Recommendations of the editorial team
We long for escapism. How differently could it be explained that every news platform and every feature ply feel about the separation and upcoming divorce of the podcaster and influencer Marie Nasemann and Sebastian Tigges? While I scroll through my Instagram feed, I see two new pieces, from the world, of the Titanic-and now, Well, too. But Hear Me Out: I think nobody really deals with these two people and about losing the belief in love. Even with those who were apparently fans and are now calling for their relationship and love, I don’t think that it is really about the end of this relationship between two people in public life. But about running away from our reality. Before war, violence and destruction in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine. Before messages such as “In the USA, the body of a brain dead woman is artificially ventilated and fed so that the fetus can continue to grow in her stomach, even though the family does not want it” and “US government is planning to start a TV show in which migrants are fighting for citizenship”. Before impending AfD election victories in a few months if the CDU does not tear itself on the strap. Before criminalization of protesting any kind and right -wing structures in security authorities. And of course in front of a new Chancellor who claims that we all have to work more if a very, many people are already far beyond their limits and still hardly make ends meet.
You like to flee into a parasocial relationship and invite them with excessive importance: These people accompany my day with their podcast, with their content on Instagram and Tiktok, they are in our feed, which flattened all relationships and lifts it on a level, right next to our friends and at some point, even if we do not want to admit it intellectually, feel like friends. Even if they are not. Even if you have no plan of our existence.
The problem of parasocial relationship is not new, not even for this column – we remember the small scandal it caused when Chappell Roan told her fans previous year that sometimes she would also like to have a private life. Now The Weeknd has made an entire feature film about it: “Hurry up Tomorrow” – the film for the album, which was released in January, is now running in the cinema. After the shot in the oven, which was his series “The Idol”, he does not want to have the acting and films written. So now a feature film in which a musician who happens to be called The Weeknd with an artist name and abel with a bourgeois name meets a super fan and, without spoiling too much, experiences a horror trip.
Is it a good film? At least he is not as bad as “The Idol”, but it doesn’t really make sense either. But that doesn’t really matter, because I am concerned with one of the most absurd, but also on a kind of clever scenes: the fan, played by Jenna Ortega, dances through the room and interprets songs from the Weeknds Oeuvre down to the last detail, invites you to with her own meanings, with kitchen psychological analyzes of the psyche of our Heartbroken artist. And that? Looks irritated and a little pissed. What does this person want? Why does she think she is entitled to him, his time, on his energy? And why does she think she knows him better than himself?
We actually know it: just because someone is supposed to authenticity, intimacy, openness, closeness, that does not mean that we really know them that we have a relationship with each other. That we could be friends who list their similarities if we only collapse at some point. It does not necessarily mean that performance is a lie, but only a small excerpt of a whole life. In really bad cases, this parasocial, admiring relationship can lead to abuse of power, just think of cases like Diddy who is currently in court, or Arcade Fire, who got into the charts with their comeback album as if nothing had happened.
Perhaps this is understandable: if the performance is really good, you can forget that it is only a performance and just a neckline. Doesn’t everyone know that: r also a little bit? If you feel really seen from a Kendrick Lamar track? If you think he also speaks about your own reality, even if you are not a black man in Compton, but maybe a white woman in Schöneberg?
I think we have to be more gracious with our urge to read deep emotional closeness into parasocial, one -sided relationships. More gracious with these objects of our desire, which are only normal people. But also more gracious with ourselves, which we interpret so much into these relationships, because we may try to cope with the brutal reality out there.