I want to start this letter by saying thank you. I haven’t said it enough, I know. I just don’t think I can ever put into words how much people reading (and paying) to read me means to me. I’ve been so overwhelmed by the number of people who have subscribed in the last three months to All Over The Place, my literal baby, whom I love dearly, that it’s made me doubt everything I write and the true value of my craft. Crazy, right? How the human brain works is beyond me, but I guess that’s why I write. To attempt understanding it.

Anyhow, 37k is a crazy number, and I just wanted to let you know that even if I don’t always reply to your comments, I am reading all of them, and I am extremely thankful for all of you.

I don’t believe numbers are representative of talent, so I don’t let them get to my head. Instead I keep trying to get better with every new thing I write.

These last couple of weeks I’ve been reflecting a lot about parasocial relationships, especially when it comes to people in creative fields trying to grow an online presence. It all started when

After reading it, I started to think about all the ways in which artists, celebrities, and anything that exists in between are forced to create parasocial relationships with people who support them to make sure the support doesn’t waver and to be able to profit from what they do.

Questions like, If I ever want to make writing a stable income, must I build an online community? Do I need to pretend I want to be everyone’s friend for people to want to read me? How do I become the people’s princess? are ever present in my mind. Even when I know the answers to them, I keep trying to convince myself that maybe if I try harder, I could learn how to care about these things.

But it wouldn’t be genuine because the truth is, all I want to do is write.

Whether it is financially or emotionally, people who create need to feel rewarded. We crave it. Anyone who says they don’t care is lying to us and themselves. Just as the artist yearns for their work to be recognized, those who support the artist want a piece of the cake too. They want to feel appreciated for all the time, money, and energy they’ve spent supporting their favorite singer, writer, actor, etc.

The symbiotic relationship between writer and reader, singer and fan, and artist and critic is one that persists through time. One that I have been a part of for many years. First as the fan, and now as the writer. Although, I guess I’m still a fan. Maybe just the diet version of it.

I’ve been a part of more fandoms than I can remember. Some I will never publicly admit I was part of, and some that I still think about warmly—I was a Disney Channel kid obsessed with Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, and Demi Lovato. A JB- and 1D-obsessed tween. A Taylor Swift fan. A Twilight, The Hunger Games, and The Shadowhunter Chronicles fan, and many more that I don’t care enough to mention.

At fourteen I became a Stan. Not only did I enjoy watching and listening to these people. I paid attention to everything they did beyond their work. I was obsessed with what they wore, who they hung out with, what they ate, and what places they frequented. I started following update accounts that would tell me exactly everything I wanted to know. In my mind, if I didn’t know what day and hour they were born, what their favorite food was, and who they had beef with, then I was a poser, and there was nothing worse than being a fake fan at that age.

When I was fifteen, I started taking my multi-fandom Twitter account seriously. I tweeted religiously every day and connected with other people on the internet over our shared interests. One of the best things that that godforsaken app left me was a group of internet friends I consider my real friends even though we have never been in the same room. We met on a group chat of “stydia” stans formed by teens from all over south america. In the beginning there were 30 of us. Now it’s just four, and we speak almost every day.

Looking back, sharing with strangers online personal information and details about my life wasn’t my brightest idea, but having something we were all equally passionate about led us to a decade-long friendship that saved me from jumping off a bridge countless times.

In many different ways, I have experienced what being a dedicated fan means— not sleeping to vote so my favorite artist could win an award they probably didn’t care about, watching all of their interviews in hopes of learning personal things about them, following accounts that updated their every move, crying at their wins and losses, defending them from people who didn’t understand them, and loving them regardless of their shortcomings and transgressions.

When I think about how I acted I see clear signs of psychosis, but I guess that’s just what growing up with unrestricted access to the internet does to your tween brain.

Despite the crazy amount of fandoms I was part of. No one, and I mean no one, has made being a fan feel better than Taylor Swift.

From an early age, Taylor understood that fans were the backbone of any artist's career, and she cared for that relationship like her firstborn. I guess Swifties, in a way, were her first child, one she was very protective of. From songs written about fans to free meet & greets to comments and direct messages on Tumblr to secret invites to her houses to listen to her upcoming albums before the GP, Taylor has managed to be as parasocial about her fans as her fans are about her.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the only reason she behaves (used to?) like this with fans is because of her benevolence and good heart. Making her fans feel this special has always been a part of her and her team’s strategy to keep the fandom happy and engaged. At least until she got too famous and inviting strangers into her house became a security problem too big to deal with.

Maybe a part of me always knew this, but I didn’t care. For years I followed her every move, I learned and dissected all of her lyrics, and found comfort in her. I was proud of being her fan; I carried that badge with honor. I stuck with her even in her lowest moments (2016) because I always knew who she was. Even now, more mature and conscious, I can still see her for who she is.

Taylor has never been afraid to show that she wants to be the best. She is not ashamed of her hunger. She knows what she wants, and she is not scared to get it. I always admired that about her.

She has also disappointed me more times than I can remember. I don’t hold it against her, though. It was my fault for thinking that a billionaire was my best friend.

Regardless of how I feel about the present, I wouldn’t take back any of the time I spent obsessing over her. She was the best soundtrack of my teens and early twenties, and a part of me will always love her as an artist. The intensity of that love has decreased, and I don’t feel as proud to call myself a fan of hers as I would’ve five years ago.

It’s not that I’m embarrassed to say I listen to her music almost daily. But being associated with Swifties sends shivers down my spine. A while ago, some fans of Taylor started calling themselves “independent fans” because being paired with people who call minorities slurs, care about awards like their life depends on it, and think anyone doing work in the same vein as Taylor are copycats is embarrassing. Especially if you are past the age of 20.

Not that I think being a fan past 20 is embarrassing. It depends. Are you a fan, or are you a fan? Do you think of celebrities as your friends? Do you think they owe you things? Do you have anything/anyone else in your life that brings you comfort?

When talking about the benefits of parasocial relationships, people usually mention they can make people feel less lonely and bring comfort into their lives, which I did experience when I was knee deep into fangirlism. But it stopped working after I gained more consciousness and realized it wasn’t fair to me or to them. I was holding them to standards that they would ultimately fail to meet, and I just got tired of feeling disappointed.

Just yesterday I experienced one of those occasions in where a celebrity you really like and admire says something that makes you go, “oh, that’s not…”

In her Rolling Stone interview, Lorde said, “I found it to be so beautiful. And maybe it’s fucked up that I watched it, but I saw two people that were so in love with each other, and there was this purity. They were jumping off this big boat.… They were like children. They were so free. And I just was like, ‘Whoa. Being this free comes with danger,” about the Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee sex tape.

The minute I read it, my heart dropped. I thought, “not you too, ella.” But again, that’s on me for expecting people I don’t know irl to have the same set of values that I have. I don’t know if she is trying to be this edgy, sleazy woman with her upcoming album after the reception of Solar Power. Maybe she thought mentioning this will make her appear as an easy going slightly controversial but cool person. But it feels out of character. It just goes to prove that we truly will never know who these people are.

I’m not sure when it happened exactly, but I do remember that around three years ago I started feeling more and more let down by the way people I admired behaved. With time, I just stopped caring about what they did and who they were with. I didn’t care if they won any awards or that their album was flopping. They were just people who sometimes did stuff I deeply resonated with, and who sometimes said stupid shit.

I love music, books, and films, and I will forever be a nerd about the process of creating them, which means I will still care deeply about people who make the art I enjoy. I do wonder how representative the art they make is to who they are. I guess that’s a completely different conversation I don’t feel the need to get into right now, but it does make me think that we should all find a middle ground of loving what someone did and being normal about who did it.

Being on the fan/supporter side of a parasocial relationship has given me understanding onto why people on the internet are demanding thoughtful comments from the writers they follow. But being on the side of the writer who sometimes can’t respond to every comment makes me understand celebrities a bit better.

It’s one thing to want to be acknowledged and rewarded for the support you give someone, and a whole different thing to demand it. Check yourself and your priorities before you come into the internet looking like an old man yelling at clouds.

If you want to read more about my thoughts on our relationships with celebrities you might like these:

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