[uoaei]

They have very much done that with Marvel characters and Twitch streamers. Relationship with a personal god is only the most parasocial relationship, but there are many flavors of this. I have noticed that among many peoples with regular access to TV and the internet, small talk often veers toward the consumption of popular culture and various impressions and opinions about those consumption products.

Religion is a mythic lens through which to view reality, a framework of archetypes to superimpose on a chaotic world, to make it feel more comprehensible, and thus safer. For many they can reach a sense of safety by communing with others about the recognizable values and behaviors of their favorite fictional characters.

Now you don't even have to know the people you're talking to, because you can assemble in pseudonymous fanbase forums to find that community. You see it in everything from K-pop Twitter to Star Wars reddit.

[irrational]

But, are online interactions really the equivalent of in person interactions? I’m not a psychologist, but my gut feeling is, no.

[uoaei]

No, they are not. But to the lonely, it's all they have access to, so they make do. It results in a self-reinforcing loop.

To me, the difference between the two is analogous to the difference between fluorescent light and sunlight.

This is a thread about social sickness, and I think the conflation here identified is close to the root of our problems, likely compounded by the sedentarity and lack of sunlight that comes with the consumption-based lifestyle.

That being said, what alternatives does anyone have nowadays? If you're a mile deep into a subdivision and you haven't yet earned your driver's license, good luck getting any meaningful socialization outside of video games, chat servers, and comments sections. This creates patterns of behavior in early life and adolescence that ossify into your default lifestyle habits into your old age. By now enough longitudinal studies have been done to know "your personality develops when you're a teenager" is a reasonable heuristic for understanding the inertia of the problem.

[akomtu]

The author of the Sound of Silence described this eerie society well:

... And the people bowed and prayed To the neon god they made And the sign flashed out its warning In the words that it was forming And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls In tenement halls" And whispered in the sounds of silence