Hello everyone, I hope you are doing great here and irl. While I was browsing the art forum threads I stumbled across a thread called "Your most *controversial* art? in which people are encouraged to share their most controversial works or talk about their past experiences with their controversial works. One of the comments caught my interest because it showed a clear examples of effects of parasocial interactions that can turn into parasocial relationships.

What are parasocial interactions? They are a kind of psychological relationship experienced by an audience in their mediated encounters with performers in the mass media, particularly on television and on online platforms. Viewers or listeners come to consider media personalities as friends, despite having no or limited interactions with them. With social media this is enhanced because, social media introduces additional opportunities for parasocial relationships to intensify due to the more opportunities for intimate, reciprocal, and frequent interactions between the user and persona.

The term was first described from the perspective of media and communication studies. In 1956, Horton and Wohl explored the different interactions between mass media users and media figures and determined the existence of a parasocial relationship (PSR), where the user acts as though they are involved in a typical social relationship (1).

However do not think that PSI were born with mass media, they trace back in ancient times, when a person would establish a bond with political figures, gods or even spirits:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190307223332/http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e7dc/325264aed0fedb0205e1242724b8cb7d7200.pdf

Since then, the term has been adopted by psychologists in furthering their studies of the social relationships that emerge between consumers of mass media and the figures they see represented there. Horton and Wohl suggested that for most people, parasocial interactions with personae complement their current social interactions, while also suggesting that there are some individuals who exhibit extreme parasociality, or they substitute parasocial interactions for actual social interactions (2).

However Perse and Rubin, in 1989, contested this idea, finding that parasocial interactions occurred as a natural byproduct of time spent with media figures (3).

Don't get me wrong parasocial interactions can have positive consequences such as identity formation and learning through media, but they do have negative consequences:

body image

A study was conducted to examine the relationship between media exposure and adolescents' body image. Specifically, researchers looked at parasocial relationships and the different motivations for self-comparison with a character. This study surveyed 391 7th and 8th grade students and found that media exposure negatively predicted body image. In addition to the direct negative impact, the study indicated that parasocial relationships with favorite characters, motivations to self-compare, and engagement in social comparison with characters amplified the negative effects on kids' body images. Furthermore, the researchers found that making social comparisons with favorite characters distorted actual, or ideal, body image and self-perception. Studies have been done exploring these effects of negative self-perception and body image across both male and female students:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320069675_Body_Image_Perceptions_Do_Gender_Differences_Exist

another study examined the parasocial relationships between men and superheroes; the study looked at muscular versus non-muscular superheroes and men who either did or did not develop a one-sided psychological bond with a superhero character. The results from this study indicated a significant impact on body image, particularly when exposed to muscular superhero characters. Research conducted by Ariana F. Young, Shira Gabriel, and Jordan L. Hollar in 2013 showed that men who did not form a parasocial relationship with a muscular superhero had poor self-perception and felt negative about their bodies after exposure to the muscular character. However, if the men had a PSR with the superhero, the negative effects on body satisfaction were eliminated (4).

And don't get me start with beauty filters on social media

unrealistic life expectations

There is research that has been done that highlights the negative role that parasocial relationships play in a person's own self esteem about their personal life. Often times, a person forms a parasocial relationship with a celebrity or influencer because of their personality and the seemingly appealing life that the person lives. Studies show that depression and a decrease in self-esteem can often occur in these relationships due to the person comparing their own life to the potentially unrealistic portrayal of the celebrity's life. This makes me think about the importance of thinking not twice but 1000 times before posting stuff that can affect negatively others if you are an influencer or celebrity...

People ignore that most celebrities and influencers hide the negative aspects of their life from public view.

aggression

A study done by Keren Eyal and Alan M. Rubin examined aggressive and violent television characters and the potential negative impacts they may have on viewers. The study was based on social cognitive theory and looked at trait aggression in viewers and identification and parasocial interaction with aggressive characters. The researchers measured trait aggression in each of the participants and compared that to the level of identification with aggressive characters. The study found that more aggressive viewers were more likely to identify with aggressive characters and further develop parasocial relationships with the aggressive characters (5).

Parasocial interaction has been linked to psychological attachment theory and its consequences have seen the same dramatic effects as real relationship breakups. In considering the relationship between parasocial interaction and attachment styles, Jonathan Cohen found that individuals who were more attached to certain television and media programs tended to be more invested in parasocial relationships. These parasocial interactions use similar psychological thought processes that are often used in real-life personal relationships.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0265407504041374?journalCode=spra

It is a very one-sided relationship. But despite the distress that media consumers experienced after a parasocial breakup was quite similar to that of a social relationship, the emotional distress experienced after the parasocial breakup was weaker than that of the real life interpersonal relationship.

Social media is designed to be a new channel through which parasocial interaction/relationship can be formed. Research has shown that interacting with individuals through blogs and social media can influence the perceptions of those individuals. As Internet users become more active on social media platforms, followers often feel more engaged with them, making the parasocial relationships stronger. And this leads to another problem that arises with parasocial interactions: the fake image a person creates around the person they think to have a relationship with.

This is what happened to the person who commented on the thread. People who follow her fabricated a mental image of her and her art as innocent and innocent-looking, they attached her a sticker, a category from which she cannot escape or she will ruin their fake images of her and her art.

Her art is mostly everyone-oriented but this doesn't prevent her from drawing more adult oriented stuff and she has all the right to do so, she explained it well in the forum thread. This is a clear example of negative effects of parasocial interactions, just because a person mainly draws a specific theme or themes, it doesn't mean they are not allowed to go out their usual zone.

And this brings to what made me want to write this journal. Now that you briefly know what parasocial interactions are and their effects (I don't want to dig in depth not to make this blog too long), I want to clarify what I want to do with my art here. The first thing I did was to create personal collections of my own works to make navigation of my artworks more easily accessible to the viewer and follower, and to help myself to keep track of what I do in order not get lost in my creations one I hit big numbers (+200 works i.e.):

As you may have noticed my art tend to be for most part E-rated with innocent-looking characters but I also have pieces that are marked as T or even M because I love exploring darker themes and I like drawing gore stuff sometimes as way to both study blood and how it works on different materials and surfaces, and to sublime negative emotions I may experience due to real life stuff. So to everyone who follows me, especially minors, be prepared that I can post bloody pieces, delicate topics or dark themes along with my more light-hearted and silly content.

This artwork for example was a huge emotional relief because I was experiencing a really annoying event that even made me lose appetite for four days straight:

This piece is also tame compared to what I can draw, but I tend to mark as T blood pieces, weapons used in combat situations, minor violence, light-themed innuendos and trivial language while I mark as M everything that is more extreme. Now I don't think I will post A stuff and by A I mean everything marked as M but ten thousand heavy in terms of themes. I won't post sexual NSFW stuff because it's not my thing and it would be very tame (sorry to disappoint all horny people here ;P, jk), similar to Kunaigirl's adult-oriented works because those times I drew sexual works it always involved tenderness, affection, cuddles, kisses and never vulgar horniness. Only exception to this personal rule of mine are artistic nudes because I consider them works of art since the human body is a natural work of art to admire and appreciate.

So yeah, you have been warned about what you are about to see here, mostly SFW stuff but sometimes I need to explore more dark waters. And remember that you can toggle filters in order to avoid seeing more mature stuff, so if you see something you don't want and you didn't even pay attention to disable said filter, it's all your fault then. I always turn off adult filter when I want to enjoy some fanarts or movies in the Portal. See you next time and have a nice day/evening!

References and footnotes

(1) Horton, D.; Wohl, R. (1956). "Mass communication and para-social interaction: Observation on intimacy at a distance". Psychiatry. 19 (3): 215–229. doi:10.1080/00332747.1956.11023049. PMID 13359569

(2) Ibidem

(3) Perse, Elizabeth; Rubin, Rebecca (1989). "Attribution in social and parasocial relationships". Communication Research. 16 (1): 59–77. doi:10.1177/009365089016001003. S2CID 145109069

(4) Young, Ariana F.; Gabriel, Shira; Hollar, Jordan L. (January 2013). "Batman to the rescue! The protective effects of parasocial relationships with muscular superheroes on men's body image". Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 49 (1): 173–177. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2012.08.003

(5) Eyal, Keren; Rubin, Alan M. (January 2003). "Viewer Aggression and Homophily, Identification, and Parasocial Relationships With Television Characters". Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. 47 (1): 77–98. doi:10.1207/s15506878jobem4701_5. S2CID 143790982