So you know when you really like a TV, book or movie character? Or when you are startled to remember that you've never actually met those YouTube vloggers? When your last five significent emotional reactions were because of things that never really happened, to people that don't really exist.
Psychologists call this phenomenon 'parasocial relating'. My family calls it "what Belle does."
I'm about to take my first steps into real life. Moving out of home, starting Law School. So this blog's about me, trying to handle the mess of reality while I'd rather be fighting alongside Buffy in Sunnydale, learning spells in Hogwarts or even dating one of those genuinely attractive vloggers who live about fifteen time zones away. My quick gripe today is about them.
It is SO EASY to forget that they are not your friends, that they are not chatting directly to you, and that you've never been in their living rooms. Their personal style is a nightmare for people who struggle with the blurring of fantasy and reality. And yet every day I'm on youtube, checking what mad thing charlieissocoollike has done now.
A few weeks ago I was lying on a double matress on the floor, watching italktosnakes deliver her review of Deathly Hallows-Part 1 on youtube. She had made her video in bed. While watching it slowly dawned on me that it felt exactly like we were chatting while sleeping over together instead of parasocially relating. I shut the video in horror, freaked out by how vivid the feeling was, and then I called someone real and talked to them until I felt like I had a life again.
I am drowning in the goo of the Glee Christmas episode at present. Even for a dedicated fan, this is too much. Except for Kurt/Blaine singing together. I ship them madly. Incidentally I ship passionately and often and in everything that has more than one character, which is basically everything but Castaway.
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