Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma

by Claire Dederer

The problem with broadcasting, or with art, is that the flow only occurs in one direction. From the speaker to the receiver; from the artist to the audience. Telepathy, perfect union, is what we seek. Art—unlike broadcasting or the internet—becomes a meaningful stand-in for that union. The artist undergoes the rigor of making, and that creates the conditions for the audience to consume. The audience member sets aside her own ego, her own self, and participates in the dream built by the artist. There is a right relationship there—the relationship takes place on the page or the canvas. Parasocial relationships don’t operate in that way, though. They create a state of confusion in the consumer: a belief in a relationship that exists outside the art. We’re all wandering around in a mistaken daze of failed telepathy. This can benefit the artist (she sells more books); but mostly it benefits tech behemoths that monetize these relationships and—in the words of the social psychologist and philosopher Shoshana Zuboff—use your information to trade on “behavioral futures markets.” In this sense, all of us who participate in parasocial relationships are workers creating money for somebody else.