A bizarre modern social trend has been named Word of the Year by one of the world’s most prestigious universities.
The University of Cambridge announced the selection of “parasocial” for the Cambridge Dictionary honor this week.
The term is defined as ‘involving or relating to a connection that someone feels between themselves and a famous person they do not know, a character in a book, film, TV series, etc, or an artificial intelligence’.
Cambridge University Press & Assessment, the publisher of the Cambridge Dictionary, said that the year was marked by interest in the one-sided parasocial relationships that people form with celebrities, influencers and AI chatbots.
The public’s obsession and personal investment in the relationship and engagement of music superstar Taylor Swift and Kansas City Cheifs tight end Travis Kelce is a prime example of the phenomenon, experts say.
‘Parasocial’ is one of several AI-related words that were added or updated in the Cambridge Dictionary this year. The Cambridge Dictionary website is seeing spikes in lookups for ‘parasocial,” school officials said.
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“Parasocial is the perfect Word of the Year,” Simone Schnall, Professor of Experimental Social Psychology at the University of Cambridge said. “The rise of parasocial relationships has redefined fandom, celebrity and, with AI, how ordinary people interact online.
“We’ve entered an age where many people form unhealthy and intense parasocial relationships with influencers. This leads to a sense that people ‘know’ those they form parasocial bonds with, can trust them and even to extreme forms of loyalty. Yet it’s completely one sided.”
However, the term isn’t new and dates to 1956 when University of Chicago sociologists Donald Horton and Richard Wohl observed television viewers engaged in ‘para-social’ relationships with on-screen personalities.
TV was the initial cause of the phenomenon, which has been expanded and intensified with the development of social media.
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