Para-social Behavior and When it Goes Too Far in Fandom Spaces

Ever since the invention of the World Wide Web, fandom spaces have been an important part. Forums, websites, and apps allow individuals with similar interests to interact. Celebrities may even interact with their fans on rare occasions, outwardly expressing liking fanart, fan edits, and fanfiction. A majority of fans post their excitement on their stories and thanking the person for noticing their work. However, some fandom spaces are notorious for what is called parasocial behavior. It is inherently harmless at first, but how far does it go before things get risky?

There’s an important difference to distinguish before discussing the risks, and that’s parasocial interactions vs parasocial relationships. Parasocial interactions happen for a brief moment. You feel like you are talking to/interacting with an influential figure. For example, when watching YouTubers telling stories about their personal life, it draws people in. It creates a sense of relatability. However, parasocial relationships are the intense version of the parasocial interactions. These feelings can border on romance, with these fans attempting to contact celebrities directly in an attempt to get them to notice. If it gets intense enough, these interactions can lead to stalking. According to the Therapy Group of DC, there are three levels of parasocial involvement: entertainment-social, intense-personal, and borderline-pathological. 

Entertainment-social is what is considered “normal involvement” in a space. This is where fans simply enjoy the consumption of content from a certain celebrity or creator and even comment on their work. It’s about having fun and finding like-minded fans. For example, fanart and fanfiction has become a massive part of how fans within fandoms interact. These create headcanons, or one’s personal interpretation of something they consume. A lot of these headcanons consist of ships. Ships are when fans see two or more characters having romantic chemistry, even if their interactions say otherwise. A popular ship within fandom spaces is Destiel. The ship consists of Dean Winchester and the angel Castiel from the popular horror TV show Supernatural. This ship was seemingly made canon in the show’s series finale in which Castiel confesses his love to Dean with tears in his eyes before being sent to Super Hell (this is what it was actually called). This broke the Supernatural fandom, with the fandom collectively shipping the two men together since Castiel’s first appearance in season four. 

Intense-personal increases the emotional one-sided connection between celebrity and fan. Their achievements feel like your own personal wins. This is where fans will begin to see celebrities as their best friends. This can lead to fans finding ways to find out intrusive information about the people they idolize. This is where toxicity in fandom spaces begins. This intense emotional connection can lead to hating people within their own space. A massive aspect of toxic cultures is stan cultures. Primarily seen in K-pop fandoms, they start out as a playful game of tug-of-war about who’s bias (favorite group member) is better and eventually starts out as harassment campaigns. These can drive fans and even celebrities off the internet. With the rise of cancel culture and false allegations, these campaigns end up even worse. 

Borderline-pathological parasocial relationships are where toxic fans become dangerous. Celebrities gain stalkers, their information is leaked onto the Internet. These are cases of extreme toxicity, which are more common than we think. One that sticks out is the DreamSMP fandom. In 2020, the Minecraft YouTuber Dream created a Minecraft survival multiplayer world (SMP) for his friends, which later evolved into a massive roleplay server competing with the likes of Hermitcraft, another popular SMP. While well received by its loyal fanbase at the time, it has gained a reputation for being one of the most toxic fanbases. Part of this reason was the problematic behavior of some of its creators, Dream included. The fandom was heavy on social justice, especially cancelling those who were problematic. However, these fans on both ends of the spectrum both partook in the act of doxxing. Doxxing is the act of leaking private, identifiable information to the public. One incident of this nature almost occurred to SMP member Tom Simons, or Tommyinnit, who was only 16 at the time. Dream had called Tommy and told him to lock his windows and doors and prepare for the worst because there were fans planning to come to his house and harm him, according to Simons himself. 

From a mass communication lens, the rise of modern social media is in part to blame. To understand this, we must look at social identity theory (SIT). “The theory posits that personal identity and social group memberships are intricately linked, mutually shaping an individual’s self-concept, as well as their sense of belonging and social identity. SIT further suggests that intergroup behavior is influenced by the desire to achieve positive distinctiveness for one’s in-group, often leading to in-group favoritism and out-group discrimination as mechanisms to enhance self-esteem” (Forner, 2025). Understanding this theory, fans tend to fall into an us vs. them mentality when it comes to parasocial relationships. Someone who may not like a celebrity can express their opinion, but fans in intense-personal parasocial relationships may turn to threats and harassment. This is heavily encountered in spaces on X (formerly known as Twitter). Going back to the DreamSMP fandom, this is where a majority of the doxxing took place. Websites filled with toxic people can influence others to do the same because of the concept of groupthink. This is when a group of people desire for a clean consensus, so they make poor decisions due to a variety of factors and constraints, such as stress or societal pressure to conform. This phenomena could potentially be a big part of a bigger issue. Immense pressure to be morally correct could lead to becoming someone much worse. 

So why do parasocial relationships exist? We’ve seen the harm that comes with developing them, so what is the reason for developing them? A common theme is loneliness. Professor Arthur C. Brooks of Harvard says the following: “Humans have evolved to thrive in groups, probably because 250,000 years ago you needed to rely on other people to survive by building social relationships. And so we become attracted to and care about people if we have a regular enough exposure to them.” We are scientifically made to connect to others. Social media can increase the amount of ways humans can interact. However, this has been known to have negative effects on the mental health of teens and young adults: the primary demographic of a majority of fandoms. 

A common phrase among the older generations to the newer generations over the past two decades is: “It’s cause of that damn phone!” Generation Z in particular receives a lot of similar comments. While this generation is one of the most technologically educated generations, it is also one of the most depressed and lonely generations. During COVID-19, social media truly stunted the socialization skills of adolescents and teenagers. According to one study, “pandemic-induced reliance on screens to engage with real-life friends may have blurred the cognitive distinctions between real-life friends and liked media personae, thereby strengthening PSRs” (Bond, 2022). The lack of boundaries between creators and viewers became a big part of this disconnect. This led to inappropriate relationships between adults and minors. One example of this is beauty influencer James Charles. In 2021, Charles admitted to texting 16 year old boys while he was 21 at the time. However, he claimed that he believed the boys were 18 at the time and called himself “reckless.” This was the start of multiple scandals involving popular influencers and underaged fans. This begs the question: what happened to being careful on the internet? Especially during COVID in a time where we were forced to stay inside and quarantine, a lot of teenagers found themselves befriending fellow internet users. It’s as easy as ever to lie on the Internet, whether someone catfishes another person using someone else’s likeness or simply says they are a completely different age with no reasonable way to prove it. Not many people think to ask for said proof, which can endanger underaged internet users. A minor could easily make their way into an 18+ space if there is no authentication or way to prove someone’s age. It just so happens that at that time, verifying ages were not the primary focus. We were trying to survive. 

Toxic and predatory behavior are more normalized than ever in the digital age. It is important to moderate social media intake, for it can ruin your self-image, self-esteem, and overall mental health. In addition, the algorithm often bases your “tailored feed” to videos you spend more than a couple seconds on. You accidentally leave a disturbing video playing for 5 seconds? It will assume you have the ability to stomach it, thus giving you more. You watch a political video for 10 seconds? Here come more of those! It is important to block content and/or creators you do not feel comfortable interacting with, in order to create your true algorithm. Look out for red flags of any kind regarding predatory behavior, and most importantly, if there is nothing you can do about a situation, log off and try not to engage with it. Mental health is important now more than ever, especially for celebrities. This way, they can deliver peak performances and interact with those that love them, not with predators.