When Grown-Ups Have Imaginary Friends “Parasocial relationships” explain why you think influencers are your pals. Credit...Anja Slibar May 5, 2021, 6:30 a.m. ET This weekend I had multiple text threads going about Hannah’s issues with her housemates, and whether she was in the wrong in her fights with Amanda, Luke and Kyle. These are not friends of mine; these are people who appear on the Bravo TV show “Summer House,” whose drama I am embarrassingly invested in, and whose psychological motivations I spend time dissecting with friends and co-workers. The kind of one-way friendship I have with these reality stars has a name in the sociology world: It’s called a “parasocial relationship,” which is an emotional relationship with a media figure. The term was coined in the 1950s by two sociologists who observed that dominant mass media — at the time, TV and radio — created the illusion of a friendship between spectator and performer, and “the most remote and illustrious men are met as if they were in the circle of one’s peers.”