On August 23rd, 2024, musician and celebrity Chappel Roan released a statement calling out her fans’ alarming behavior. Stalking, nonconsensual contact, and verbal harassment are just a few of the things that celebrities like Roan deal with.
“Please stop touching me. Please stop being weird to my family and friends,” Roan said. “I feel the most unsafe I have ever felt in my life.”
This complex fan behavior stems from the term, parasocial relationship, which, according to Cambridge Dictionary, is a relationship “involving or relating to a connection between a person and someone they do not know personally.”
People can take celebrities’ public perception and decide that they know them personally. Well, I’m here to tell the reader this: you do not know these people. What a celebrity chooses to share online does not make you “worthy” of knowing everything about them.
The obsession that some fans have with knowing everything about a celebrity’s personal life can have real ramifications. Britney Spears, for example, had a highly publicized breakdown in 2007 after being hounded by the public to release details about her personal life. Spears did not owe her fans any insight into her personal life, yet they viewed her as a commodity whose only job was to please the public.
The false sense of closeness fans feel with celebrities creates a false narrative that they are “best friends.” One of the ways that this parasocial behavior has come up recently is through throwing things at celebrities.
On June 19th, 2024, singer Bebe Rhexa posted a photo of her with stitches after being hit in the face. Her concert the night before was cut short after a fan thought it would be funny to throw their phone up at her.
It is unbelievable that this type of behavior is excused as ok because it is being targeted at a celebrity. Throwing things at people is unacceptable, regardless of the item; however, this behavior is even stranger in this context because it is directed at somebody this person does not authentically know.
It is up to us to remember that celebrities are people with real emotions, thoughts, and experiences. We are not required to share every aspect of our lives, so why are celebrities the exception? The answer is simple: they shouldn’t be.
