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I thought this was a really interesting and insightful Tumblr post.

But I think sometimes adults do the same thing. I think parasocial relationships are something that people do when they want to explore an emotion but don’t have a way to explore it in real life, for whatever reason.

Of course, it would be easier for everybody involved if people stuck to parasocial relationships with people who could never feasibly notice: celebrities, fictional characters, etc.

I think the internet makes parasocial relationships more dangerous and disruptive, because it’s much more likely the person whom all the emotions are projected onto will notice. It’s also more easy for the person doing the projecting to imagine that they’re so insignificant the other person will never notice their attention.

If you find yourself on the receiving end of a parasocial relationship, my advice is to completely and absolutely ignore the person projecting all of those intimate emotions onto you. They likely don’t realize you can see what’s up, and likely don’t actually want anything from you. Yet the more attention you pay to them, the more their behavior will escalate.

Because for those initiating parasocial relationships, they often don’t realize that distance is what they actually want, and they’d be better off admiring a fictional character or dead historical figure or celebrity or anyone else who can’t actually notice someone is projecting intimacy onto them.

And if you ignore them long enough, they will probably get past it and move on.