CROSSOVER

A species that has spent fifteen thousand years being selected partly for forming attachment to one particular ape.

A regular assembled audience for a figure who addresses them, in a building, on a schedule, for years.

A person who hears the specifics, performs the ritual, and knows the family history, on a repeating cycle.

Performing a self until the self holds, where it can be witnessed. Margery Kempe in white clothes in a world where widows wore black, weeping loudly in public for years, having decided she was going to be a specific kind of person.

A room of people responding to a performance, learning the timing of the person on the stage.

An adult with authority over a child for years, who is remembered partly by how they made them feel at nine.

A named individual with access to your home, your deposits and your address, met in person, repeatedly, under stress.

An authority figure seen daily, for years, who knows your name, your mood and your home situation.

One person on your own television, in your own town, for twenty years, who is leaving and everybody is upset.

Someone whose kitchen light you can see, whose bin day you know, and whose life you have been tracking for years without ever having asked.

A person who recognises you, remembers what you wanted, and has the right thing behind the counter when you come back.

A sales clerk who remembered. Not a recommendation engine, not a loyalty points balance - a person who noticed what you had looked at and had the right thing ready when you came back.

Support for a politician structured as a personal bond rather than a policy preference, in a way that transfers poorly across candidates.

A long-running body of work from Rubin and colleagues, repeatedly finding that people form parasocial bonds with news anchors, and that the strongest predictor of which anchor they bond with is not the anchor's performance.

The person who knows you is also the person who profits from you, and is paid to be there, and goes home at six. The relationship has an employer.

A working vocabulary for grief over a public figure, drawn from bereavement practice, used without qualification.

The difference between being known by somebody who was paying attention on purpose and being modelled by a system that has your history. Same information, different relationship.

A voice assistant on every phone, addressing the user by name, knowing the user's calendar, and present in the home.

Attachment to somebody we are not supposed to have feelings about: the teacher, the landlord, the local news anchor, the doctor's receptionist, the AI assistant that has read everything typed. The category no fandom site will admit exists.

Whether a bond to somebody who does not know you exists can be a rights question at all.

A system holding your calendar, your messages, your health questions and your voice, in a private conversational register.