c. 600 BC
Pygmalion
MYTH
Fell in love with his own sculpture. The statue was never the point - the work was. Two thousand years before anybody called it anything.
Figures · the people holding the sphere
Who does the holding
Every parasocial bond needs something on the other end, whether or not it can hold anything back. These are the ones that keep turning up, from a sculptor to a face on a webcam.
1438
Margery Kempe
HISTORY
Performed a self in public until it held: white clothes, loud weeping, a whole town watching. The founding document of this entire site, and the reason I did my master's thesis on her.
1997
Dorothea
FILM
Several hundred children, all of them calling one girl by one name, none of whom knew she was a machine. She was the most parasocial figure in cinema and she was never real.
1980
Pee-wee Herman
TV
A man in a red bow tie who knew the audience's names better than they did, and who could switch it off completely. Proof the bond is a performance and the performance is a skill.
1963
Dionne Warwick
MUSIC
Received fan mail by the sackful and answered it by name for years. The first celebrity whose relationship with the public was genuinely reciprocal, which makes her the exception that proves the rule.
1999
Charlie Kaufman
FILM
Sat in a chair on a talk show and told the whole country he was worried about people. Millions of people believed him completely, immediately, about nothing.
2014
A Twitch emote
INTERNET
A face on a streamer's webcam, given a name, given feelings, and now used by strangers to express things they cannot say to anyone they know.
Want the argument for the whole thing? The history course → · The ten aisles →