October 10, 2023 • 54 mins
Parasocial relationships are fascinating and it turns out Chuck knows what it's like from both sides. Listen in today to your old friends.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
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.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
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,
(01:04):
or what you would do after they stopped filming the
TV show or something like.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
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
(01:40):
very well.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
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
(02:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah. In one of those papers you sent me, I
saw it described rather aptly as a one sided intimacy
at a distance.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
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,
(02:51):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
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,
(03:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Happens hard to those we'll see.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
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
(04:10):
that it's like a real relationship.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
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.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Yeah, Charlotte, Charlotte.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
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
(04:57):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
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
(05:40):
they think of us as friends do seem like people
we would probably hang out with in real life.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
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
(06:06):
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.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah, he does not think that.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
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.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Yeah, probably so, So let's.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
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.
(07:07):
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
(07:28):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
And probably new people don't TV.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
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
(08:03):
thing started with TV and people shouting at it, and
what they coined was a term called parasocial interactions.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
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,
(08:31):
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.
(08:53):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
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
(09:38):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Well yeah, I mean that's what and Wall call that.
I think it's a type of intimacy.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Okay, so what would you call it?
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Intimacy? One way intimacy?
Speaker 2 (10:09):
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,
(10:30):
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
(10:53):
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.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
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
(11:25):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
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
(11:58):
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
(12:21):
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.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
I got to wait, whom I'm like?
Speaker 1 (12:51):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
No, No, I'm not.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Maybe a bit of a bit of a Rachel.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
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.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
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
(13:28):
a whole different bollowax these days.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
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
(13:51):
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
(14:15):
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
(14:37):
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.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
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,
(15:14):
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
(15:36):
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
(15:57):
we are hardwired to be social with one and another,
to pick up on social cues and to have wins.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
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.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Right, exactly for sure?
Speaker 2 (16:14):
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,
(16:35):
so you like them back.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
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
(16:58):
face looking you in the eyeball telling you something interesting
or funny or what have you.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
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
(17:23):
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.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
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.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
I know. I mean I can't be to strangers too,
for sure. I just don't know. There's there's some.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
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.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
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.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Yeah, for sure, I thought you were saying you weren't,
so you are.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Well.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
I mean also, like, there's not a lot of like
podcasts you listen to every day and stuff, is there? No?
Speaker 2 (18:35):
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.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
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.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
I want to know. Well, just google it, okay.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
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
(19:24):
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?
Speaker 2 (19:38):
What are you talking about? Yeah, we were moving on
that that, Like.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
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.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
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
(20:12):
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
(20:33):
end of this episode. So uh.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
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
(20:58):
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,
(21:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
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,
(21:52):
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
(22:13):
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,
(22:34):
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,
(22:57):
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
(23:17):
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.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
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
(23:54):
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.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Right, Like anyone who smokes a rock of crack is
going to get addicted to.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Right, right, Yeah, exactly, So just.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
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.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Yeah, this was interesting.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
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
(24:56):
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.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
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
(25:25):
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.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Yeah, that's a pretty wide window.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
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
(26:21):
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
(26:44):
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.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
The bay Hive or the swift Swifties.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
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.
(27:27):
And anything could tell you that, but you can thank
Gail Stever for proving it.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
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.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
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.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
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
(28:38):
the episode is.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Over, right, And don't ever talk back at the movie screen,
although it can be funny.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
In the theater. Yeah, no, never.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
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.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Okay, I'll just tell you what episode, go find it.
I forget stuff. Do you want to take a second break.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
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.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
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
(29:43):
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.
(30:06):
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.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
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
(30:42):
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
(31:05):
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
(31:26):
you should see ke help if you're having struggles with
this certain thing.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
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
(31:53):
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
(32:14):
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
(32:39):
the study because they were exposed to gay people through TV,
through these characters that they developed some form of parasocial
relationship with.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
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.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Go ahead, So, Chuck, speaking of gay love stories, I
saw Have you seen The Last of Us? I'm sure
you have.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Yeah, yeah, I played the game as well. I was
waiting to it.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
So the I think episode three the best.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Nikauferman just amazing, dude, It is so amazing.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
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.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
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
(34:03):
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.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Yes, it's so good, amazing. Nick Offerman just did such
a great job.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Yeah. And the other guy from White Lotus got he's
so good.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
I've never seen him before. I've not watched that show.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Oh I think you would like White Lotus.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
I've heard, I've heard, I've heard.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Yeah, Murray what's his name, Aby something? F Murray Abraham, No,
Murray Bartlett. He's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
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.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
I don't know he's so good at White Lotus though.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Okay, I'll check it. I'll check he's.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
He's been another stuff, and he's certainly like probably more
busy than he's ever been now because of those roles.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Okay, so where were we, Chuck? We were talking about.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
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
(35:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
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
(36:15):
a jerk.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
The Bay City Rollers.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
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.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Yeah, there a.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Significant other to have Bay City Rollers hair.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Yeah, for sure, the aka the best hair.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
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
(37:01):
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.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Yeah, did it just blow your mind? Or were you like,
what is this crying? No?
Speaker 1 (37:23):
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.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
What was she and aiden is it enough?
Speaker 1 (37:34):
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.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
A kid, I remember. I just don't remember what she
was in.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
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.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
Yeah, I'm familiar with her. I can't remember what.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Oh family it was on that family.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
That's why I thought it was eight is enough. It's
basically the same.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Thing exactly, there just weren't eight of them.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
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,
(38:32):
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
(38:54):
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
(39:16):
know you. And this is a parasocial relationship, especially especially
for developing minds.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
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
(39:45):
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.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Well, she's a huge TikTok influencer, so I'm sure that
happens still lots of people.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Oh is she really? Oh I don't know.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
I've never been on TikTok.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
I see her more on Instagram.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
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
(40:28):
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.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
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
(41:04):
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
(41:28):
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.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Right, that's a nice call up.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
You're not even in gamer No, I'm not, but I've
heard of Fortnite before on TV.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
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
(42:18):
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
(42:39):
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
(43:05):
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.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
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
(43:42):
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
(44:06):
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.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
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.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
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.
Speaker 1 (44:44):
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
(45:06):
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.
(45:29):
But Chuck and Josh are just Normy's like us, so
we would be.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
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
(45:54):
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.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
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.
(46:31):
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
(46:52):
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
(47:15):
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
(47:38):
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.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
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
(48:14):
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.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
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.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
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
(49:17):
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
(49:39):
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.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
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.
Speaker 2 (50:13):
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.
Speaker 1 (50:29):
I think I took my enthusiasm for crosswords and got weird.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
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.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
Uh, I mean that's all I got. I think it
is super interesting for sure.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
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.
Speaker 1 (50:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (51:14):
There you go. That comes after the colon from Parasocial Relationship.
It's chuck both ways.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
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.
Speaker 2 (51:28):
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.
Speaker 1 (51:44):
Okay, sounds good.
Speaker 2 (51:46):
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.
Speaker 1 (51:53):
Was good salad forward ways.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
I like it.
Speaker 1 (51:55):
When I came over, he only made me three salads,
so I'm a little salty.
Speaker 2 (51:58):
I was holding back. I still perfecting the fourth one.
I'll make that fourth one for you some other time.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
Please.
Speaker 2 (52:06):
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.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
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.
Speaker 2 (52:32):
No way, really yeahs.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
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
(52:56):
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,
(53:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (53:29):
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.
Speaker 1 (53:38):
The Mitchy exactly.
Speaker 2 (53:41):
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.
Speaker 1 (54:01):
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.
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
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.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
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,
(01:04):
or what you would do after they stopped filming the
TV show or something like.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
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
(01:40):
very well.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
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
(02:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah. In one of those papers you sent me, I
saw it described rather aptly as a one sided intimacy
at a distance.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
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,
(02:51):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
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,
(03:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Happens hard to those we'll see.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
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
(04:10):
that it's like a real relationship.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
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.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Yeah, Charlotte, Charlotte.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
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
(04:57):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
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
(05:40):
they think of us as friends do seem like people
we would probably hang out with in real life.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
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
(06:06):
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.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah, he does not think that.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
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.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Yeah, probably so, So let's.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
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.
(07:07):
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
(07:28):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
And probably new people don't TV.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
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
(08:03):
thing started with TV and people shouting at it, and
what they coined was a term called parasocial interactions.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
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,
(08:31):
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.
(08:53):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
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
(09:38):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Well yeah, I mean that's what and Wall call that.
I think it's a type of intimacy.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Okay, so what would you call it?
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Intimacy? One way intimacy?
Speaker 2 (10:09):
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,
(10:30):
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
(10:53):
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.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
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
(11:25):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
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
(11:58):
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
(12:21):
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.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
I got to wait, whom I'm like?
Speaker 1 (12:51):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
No, No, I'm not.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Maybe a bit of a bit of a Rachel.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
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.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
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
(13:28):
a whole different bollowax these days.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
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
(13:51):
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
(14:15):
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
(14:37):
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.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
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,
(15:14):
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
(15:36):
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
(15:57):
we are hardwired to be social with one and another,
to pick up on social cues and to have wins.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
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.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Right, exactly for sure?
Speaker 2 (16:14):
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,
(16:35):
so you like them back.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
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
(16:58):
face looking you in the eyeball telling you something interesting
or funny or what have you.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
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
(17:23):
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.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
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.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
I know. I mean I can't be to strangers too,
for sure. I just don't know. There's there's some.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
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.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
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.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Yeah, for sure, I thought you were saying you weren't,
so you are.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Well.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
I mean also, like, there's not a lot of like
podcasts you listen to every day and stuff, is there? No?
Speaker 2 (18:35):
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.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
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.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
I want to know. Well, just google it, okay.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
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
(19:24):
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?
Speaker 2 (19:38):
What are you talking about? Yeah, we were moving on
that that, Like.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
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.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
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
(20:12):
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
(20:33):
end of this episode. So uh.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
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
(20:58):
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,
(21:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
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,
(21:52):
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
(22:13):
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,
(22:34):
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,
(22:57):
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
(23:17):
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.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
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
(23:54):
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.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Right, Like anyone who smokes a rock of crack is
going to get addicted to.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Right, right, Yeah, exactly, So just.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
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.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Yeah, this was interesting.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
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
(24:56):
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.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
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
(25:25):
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.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Yeah, that's a pretty wide window.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
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
(26:21):
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
(26:44):
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.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
The bay Hive or the swift Swifties.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
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.
(27:27):
And anything could tell you that, but you can thank
Gail Stever for proving it.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
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.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
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.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
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
(28:38):
the episode is.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Over, right, And don't ever talk back at the movie screen,
although it can be funny.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
In the theater. Yeah, no, never.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
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.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Okay, I'll just tell you what episode, go find it.
I forget stuff. Do you want to take a second break.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
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.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
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
(29:43):
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.
(30:06):
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.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
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
(30:42):
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
(31:05):
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
(31:26):
you should see ke help if you're having struggles with
this certain thing.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
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
(31:53):
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
(32:14):
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
(32:39):
the study because they were exposed to gay people through TV,
through these characters that they developed some form of parasocial
relationship with.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
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.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Go ahead, So, Chuck, speaking of gay love stories, I
saw Have you seen The Last of Us? I'm sure
you have.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Yeah, yeah, I played the game as well. I was
waiting to it.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
So the I think episode three the best.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Nikauferman just amazing, dude, It is so amazing.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
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.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
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
(34:03):
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.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Yes, it's so good, amazing. Nick Offerman just did such
a great job.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Yeah. And the other guy from White Lotus got he's
so good.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
I've never seen him before. I've not watched that show.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Oh I think you would like White Lotus.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
I've heard, I've heard, I've heard.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Yeah, Murray what's his name, Aby something? F Murray Abraham, No,
Murray Bartlett. He's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
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.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
I don't know he's so good at White Lotus though.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Okay, I'll check it. I'll check he's.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
He's been another stuff, and he's certainly like probably more
busy than he's ever been now because of those roles.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Okay, so where were we, Chuck? We were talking about.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
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
(35:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
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
(36:15):
a jerk.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
The Bay City Rollers.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
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.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Yeah, there a.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Significant other to have Bay City Rollers hair.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Yeah, for sure, the aka the best hair.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
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
(37:01):
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.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Yeah, did it just blow your mind? Or were you like,
what is this crying? No?
Speaker 1 (37:23):
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.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
What was she and aiden is it enough?
Speaker 1 (37:34):
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.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
A kid, I remember. I just don't remember what she
was in.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
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.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
Yeah, I'm familiar with her. I can't remember what.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Oh family it was on that family.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
That's why I thought it was eight is enough. It's
basically the same.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Thing exactly, there just weren't eight of them.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
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,
(38:32):
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
(38:54):
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
(39:16):
know you. And this is a parasocial relationship, especially especially
for developing minds.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
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
(39:45):
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.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Well, she's a huge TikTok influencer, so I'm sure that
happens still lots of people.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Oh is she really? Oh I don't know.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
I've never been on TikTok.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
I see her more on Instagram.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
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
(40:28):
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.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
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
(41:04):
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
(41:28):
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.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Right, that's a nice call up.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
You're not even in gamer No, I'm not, but I've
heard of Fortnite before on TV.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
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
(42:18):
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
(42:39):
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
(43:05):
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.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
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
(43:42):
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
(44:06):
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.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
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.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
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.
Speaker 1 (44:44):
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
(45:06):
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.
(45:29):
But Chuck and Josh are just Normy's like us, so
we would be.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
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
(45:54):
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.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
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.
(46:31):
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
(46:52):
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
(47:15):
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
(47:38):
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.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
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
(48:14):
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.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
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.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
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
(49:17):
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
(49:39):
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.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
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.
Speaker 2 (50:13):
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.
Speaker 1 (50:29):
I think I took my enthusiasm for crosswords and got weird.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
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.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
Uh, I mean that's all I got. I think it
is super interesting for sure.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
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.
Speaker 1 (50:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (51:14):
There you go. That comes after the colon from Parasocial Relationship.
It's chuck both ways.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
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.
Speaker 2 (51:28):
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.
Speaker 1 (51:44):
Okay, sounds good.
Speaker 2 (51:46):
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.
Speaker 1 (51:53):
Was good salad forward ways.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
I like it.
Speaker 1 (51:55):
When I came over, he only made me three salads,
so I'm a little salty.
Speaker 2 (51:58):
I was holding back. I still perfecting the fourth one.
I'll make that fourth one for you some other time.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
Please.
Speaker 2 (52:06):
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.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
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.
Speaker 2 (52:32):
No way, really yeahs.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
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
(52:56):
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,
(53:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (53:29):
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.
Speaker 1 (53:38):
The Mitchy exactly.
Speaker 2 (53:41):
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.
Speaker 1 (54:01):
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.
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