OpenTube

Criticism in an age of parasocial relationships.

leena norms

42,912 views

00:00 intro
00:23 criticism weighting
04:04 meeting people in person
06:11 you’re parasocialising with your friends
08:43 how friendships changed
11:23 my role on this platform
14:14 why the internet needs nice people
17:22 we are all unknowable
18:50 your homework

Books mentioned:
Scary Smart: The Future of Artificial Intelligence and How You Can Save Our World by Mo Gawdat
Esther is Now Following You by Tanya Sweeney
Melanie Murphy video: What 20 years of relationships taught me a...

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20 Comments

@derdsnibhrian7686 7 days ago

I have thought a lot about friendships being parasocial now. I have a lot of friends who added me on social media as we were getting to know eachother, and the relationship never deepened. Or we drifted away from eachother. Or maybe i was added to a close friends story and never removed. And now i feel wierd because i am able to access so much about them and stay up to date but we never speak. I will frequently update my mum on what old school friends are doing but we havent spoke to eachother in years. It can be really warping. Like how many friends do i have versus people i sort of know online. Also has made it hard to develop my aquaintances as i might know a huge amount about them from their social medias but the number of times we have spoken isnt that many. I find myself wondering if i should ask them about stuff theyve posted or pretend like i didnt see it and try to see if it comes up organically - both feel strange. Learning about a friend through their posts feels like snooping in their drawers when they leave a room, even when its publically posted idk if people always realise who they are posting for

@helenross3037 2 days ago

I've been thinking a lot lately about how many huge channels (Smosh is a good example) have transitioned from "content about things" to "content about the people making the content" which means we genuinely end up knowing more about these complete strangers than we do about our own friends

@cdemi12 11 hours ago

I love the idea that online Leena is our mutual friend! What a great way to reframe parasocial relationships.

@queenoftheverse 4 days ago

Yeah someone once told me "if the only way you know what's going on with your friends is what you read online, you're not their friend, you're just another follower." But even if you get the update from them in person it doesn't mean you're having a meaningful relationship with them. On the other hand I have a friend that I never manage to catch up with because we talk about ideas and concepts and tangents and then go home and realize we haven't shared our basic news.😂

@socpancake 4 days ago

I move countries a lot because of my job in academia, as do a lot of my friends, and so at any moment most of the friendships I'm trying to maintain are long-distance, which is not always easy 🥲 even still, I refuse to use social media to passively absorb knowledge about my friends' lives. catch-up culture is painful, yes, and there's nothing quite having a friend living in the same place as you, so you can run boring errands together and share those inconsequential little moments most of our lives are made up out of. but a nice long video call with a jokey "recent life updates" powerpoint presentation is how we keep each other in the loop -- and it's infinitely more joyful than me learning about your engagement from an instagram story.

@zoeziebee 8 days ago

It’s interesting to think about having para-social relationships with our real-life friends

@mmmsss2443 4 days ago

I do find your videos really useful! You've introduced me to the Women's Prize, and through that, some of my favourite books. I've given up dairy this year, which I'm interpreting as a form of half-arsed veganism. And I've gotten more unapologetic about wearing my favourite colours all the time!

@jayalexandrah 3 days ago

Ahhhh!! That's it! You hit the nail bang on the head, Leena! Social Media is mutating friendships and acquaintanceships into parasocial relationships.... Oh... I really don't like it... What do we do???? This IS something to think about.

@0roseable 3 days ago

The "six dot points about my life" is so relatable. It feels like that is a lot of my friendships - it is catch ups where we chat. But I feel isolated because there aren't people I do life with.

@naomicarter6261 2 days ago

I loved this video Lena! Often, one of my close friendship group (who are all long-distance) will send one of your videos to our chat and then we end up having a really deep and interesting conversation using what you say as a jumping off point. It's lovely because I might have no idea what they did at work that week (or what their actual job is), but I know we are still connecting with each other over values and thoughts and feelings.

As for taking criticism, it's interesting because when I worked a job I hated, it was easy for me to dismiss criticism I received, as I could think "you don't treat me and my job with respect, so I don't always respect your criticism", whereas if a friend critiqued how I acted in a work situation, I would really take it to heart. Then again, if I feel like someone is judging how I look or act in public, I can get really self-conscious - for why?! Who are they to me and my close circle?!

Anywho, thank you as always for prompting interesting thoughts and discussion!

@jessd8357 2 days ago

Having a friend in common is such a good reference for parasocial relationships!

@shae7570 3 days ago

nothing intelligent to offer - this is LOVELY <3

@RebeccaLeeAltamira 3 days ago

friend washing detergent smell is so niche and so true and now that im a parent im becoming aware that the random washing liquid i chose at the supermarket is becoming my kids core childhood smell memory of home

@CatLadyLaura 1 day ago

Jeez Leena, you're always asking the tough questions 😂 I appreciate you making me zoom out of my life ❤

@lottas3561 4 days ago

I found it interesting when you talked about youtube (or other platforms) like church and a sermon we just turn up to listen to and not participate. Because back in the days (was it the platform or was it me??) I used to comment but also participate more in general. With nerdfighteria but also with your channel - I've even just remembered now that I recorded and uploaded a video of me ages ago when you did a series/playlist on bathtub busking and you added everyone to this playlist who made a video busking in their bathtub. woooooah the times have changed (maybe I'm just 31 and not 19). But I also have felt the vibe shift on youtube and the other platforms (even reddit) - basically the only thing that stayed true to itself is Wikipedia. I found a lot of joy, inspiration and information on the internet and I still do in places like your channel. it's been incredibly useful to me. Thank you (and everyone who is reading this, because I also learned so much through reading the comments under your videos). I'm trying to curate my experience, blocking ads, disabling trackers, not using instagram anymore, not using tiktok, no news apps, listening to the news only via a news podcast. But still I feel it's so hard to escape this flood of content for the sake of content. And I'm sick of the parasocial plastic projections of friends or people I once knew. On the one hand I feel I should keep up and on the other I want to escape it all and I feel so much better mentally since I stopped consuming so much.
Criticism and thoughts on how we consume (physically and digitally) are also a HUGE takeaway from your videos. I don't know where I'm going with this, but I think maybe it's time for a new (old) internet free from capitalist bullshit. Thanks anyway for being here and doing what you do since what feels like forever <3

@borzenkam 3 days ago

As a refugee who have migrated twice in the last four years, so I have no idea how to experience life with my old friends. They are all in different places now, we are catching up online ("six bullet points"), but we can't even travel to each other most of the time, because we're from Ukraine/Russia/Israel. We are still handwriting letters to each other though! And also exchange clothes:)

@siansaul4932 2 days ago

At university, I realised I had kind of a parasocial relationship with my friends tutor. They spoke about him a lot so I knew all these stories about the ways he interacted with his students and then I saw him around and said Hi and realised that he didn't know me at all. I think about this with friends of friends or partners of friends or colleagues that I haven't met but hear a lot about.

@littlemisstapdance 2 days ago

Just feeding into the convo because it’s interesting!

Maybe I’m too neurodivergent for this but I don’t necessarily see the issue with para-social friendships or catch up culture. Is that not just adult relationships? In a world before social media, in adult friendships where you also would not be meeting up all the time because you have responsibilities, you’d be catching up.

I guess sometimes I find this conversation is the victim of over thinking. Like, I want to know about my friends lives. We meet, we catch up, we express love, we return to our lives. Sometimes an activity. But that’s just being an adult is it not? If anything socials are great because they free you a bit from the catch up and then you can move on to chat about other stuff if you wanted.

I’m just not fully sure what the fuss is about! Not criticism for you, just on general!