The vast majority of podcasts are independent productions: they’re created by a small team—maybe even just one person—and they’re funded by either the creator, the fans, or a mix of the two. They can also be made from anywhere, including the creator’s own home. This means that, at least right now, there’s no one physical location where podcast creators tend to flock to create and work on shows; there’s no podcasting equivalent to Los Angeles or New York City. But people are people, and people crave community, and people crave connections. Lacking a physical space to socialize with each other, it seems only natural that the field would find an online space to congregate. That space, for better or worse, is Twitter.

By nature of being a social media website, Twitter makes us feel like we’re friends with everyone we follow. Even if someone we follow doesn’t follow us back, we still feel on some level as if we’re friends. But… we’re not. We can’t be. Personally, I follow over 800 Twitter accounts. There is no possible way for me to be close friends with every single person I follow. But if we know logically that it’s impossible for us to be friends with everyone we follow, why do we feel like we are?

Because of the casual nature of Twitter, many people feel like everybody they follow is their friend, particularly when that person follows them back.

The answer: parasocial relationships. Parasocial relationships are any relationship wherein one person feels affection for, interest in, and even devotion to somebody who has no idea that they exist; or, if they do, views them as a passing acquaintance rather than a true friend. For an in-depth examination on how podcasting breeds this, I highly recommend Wil Williams’ article “Podcasters Are People: The Intimacy of Medium vs. Parasocial Relationships”.  (Disclosure: Wil Williams is the managing editor for Discover Pods.)

Most people you follow probably do not consider you their close, personal friend. Unless you’ve had multiple lengthy, private conversations with them, they probably only consider you a stranger; at best, maybe a professional colleague. Even if you have talked with them at length, some people only consider a select few people true friends, which is perfectly within their right. There’s nothing wrong with just being somebody’s colleague. It doesn’t mean they dislike you, it just means they’re not close to you. 

But Twitter is a social media website with a distinctly casual feeling to it; a website where people are just as likely to post about what they’re having for dinner or what their dog did today as they are about their professional endeavors. Unfortunately, this makes it a great venue to create and encourage unhealthy parasocial relationships. Because of the casual nature of Twitter, many people feel like everybody they follow is their friend, particularly when that person follows them back. And when you’re in a field where it’s easy to directly interact with the people whose work you admire—and even to receive a response from them—that feeling gets even stronger. After all, you follow that person. You like their work, and maybe they’ve tweeted something nice about something you worked on. You’ve interacted in tweet replies on Twitter. Maybe you’ve even chatted in a Discord server. They must be your friend!

Meanwhile, the person you view as a close friend doesn’t view you as being a friend at all. I—and many others I know—have seen this lead many, many times to two kinds of issues:

The mistake

Someone you have a parasocial relationship with does something you don’t like. Maybe they tweeted something a little thoughtless, or they said something that they intended as a joke but that came off as mean-spirited, or they made a writing choice in their audio drama (fiction show) that you disagree with. The healthy response to this is to let yourself feel whatever you feel about that, but to not take it personally. But in your mind, this person is your friend. So now, instead of just being miffed that a stranger you respect (or formerly respected) did something that you think wasn’t okay, you feel personally betrayed. They’re your friend! How could they do that to you, personally?!

And what if you’re upset enough to directly address it with this person, letting them know exactly how upset you are? They’ll likely react with confusion, maybe coldness or frustration—they don’t understand why you’re acting as if you have a personal stake in what they do. Now you’re even more upset. Not only were you “betrayed” by your “friend”, but when you tried to talk to them about it, they didn’t give you the apology that you feel you deserve. Meanwhile, they’re upset, stressed out, and frustrated because someone they consider a colleague (or even a total stranger) came up to them and demanded a response from them that’s completely inappropriate to demand from somebody you don’t know. What happens after that? We’ll explore that soon.

Violating boundaries

The other dangerous manifestation of parasocial relationships involves personal boundaries. It’s very reasonable and healthy for all people to have boundaries, and that extends to having different boundaries for different people—like maybe you’re okay with being hugged by your family and partner, but nobody else. But what happens when you think that somebody is your friend while they view you as a colleague?

Imagine this scenario: You work for a large company; there’s hundreds of employees in your building alone. You have a coworker, Steve, who works in a different department. You don’t really work together, but you might chat with each other if you’re sitting near each other in the cafeteria or if you pass by each other in the halls. Now imagine that Steve gets your cell phone number, and one evening—completely out of nowhere—he starts texting you intense, heavy, detailed information about his history of abuse and his current struggles with trauma and mental illness. You’ve barely spoken to this guy, but he’s putting you in a position where he’s suddenly expecting you to comfort him and act like his (unpaid!) therapist. 

Read more: EarBuds Podcast Collective: *Let’s Talk Mental Health*

You might be thinking, “That sounds horrible, but it also sounds unrealistic; nobody would actually do that.” Unfortunately, variations of that happen with a horrifying frequency in online spaces—including podcasting Twitter.

When you go up to a stranger and start venting about your personal life, you’re creating an incredibly awkward and uncomfortable situation. The person you’re venting to is now in a situation where they either need to provide emotional support to someone they don’t know or tell someone in distress, “I’m sorry, I can’t help you.” The second option is absolutely the healthiest thing for them to do, but it can create another unfortunate situation:

From the other person’s point of view, a stranger demanded something unreasonable from them and they politely but firmly reinforced their boundaries. But from your point of view, you went to a friend for support and they callously rebuffed you. You think to yourself, “This is unfair because if they wanted to vent to me, I would listen”. And maybe that’s true, but it doesn’t take into account whether you’re someone they would want to vent to at all.

The result

Both of the situations I outlined above—being personally upset when someone does something you dislike and trying to act overly familiar with a stranger—often end in the same emotion: somebody feels (perhaps justifiably, perhaps not) that they were wronged.

In any of those situations, if either of the people involved view their Twitter as their personal space rather than their professional one, they might use it the same way they’d use a group chat with their close friends: they open up their Twitter and begin to vent about the experience they just had. Sometimes this will be in the form of vague tweets, like “ugh some people around here really need to learn how to respect boundaries” or “wow sure is fun when someone you thought was your friend abandons you when you need help, lol”. Sometimes, if they’re particularly mad, they’ll go as far as to outright name the person who upset them.

They know personal, intimate details about you, so they must be your friend, right? 

That’s where things get even messier. If you open up Twitter one day to find that somebody has started talking about what a horrible person you are in full view of your colleagues—colleagues you want to maintain a good reputation with—there’s suddenly pressure on you to respond publicly instead of privately. Instead of being able to work this issue out in private (or just walk away from it entirely), you feel like you have to publicly defend yourself. 

Just like that, we have Twitter Drama: an issue that should have been resolved privately (or simply resolved by both people deciding not to interact with each other anymore) is suddenly in the public eye. And it doesn’t end there.

You follow two podcasters, X and Y. One day, you log on to find that Y has made a lengthy tweet thread complaining about X, and X responded with their own tweet thread that shows their side of the story. They deny the claims that Y made, and maybe make some complaints about Y in turn. Suddenly, everybody you follow is talking about this new public drama, and it’s all over your timeline. Not only are people talking about it, but people are taking sides—so you feel like you need to take a side, too. If you consider one of the people in this conflict your friend (even if you’ve barely interacted), you’ll feel naturally compelled to take their side. Your friend (are they really your friend?) is being publicly harassed, being unfairly targeted by somebody attacking them for no reason! They’re your friend (right?), so they couldn’t be in the wrong, because you wouldn’t be friends with a bad person (and you’ve interacted with them twice, so they must be your friend). They must be right. Therefore, the other person must be wrong.

Suddenly, an issue between two people that stemmed from a simple misunderstanding has become major Twitter drama that everybody following them feels morally obligated to be part of. And even if you don’t feel morally obligated, even if you don’t consider either of the people your friend, you might feel publicly pressured to join the fray. Because here’s another way this gets even worse: the people at the core of the issue and/or the people following either of them are suddenly making tweets about how everybody needs to pick a side (their side) right now. 

“Unfollow me if you still support X after everything that Y revealed about them,” says one tweet on your timeline from someone you respect.

“I can’t believe that there are people who are still supporting Y after they viciously attacked X”, says the tweet below it, also from someone you respect.

Everybody you follow is telling you that you have to pick a side, and that if you don’t, you’re a terrible person. In the eyes of Twitter, your stance on the latest drama decides your morality. And god forbid you aim for neutrality! Even temporary neutrality will be attacked—I’ve seen people absolutely ripped to shreds by accounts with several times more followers than them for the crime of simply saying, “I don’t have all of the facts on this situation yet, so I’m going to wait to speak publicly on it until I learn more.”

Now, this scale of drama—huge, public, namedropping drama where practically the entire field gets dragged into it—doesn’t necessarily happen constantly. But the smaller issues, where people feel like their boundaries are violated and start resenting people over it? I’ve seen that happen a lot. Way, way more than I should. And I really, genuinely believe that so much of this (and probably other issues in the field, too) stems from people trying to simultaneously use Twitter as a personal and professional space. But in many ways, you just… can’t. Especially if you have a large following. If you use Twitter as your professional account, you can’t vent on it like you’d vent to your private group chat with five close friends.

And that doesn’t end at refraining from publicly shaming other people: it also means that you need to be careful about the kind of things you tweet out about your own life. I’m not saying that if you make a podcast, you can never post anything about your personal life on Twitter. But if you have a Twitter account where most of your followers are only there you because they like your podcast, even if you’re not a professional podcaster and you’re just doing this for fun, your Twitter account is no longer a purely personal account. If you go onto that account and start tweeting detailed information about your experience with abuse, mental illness, and/or trauma while implying (or stating) that you need support, your followers—who, remember, don’t actually personally know you—will feel pressured to comfort you. And it makes them feel closer to you, too. They know personal, intimate details about you, so they must be your friend, right? 

Read more: Ask How to Audio Drama: Critique the Critics

And just like that, you’ve encouraged a parasocial relationship between yourself and your followers. Just like that, the pathway to hurt feelings, misplaced feelings of betrayal, and public drama has been laid down.

That isn’t to say that people are never allowed to talk about trauma, mental illness, or abuse. Those are all incredibly stigmatized experiences, and I do believe that it is good for people to discuss them publicly—if they do it right. Done right, it can help to lower stigma and make other people feel more comfortable discussing and getting help for their own struggles. It can even be educational, like talking about your experience with a misunderstood mental illness to clear up misconceptions about it. But there’s a huge difference in intent there. Are you tweeting because you want to help people? Or are you tweeting because you want a bunch of total strangers to help you? 

At the end of the day, parasocial relationships are a very easy trap to fall into—particularly on Twitter, and particularly in a field where people are creating art that makes all of their listeners feel like they’re best friends. I’ve definitely caught myself thinking about people I don’t actually know as if they were friends! Doing so is not a moral failing. And if you don’t catch yourself early enough, you might make a misstep like the ones above. When the person you thought was your friend responds in such a way that makes you realize you’re basically strangers, that can feel embarrassing and uncomfortable. That’s okay. Plenty of people have made that mistake before.

The key thing to do then is to not get mad at them for it. They are not a bad person for not being your friend. If that happens to you, apologize to them, make a mental adjustment about how you view them, and then walk away. 

The issue, at the end of the day, is not the mere existence of parasocial relationships—it’s how we react when we realize that we’ve stumbled into one. When we respond to that realization by publicly insulting the person we viewed as a friend, we’re contributing to the podcasting field being a toxic, dangerous place that pushes people out and makes people feel unsafe. But if more of us would take a moment to step back, realize that the other person isn’t at fault, and let the issue be settled privately rather than publicly? We’d be a long way towards making the podcasting field as welcoming of a space as podcasters already claim it is.  

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