Parasocial relationships with celebrities have been growing in popularity due to celebrities posting their daily life online. A parasocial relationship is a one sided connection where a person feels a deep bond with someone they don’t actually know. The main victim of these relationships has been celebrities.
Parasocial relationships can be due to a mental illness where the person seeks comfort and finds that in a celebrity they cherish. These obsessions can be harmless, but can also be very harmful to the person obsessing as well as the person being obsessed over.
While celebrity crushes have been around for a long time, the rise of TikTok in 2020 has taken this behavior to another level. It has gotten to the point that it’s become normalized in today’s society. This should not be the norm because why would you marry someone who’s obsessed with someone else, no matter if they’re a celebrity or not.
Junior Caitlin Sargent said, “I think it’s very inappropriate. Every celebrity has their own lives and most of them are already married and have children, so knowing younger people are admiring them in an inappropriate way is weird.”
The word ‘Stan’ became popular on TikTok referring to an obsessed fan of a celebrity or character which is actually a reference to the song “Stan” by Eminem, released in Nov. 2000. This song refers to a man obsessed with Eminem. He’s so infatuated with Eminem to the extent that he killed himself and his pregnant wife because Eminem wasn’t responding to his letters, when in reality Eminem just didn’t receive them until it was too late.
One real life example of this song is Christinia Grimmie, a singer who became popular due to her covers online, was shot and killed at her meet and greet by an obsessed fan Kevin Loibl, who killed himself soon after. Another example of this is Selena Quintanilla, who was a famous Mexican-American singer, was shot and killed by her former fan club president Yolanda Saldivar. Yolanda was angry that Selena cut ties with her due to Saldivar embezzling funds. Selena was later shot in the back by her “number one fan.”
Although some people find celebrity crushes relatively harmless, a lot of times it affects everybody in the situation. The energy spent obsessing over the celebrity, the discomfort the celebrity could go through, and the potential harm of future partners, gives them the idea that if their partner got the chance to cheat, they would. These issues overpower any potential for positive impact of celebrity crushes.
The sheer time and effort it takes for a person to obsess over someone that they most likely will never meet is pointless and shouldn’t be normalized. It affects the view of romance and relationships in today’s society and puts a bad generalization on the new generation.
