For about fifteen years, I listened to a specific podcast every week, to the point where it felt like the hosts were friends. They would interact with their audience via various online methods, and as a part of their online community other people (including the hosts) came to know who I was. I’d never met anyone else from the community — or the hosts — in person, but I felt like I had at the very least a parasocial relationship with the hosts, and regular social relationships with the people in the online community who I talked to every few days.
The show eventually ended when one of the hosts passed away unexpectedly, but I remained part of the online community, which to this day is still going strong. Recently, the son of the host who passed away posted in one of the chats that a fantasy football league his father had been in was looking for new players. I threw my hat in the ring, along with a few others. Several days later, the son (who I will refer to now as the commissioner, because he runs the league) messaged me privately with information on how to join the league and where to send my dues.
As fantasy football leagues continue year-over-year, people become friends — sometimes close friends. This is my first year in this particular league, so I’m stepping into an established group of friends, but I think it will be an interesting way to meet people and talk about something I enjoy — NFL and fantasy NFL football. I didn’t join specifically to become friends with the commissioner, or the surviving host of the podcast, but because I am now part of this group my parasocial relationship with the host may become an actual social relationship, to the point that if I’m ever in town where he lives (or vice versa) we can go out for a beer. I don’t foresee myself becoming best friends with the commissioner or the host (or anyone else in the fantasy football league, some of whom are people I play with in another league that I found through the online community), but it is an interesting study in parasocial relationships becoming social relationships.
Another interesting one is a friend of mine from college, who was on a fairly-popular NBC sitcom, going from extra to named character and actually interacting with the main cast on occasion. I’m sure that, as an actor, he knew about at least the main star of the sitcom, even if he’d never met her in person. Well, now they’ve worked together on a project, and they probably have a social relationship. I’m sure they don’t, like, hang out on a regular basis (especially since my friend no longer lives in California), but I’m willing to bet that, if my friend went to California, he could text the main star and they could go out for a beer and reminisce or catch each other up on what’s going on in their lives. A parasocial relationship that became a social one.
The thing is, when you want to turn a parasocial relationship into a social one, you can’t force it. It has to happen naturally. I didn’t go onto the online community from the podcast that day looking to join a fantasy football league run by the commissioner; I was just checking out what was going on and participating in chats when I found the call for players, and since I like fantasy football, I replied. There was no agenda; there was no ulterior motive. And who knows; maybe if the surviving host of the show comes to Atlanta and I message him, he won’t want to go out for a beer. That’s totally fine. The best social relationships form naturally, whether they start parasocially or not. And if you do pull this off, don’t use the social relationship as a networking tool. I don’t care what LinkedIn posts are saying. If networking happens naturally (maybe my actor friend is in California and the star of the show is going to a party and happens to invite him along) then it happens, but if he hears about a party she’s going to and asks to go… that’s a no-no.
Semi-related story: in the early 2000s I went to Las Vegas, and I happened to get a chance to see George Carlin perform at a comedy club. At the start of the show, he said he was debuting some new material and it wasn’t all done yet, so if he reached the end of a joke that didn’t have a punchline yet “I will make a small bow.”
So this is me making a small bow.
