A reoccurring theme in this project is that of the para-social relationship, and in my purely vibes based academics I found that its kinda not real. I know people in my immediate vicinity my relationship with whom is in some way para-social. What is a work friend but someone who you kinda know who you are primarily in contact with through economic reasons? There is an interactivity inherent to the relationship, but even this is dwindling with the advent of online work. If you can't be arsed to find your coworkers socials in such a workplace they may as well be Troye Sivan to you.
Another example of a para-social relationship is that of the old friend. I moved to a bigger city for college last year and found myself drifting away from my old friends. Our interactions are now more and more limited, we see snapshots of each other through occasional meetups and texts. We see glimpses of each others lives, much like how I would see glimpses of the life of an artist through interfacing with their art.
I find that some people in academia and the arts are incredibly email-able. I've found that most artists or academics would come back to me if I have a question about their work, with a few exceptions. Namely pop cultural icons. This is obviously a numbers game, but this is also where we start applying the para-social label.
One of my favourite artists and one of the most interesting artists working today, CJ the X is very concerned with parasociality, they have a thing on their patreon called "social non-para" and they have an entire video ripping into an internet comment asking for them to tour their live show in the commenters city(they are justified in making this video response, I missed several of their shows because of work and I'm not moaning at them about it, just disappointed). They are antagonistic toward their audience, I recently heard them recently say in an interview that they discourage audience interactions at their shows. CjtheX is doing a bit though, right, "I hate my audience" is the brand. CJ repeatedly says that they do what they do what they do because its best for the art, but I cant stop questioning whether this aggressive enforcement of the artist audience divide is best for the art simply because it adds to the brand or because of something more.*
I find the idea that a para-social relationship being based on a disparity of knowledge of each other to be uncompelling. I found that people have different levels of openness and talkativeness, and this just naturally results in "normal"/non-para-social relationships with large disparity of knowledge about each other.
A few weeks ago, someone who I don't know and don't have any mutuals with contacted me on the instagram page I set up to advertise this blog. He said that he stumbled on my website and liked it, it seemed like a legit person. The message means a lot to me and I responded a short thank you to him, but I think I get it now. I'm incredibly happy that this person liked my work, but I don't feel like I want to know more about him, and that's ok.
A para-social relationship could then be defined as a relationship based on a disparity of interests rather than a disparity of knowledge. This does beg the question though; Do I have a para-social relationship with my employer? Do I have a para-social relationship with my landlord? Are class relations para-social?
I realise I haven't explained my absence from my blog, and I kinda don't need to, but I've wanted to to a blogpost explaining the blog, and now is a better time than ever I guess.
I started this blog for two main reasons, the first is that I found that I got too ambitious in too many of my creative projects and I wanted to release something in the world so I could show people who asked what art I've made(not that anybody has lmao) this project. It was created to be over when I felt it was right to retire the project and I was going to be flexible in form, content and commitment without sacrificing amount of work published. The second was that I was simply at a loose end, I was working over the summer but wanted something low commitment to keep producing creative work.
There are another few blogposts I started which I still want to make, but after that I'm thinking of retiring the project. What form that would take is up in the air, but I was thinking of collecting and annotating the posts in a book. If you would be interested in this, do genuinely reach out to me(@plsgetoffthisfuckingapp on intsagram), despite what I said in this very blogpost.