duck&cover  - 2020-10-24
Many, many lonely people out there.
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simon666 - 2020-10-24
So first I thought: What the hell is this 2 hour video essay?
But it seems to be pretty good! I've been skipping around a bit, from what I can tell one (the only?) thesis is that youtube personalities are filling the role of friends or pseudo-friends and viewers react to the connect they feel by getting stalky.
Two things came to mind: First, I was reminded of that guy who has had a dream to meet Drew Barrymore his hole life, then created a documentary about trying to meet her, in which he created fake Oscar badges and snuck in; it ends with him finally meeting her--Drew agrees, I guess--and it is basically a let down. She was polite, they just have a brief awkward talk then it's over.
Second, and maybe a romantic counter-point, I'm not sure it's always bad to reach out to celebrities because you're interested in them in some way. Showing up to a person's house is clearly wrong. But there is this kind of romantic story about the author of Black Elk Speaks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Elk_Speaks), John Neihardt who married as woman who fancied him. Neihardt was a poet and a woman who fell in love with his poetry and him to some degree wrote him, they started corresponding, and got married eventually. That seems sweet, so hopefully we can figure out how to negotiate respecting boundaries, not being stalkers, etc. in this new digital life, while also figuring out how to allow for romantic stories like that every no and again. I duno, maybe it's too creepy.
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Miss Henson's 6th grade class - 2020-10-24 People who want to talk to celebrities aren't always disappointed. Apparently Ian MacKaye from Minor Threat/Fugazi was inspired by the fact that when he was writing a book report in high school on "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," he looked Ken Kesey's number up and found that it was listed. He called Ken up on his farm in Oregon, chatted for a while about his book, and, a little while later, started a rock band.
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Nominal - 2020-10-25 All great events in life end with "a little while later, he started a rock band".
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Old_Zircon - 2020-10-25 You should watch it, it's pretty good. It's about a lot more than that. Parasocial relationships are something that has been studied intensely for decades (like, back to WWII at least, one of the big 1940s studies is mentioned in the video but I think there was already stuff being published in the 30s) and there's a pretty vast body of academic work about them but it's only the last year or two that I've heard any kind of limited public talk about them. This is mainly about how information technology has made them even more common and intense, and how the economics of social media incentivizes them in ways that they weren't before. It's good.
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Two Jar Slave - 2020-10-26
I'm para with all y'all!
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