pArasociaL (O New agE)
for trombone and electronics
Commissioned by: a consortium led by Colin Babcock
Work completed: November 2020
Duration: 6'
Difficulty: Advanced
pArasociaL (O New agE) reckons with a unique societal symptom of modern digital media: parasocial relationships. Simply put, these are one-sided relationships marked by the attraction that content consumers may feel towards the media personas they’re exposed to. This can take many forms in our age, including those between a YouTube personality and the channel’s fanbase; a Twitch streamer and their audience; an Instagram or TikTok figure and their admirers. More broadly, this is a key facet of celebrity culture, pop culture, and extreme political fanaticism.
Parasocial relationships are not intrinsically negative. On any platform, the collective fanbase can be a powerful community of like-minded individuals with a space to express themselves and be accepted. In a survey, 40% of millennial YouTube subscribers claimed that their favorite creators understood them better than their friends; and, really, I believe most of us can name a creator or artist whose work has lifted us out of our darkest days.
But left unchecked, these relationships can become sinister. Streaming sites (most famously Twitch) deal with issues where audience members expect friendship, attention, or romance in return for donations and loyalty, while streamers are only aware of the depersonalized list of usernames on screen, the collective “chat”. Celebrities in any medium are unaware of the individual existences of their most diehard fans, while those fans may feel deeply emotionally invested in the press surrounding those celebrities. In the most extreme cases, fans have turned their feelings into stalking, obsession, and even murder attempts.
This strange duality of media consumption - sometimes a source of comfort, sometimes a corrupter of the social self - has come more strongly to the fore during the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Already, people tend to largely filter what they put online (for good reason); now, these façades comprise the majority of what we consume on a daily basis. Social media algorithms compound this issue by prioritizing the user’s attention over the quality of their experience. I’m not the sort of person to approach the Internet with total cynicism, but I’m acutely aware of the fine line between perception and reality amidst an epidemic of loneliness.
The piece takes a panoramic view of this phenomenon, moving from one extreme to the other. Warm, bright tones characterize the opening section, a reflection on comfort. As the momentum picks up and new ideas are introduced, a sense of digitized corruption slowly takes hold, like a dance where one person can’t quite keep up with the other. The line between human and machine is gradually blurred. Ultimately, the opening material is revisited, but in a twisted and deeply unsettling light.
Recommended YouTube viewing on parasocial relationships:
“There is No Algorithm for Truth - with Tom Scott” by The Royal Institution (starting at 33:37)
“The Parasocial Problem with Livestreaming” by Glink
Commissioning consortium: