A mechanism or tactic · 2005 · Internet
Fighting about a stranger in a reply section
A disagreement conducted entirely in good faith about a person none of the participants have met, using the vocabulary of a personal grievance.
A parasocial relationship conducted in public with a complete stranger, and the argument is never about the stranger. The people with the strongest feelings are the most likely to be drawn in, which is the same property that makes fandoms work.
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.
Where it sits
2000 2000-2009 · 2005 2009
Provenance · 2 source record(s)
- retrievableFighting about a stranger is norm enforcement, not expression: accusation triggers moral outrage, the network piles on, and the target self-censors. Interviews n=28 plus n=9 Trust and Safety workersMarwick, A. E. Morally Motivated Networked Harassment as Normative Reinforcement. ↗
- unverifiedSanctioning a stranger is an identity signal, and is read as one by everyone watchingAhn, C., Lelkes, Y., & Levendusky, M. S. (2024). Sanctioning political speech on social media is driven by partisan norms and identity signaling. ↗
PREDATOR The one inside the group
Connected · 3 out, 6 in
Reported as a story
It sits in