Another month has passed, meaning it’s time for another visit to the LwL virtual coffeehouse.
To start the conversation this month, I want to talk about something that is coming up in my email inbox more and more these days: limerence for people that the limerent doesn’t know in real life.
The term parasocial relationship has gone mainstream in recent years, thanks largely to the massive increase in such one-way connections enabled by the creator economy, and the emergence of influencers, streamers, and – *cough* – bloggers as a new class of quasi-friends.
But, the idea is illusory relationships is much older of course.
Celebrities have always had devoted fans who sometimes struggled to separate fantasy from reality, it’s just that nowadays there are a lot more celebrities and they are a lot more accessible.
When someone livestreams their life in detail, talks about their dreams and trials, shares intimate thoughts, or just shows up every day as a source of familiar “online company”, it’s inevitable that we will feel more connected to them than to a famous film star.
MrBeast – someone quite familiar with attention-getting – commented a little while ago about a charity football match he took part in, where the streamers and YouTuber stars got much bigger cheers from the crowd than the “A list” celebrity guests.
Parasocial relationships are shifting focus from aloof celebrities, to more everyday people chatting directly to their fans.
This creates a fertile opportunity for limerence.
Over the last few months, I’ve heard about all different degrees of parasocial limerence.
Some limerents fall for celebrity LOs, some for local musicians and artists who they get a bit closer to, some become limerent for Onlyfans models, and some – perhaps most dystopian of all – become limerent for AI LOs.
In this last category are both AI “girlfriends” that link a pretty cyber-woman to a flattering chatbot, and limerents who train ChatGPT to impersonate a real-world LO so they can carry on a fantasy conversation with them.
A lot of hope and energy (and money) can be poured into these parasocial limerent objects.
In many cases, there is also a double-addiction aspect to it.
Limerence can become an addictive natural high, but that’s even more likely to happen if it’s coupled to erotic stimuli, arousal, and/or social reward (Chatbots are very good at making you feel heard and understood).
So, that’s the topic for discussion in this edition of coffeehouse.
Have you ever experienced parasocial limerence?
What do you think are the motivating forces?
Will it only get worse as AI improves?
What do we think?
Great topic DrL.
I’m not really into the whole influencer culture, but the issue of “AI LOs” has been discussed a bit in this community before. Some have ventured the opinion that it’s a safer way to navigate an LE. I guess it is in some ways, as it doesn’t drag another person into it.
But I know a few people who are literally giving their lives over to AI, and it’s not going well. One has gone literally mad through it – thrown away his wife, home and job in the space of a year. One talks to it constantly – like we can be having a coffee and he wants AI to be like a third person in the conversation. The one I’m most concerned about is the one who says less about it. I’m pretty sure he has an AI girlfriend. The last thing he said to me about it was how he found AI more empathetic than any human being.
It all feels dystopian to me. Some say it’s just a step on from whatever the previous form of technology was, but to me it feels like something much worse.