Strangers With Familiar Faces: What is Parasociality?

I’ve heard the word parasocial more and more over the past year, so I wasn’t too surprised when it was named Cambridge Dictionary’s Word of the Year for 2025. But it is interesting that a word related to audience interactions with film and media has become so relevant to society as a whole.

Cambridge Dictionary defines parasocial as “involving or relating to a connection that someone feels between themselves and a famous person they do not know, a character in a book, film, T.V. series, etc., or an artificial intelligence.” Parasociality is a false, one-sided sense of familiarity. The term para-social first appeared in a Psychiatry paper by Richard Wohl and Donald Horton in 1956, describing the relationship people have with fictional characters in emerging mass media such as radio, television, and film. It wasn’t widely used outside of academic conversations about psychology and mass communication until it started circulating in articles and online posts in 2023. Cambridge Dictionary points to trends of searches and discussions about parasociality with relation to celebrities and new AI chatbots in 2025 in order to justify its rank as Word of the Year. Parasocial relationships are not a new or rare phenomenon, but the Digital Age, social media, increased social isolation (stemming from factors like a global pandemic and a lack of accessible third places), and now AI, have made them more prevalent.

Parasocial relationships with fictional characters seem to be mostly harmless. However, according to some studies, there is the potential influence on people's perceptions of self, what is considered acceptable behavior, and distress can be experienced when a character dies or a show ends. Any possible consequences of parasocial relationships with AI chatbots are still in early stages of study as the technology rapidly changes and becomes more widespread.

Parasocial relationships centered around real people, however, can definitely become harmful. In the case of content creators, actors, or artists, for example, parasociality can lead to fans overstepping boundaries and feeling entitled to knowing, having opinions about, and interacting with everything in the celebrity’s life. As someone particularly invested in queer media, two recent cases of parasociality around television and online content come to mind: that of the overnight stardom of the Heated Rivalry cast and that of longtime YouTubers Dan Howell and Phil Lester.

Heated Rivalry is a Crave original television adaptation of novels by Rachel Reid, written and directed by Jacob Tierney and starring Connor Storrie (left) and Hudson Williams (right) as two hockey rivals that fall in love over the course of the show’s first season (it’s already renewed for a second season set for 2027!). As soon as the episodes aired in late 2025 the show was a monumental hit and the previously unknown actors became instant stars—so much so that they were torchbearers for the 2026 Winter Olympics. 

All of this fame was of course concurrent with a lot of parasocial behavior from fans of the show. On an unserious level, this manifested as people commenting things like “My babies I love them both” or “Im so proud of my boys” accompanied by heart emojis on Instagram posts. Is it a little weird to say this about men you have never met? Maybe. But it is typical fan behavior that doesn’t harm anyone. Some people, though, began to scrutinize the actors’ lives and speculate about if they have the same queer identities as their characters and whether or not they are together in real life. While it would be nice to see more out gay actors in gay roles, it is never acceptable to investigate or pressure people into labeling themselves. Just because someone is famous does not mean that their personal life is public property.

Which brings me to Dan and Phil.

To briefly summarize 16 years of lore, Dan Howell (left) and Phil Lester (right), jointly branded as “Dan and Phil,” have been producing content together on YouTube and elsewhere since they met in 2009. As some of the first internet celebrities, whose audience was mostly young, while they themselves were barely adults, neither they nor their audience knew how to exist online in a healthy way. Social media was new, and it began as more of a casual, personal thing than a stage to perform on professionally. These circumstances probably contributed to some of the more dangerous parasocial behaviors they encountered, including people stalking them and trying to reveal their sexualities and relationship status. Jumping to October, 2025, Dan and Phil posted a video confirming that they’ve been a couple since 2009 and addressing their complicated history with their parasocial fanbase, ultimately forgiving the young people who did not understand that their behavior was traumatizing and unsafe. 

One takeaway from both the Heated Rivalry fandom, and the Dan and Phil fandom, is that people will inevitably become parasocially attached to public figures that they believe understand them or whose work is catered to them — and this is not necessarily a bad thing. The target audiences for Heated Rivalry are queer people and women; many queer people naturally feel represented by the show’s content, and many women are enamored with attractive men that do not conform to heteronormative toxic masculinity. Similarly, most of the extreme parasocial Dan and Phil fans were young queer people desperate for community. In Dan’s words, parasocial relationships are not inherently evil and are “a fact of life these days.” Parasocial relationships can form real communities of fans and help fund creative industries. As long as fans respect boundaries, do not conflate performances with the lived reality of performers, and do not get caught in the illusion of closeness that social media uniquely curates, parasocial relationships can be mutually beneficial for creators and fans alike.