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People have been misusing parasocial for quite some time now. Parasocial interaction is like King of Comedy, where Robert De Niro's character on some level thinks he's literally friends with Jerry Lewis and carries on conversations with him while alone in his house watching the show. Or if you haven't seen King of Comedy, like in the Joker movie that was basically an edgy remake of King of Comedy, where Joaquin Phoenix's character thinks he's literally friends with Robert De Niro. It was first studied in the 50s.
Japanese idol culture produced the same effect and then YouTube and later Twitch did the same, see picrel which was quite a famous image once upon a time. Question: When you donate 5 dollars to the retarded whore doing a hot tub stream and she says "thanks for the sub anon", is that parasocial interaction? Or if you give Rushia an akasupa so that she can read it two weeks later while getting fucked by her husband in the meantime? Well that's actually a borderline case. Because if you get a dopamine hit from the shoutout and the kudos then that's a real interaction, albeit a very shallow and meaningless one. If you start having imaginary conversations with Rushia or Morgpie then that's PSI
But of course whenever a new term like "gaslighting" or "parasocial relationship" or "woke" catches on with the mainstream it almost immediately gets stretched past its original meaning past the point of recognition. Which brings me to my point, if you're in a chat with 2views watching some vtuber play a game or zatsu and you're joking around and being friendly and chatting with the streamer and the streamer is responding to you, that's literally not parasocial interaction. That's just standard human social behavior. Albeit it's done entirely through a screen and with one or more participants using a shota anime boy avatar with suspenders and undressing redeems that give me lewd thoughts. Ahem. Despite that it's still not parasocial. It's just social. It's not any more parasocial than tipping a street performer and chatting them up between songs.
