The attention economy

It gives the parasocial question its economic form. Once attention is the product, the parasocial bond is not a side effect of the business model, it is the business model. Every mechanism in the manipulation lane is a technique for converting affection into measurable minutes.

Manipulation. One-sided attachment engineered for somebody else's benefit. Paid intimacy, parasocial persuasion, sasaeng, grief extraction, the streak. The lane that pays the bills and the lane that causes the most harm, frequently at the same time.

Consideration. The part where somebody stops and thinks. The research, the diagnosis, the ethics, the lawsuits, the regulators. Roughly fifty years of arguing with itself about whether this is a relationship.