Parasocial relationships can make celebrities feel psychologically familiar to us.

Repeated exposure on social media can strengthen the sense that we genuinely “know” a celebrity.

That feeling of intimacy has commercial value and is being exploited by marketers.

Lately, I have been working on an ongoing research project on influencer marketing, which means that I have spent an unreasonable amount of time reading research on why people follow, trust, and buy things from people they have never met. While working through the literature on parasocial relationships, I found myself thinking about the phenomenon somewhat less academically—namely, why I so desperately wanted to marry Robbie Williams when I was a teenager.

This was not a particularly reciprocal relationship, as Robbie Williams did not know that I existed, which presented some obvious logistical problems for our future together. I, on the other hand, knew quite a lot about him. And although my teenage obsession eventually disappeared, the phenomenon certainly did not. We still want to know all the details of Taylor Swift’s marriage, what the latest royal baby looks like, who has broken up with whom, and whether two people we have never met are secretly feuding.

Why do we care? Psychologists and media researchers have been asking versions of this question for decades. And the answer has a lot to do with the curious ability of our minds to turn repeated encounters with strangers into something that feels like a relationship.

The Friends Who Don't Know Us

The idea dates back to the work of Donald Horton and Richard Wohl in the 1950s. Parasocial relationships describe the one-sided, friendship-like bonds we can develop with media personalities through repeated exposure. The more we see someone and learn about their lives, the more familiar they become. And eventually we can start to feel that we actually know them.

Communication scholars Siyoung Chung and Hichang Cho describe understanding as........

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