I attended the first panel of Networked Narratives last Friday, March 15th. Presenters Warner Stoddart II and Micah Sakado talked about volunteering abroad with various foreign armies and the parasocial relationships created in V-tubing, respectively. At first, I wondered why these two wildly different presenters would be put together. What does volunteering for an army fighting battles that are not your own and engaging with a live stream of a fictional, motion-captured anime character have in common?

Only after their presentations did it occur to me that the common thread between Warner and Micah’s presentations is parasociality.

Thanks to social media, parasociality and parasocial relationships are regarded as symptom of delusion, a malady of the brain. Having a parasocial relationship with a celebrity or a fictional character can be met with at best, disbelief, and at worst, disdain or disgust. Why are these parasocial relationships met with such negative reactions when everyone in some way, shape, or form engages in these relationships? Sports fans buy their favorite athletes’ jerseys and music lovers attend their favorite artists’ concerts, so why the negativity?

Micah redefined a parasocial relationship as an “asymmetrical relationship with critical distance,” rather than a one-sided illusion of a face-to-face relationship. Defining a parasocial relationship as “asymmetrical” removes power from the “one-sided” aspect of the initial definition, as both parties contribute to the relationship in some way but there is considerably more effort being exerted from one side than the other. Micah noticed that the key to having a healthy parasocial relationship is for the individual to recognize that the relationship only evokes the feeling of having the relationship they desire rather than having the actual relationship. His interviewees said that they got into V-tubing because interacting with their favorite V-tuber was “like having a friend” or “like having a crush on someone”–the key thing to note is that these interviewees differentiated between having a friend in real life and a friend through the screen.

Warren, who presented on volunteering for the YPG Kurdish militia and Ukraine, among many other foreign armies, touched very briefly on the volunteers’ motivations for volunteering. For some of them, their reasons for joining were political, but quite a few said they felt a calling to “chase the dragon of combat.” I wanted to ask if there was also an altruistic approach to volunteering for foreign armies that these volunteers took. Did some volunteers feel like this was the best way to help the civilians affected by the terrorist groups? Did they feel a connection to these civilians, despite not knowing them personally? In a way, I can see some form of parasociality in the decision to volunteer.