Do you have what it takes to be a V.I.P.?
PHANTASMAL RELATIONSHIPS
Fans feel close to celebrities.
Posting online is an overwhelming experience for the mind. To cope, we manifest what media expert and now current Director of Research at Facebook, Eden Litt, coined "the imagined audience," or a "mental conceptualization of the people with whom we are communicating" (Litt 2012). The brain compensates the binary abyss by writing post recipients off as either abstract audiences, no one in particular, or (more frequently) a specific target audience, which can be segmented in the following four categories: personal ties, communal ties, professional ties, and phantasmal ties. Phantasmal ties, the most uncommon of the grouping, are "people or entities with whom [users] had an illusionary relationship such as famous individuals, brands, animals, and the deceased" (Litt 2016). Have you ever passed a tweet demanding a musical artist to 'COME TO BRAZIL'? How about one asking for an anime character's hand in marriage? Users mentally create a direct line of communication to celebrities, companies, and even fictional characters that are unlikely to (or quite literally can't) elicit a response back.
Relationships with celebrities are real for people who buy into the phantasmal. When One Direction tweeted something vague about deep-dish the day before their 2010 Chicago concert, they were talking to me because I replied. I can confirm this because Niall and I later made eye contact during the concert the next day. Stop it, I'm being serious.
Beyoncé passes the mic to a fan
Does a person's celebrity presence (both in-person and online) take on a life of its own, separate from the person's authentic being? If yes, how does the famous person reconcile their splintered self? As you may recognize from phenomenology, Daniel J. Boorstin's work suggests that if the celebrity is known for being known, it matters more that celebrities are tangible to their consumers.
After analyzing presidential debates between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in the 60s, Boorstin came to the conclusion that the effect of media, publicity, and advertising made the practice what Boorstin coined a pseudo-event. Many pseudo-events are staged for publicity purposes and have little real value. Take, again, One Direction tweeting that they're looking for a deep-dish recommendation. They might not have even gotten pizza here, but you'd be hard-pressed to convince Dylan from 2010 (or 2021, frankly) that the ask was not genuine. Fans who are committed to the phantasmal relationship they've developed are devoted. Taylor Swift often invites her biggest fans over to her home before album releases for "secret sessions," but how does she select those fans... those friends? The way invitees race back to tell Twitter of the experience and why the album is so great brings authenticity into question.
Pseudo-event: an ambiguous truth that appeals to people's desire to be informed