Source
Archer & Robb (2025), “Ethics of Parasocial Relationships”, LIT-172, read in full in NOTE-186 from the penultimate draft.
What was actually shown
An informal argument in three steps.
- Personal relationships (§1, pp. 2–6). On LaFollette’s criterion, a relationship is personal “inasmuch as each person relates to the other as a unique individual”. Fans relate to celebrities so, with kinship terms and grief. Non-reciprocity and illusory intimacy are answered: unrequited love is personal, and personae are curated but not detached from the person. A weaker fallback is offered, that parasocial relationships share distinctive forms of the paradigmatic features (p. 6).
- The asymmetries (§2, pp. 6–8). Attention: the fan attends to one celebrity, the celebrity to a fanbase. Communication: the celebrity broadcasts; a Twitter sample found no replies from celebrities (Kehrberg 2015). Epistemic: fans know much about the celebrity, the celebrity nothing about the fan. Together these split Cocking and Kennett’s two influences of friendship. Celebrities “do most of the directing”, fans “most of the interpreting” (p. 8).
- The wrong (§3, pp. 8–12). The case is Swift’s 2018 break with her “nice girl” persona and the backlash. Recognition respect is owed to the self a person is “entitled to perform” (p. 10, after Darwall 1977). On Lindemann’s account, identity is co-constituted by one’s stories and others’ uptake, so refusing uptake restricts agency (pp. 10–11), a form of Valentini’s public-identity disempowerment. Mass scale and the asymmetry of exit (fans can leave, celebrities cannot) aggravate it. Fans should “be open to changes in the public persona of their idols” and should “refrain from pressuring celebrities” (pp. 11–12). Misleading or ambiguous self-presentation mitigates their blame (the Paris Hilton case, p. 12). There is no duty to remain a fan (p. 11).
What could have come out otherwise: interpretive influence running from celebrity to fan as much as the reverse, or refused uptake leaving the celebrity’s self-presentation untouched. Only one case is examined.
What this does not say
- What celebrities owe fans. The abstract promises “ethical responsibilities for both fans and celebrities”. The body argues only for fans’ responsibilities, and cites celebrities’ duties from earlier work (NOTE-186, corrections).
- That the identity asymmetry has the effects claimed, in general. The support is celebrity-studies literature and a few documentaries and news cases (Swift, Hilton, Spears, the Olsens). There is no systematic evidence.
- What grounds the entitlement to a presented self. Recognition respect is owed only to a self one is “entitled to perform” (p. 10). What grounds that is left open, which matters most for contested personae.
- That the wrong applies to chatbots or fictional characters. The definition of parasociality admits them (p. 1). The asymmetries plausibly transfer to a user and a chatbot persona. The wrong does not: it is done to a person whose identity and agency can be restricted. Carrying it over needs an argument about AI moral status (compare LIT-126).
- That relationships of power share the wrong. The extension to political leaders, managers, religious leaders and teachers (p. 13) is asserted in the conclusion without analysis.
- That the relationship is “personal” in the full sense. That claim leans on how people talk and shifts the burden of proof (p. 6). The fallback does most of the work.
Connections
- Identity in the practical sense. The account works with who someone is as others track it, not with numerical persistence. THEORY-464 (Dufner, LIT-130) argues that the ethical questions that seem to turn on personal identity usually turn on some other relation. This is a case in which the relation is narrative and social.
- Velleman (THEORY-590) separates the self of self-conception from the self of persistence. Refused uptake, on this account, presses on the first.
- Bunton (LIT-174) asks the converse question about the same 2016–2018 era of celebrity speech: when a celebrity’s speaking out is justified.