘extra virgin virgin olive oil’, ‘fair trade’, ‘sustainable’ anything, ‘CO2 credits’, fitness instructors, muscled Hollywood actors, pro wrestling/cycling/baseball etc. They’ll pretend to be ‘hand-made’ premium mediocre goods, and we’ll pretend to pay anywhere close to what that’d actually cost to be so good.
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“Livestreaming monetisation models, aka, What do camgirls have in common with Twitch streamers?”; “Maximizing Your Slut Impact: An Overly Analytical Guide to Camgirling”
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“God-Shaped Hole”, 0hpl
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See Also: “Littlewood’s Law and the Global Media”, “The Melancholy of Subculture Society”, “GPT-3 Creative Fiction”