>>64793239It's simply a bit diminishing to compare co-creation of a work to interaction like cheering, booing, or beat keeping at live events. Regardless,
Streamers co-create content with their audience. Their decision making is directly affected by their audience reception, and uniquely, for streaming in particular they are subject to synchronous interactivity (which you wouldn't expect from any traditionally parasocial relationship). In this way not only do they go beyond interaction by co-creating (they are necessary to the work produced, undeniably from this involvement), but they do so synchronously rather than asynchronously. Therefore streaming has more in common with a phone call, or a video chat, than it does even a personal message, or a mass/generic message.
In this way it is still difficult to justify calling such a relationship categorically or clearly parasocial in a traditional lense. Rather, perhaps they are not, infact, parasocial at all, or they might be considered uniquely parasocial i.e. (trans-parasocial could still be considered) a form of parasocial relationship. Even still the definition of parasocial could be completely different, or diverge in its popular usage from its original definition, but in that traditional usage and understanding, and given the criteria (the signs of a parasocial relationship traditionally) they fail to meet that specific definition.
The main problem is that in doing so, using the term parasocial to describe the relationship between streamers and viewers often describes aspects of the relationship inaccurately, or in ways that literally don't apply to streamer-viewer relationship.
Ex. Such as implying a non-reciprocal, unidirectional relationship, that is produced (or simply broadcasted one-way). Whereas these are collectively reciprocal, (a)syncronously interactive relationships driven by co-created content and strategies. You'll note these are simply the traits of parasocial media/relationships and equivalent opposites.
>You might interact with your audience of 500 people but you won't be able to remember what each one told you 10 streams ago about their favorite game or what they were doing that day. It is absolutely parasocial.If your definition of parasocial is just going to be raising the bar to include any reciprocal relationship that isn't specifically personal, then there's no point talking to you further though, sorry
