AOC and the parasocial nature of politics
The Spectator asks whether a term coined in 1956 for soap opera characters works on a member of Congress. Yes, and that is the interesting part.
The Spectator AustraliaRead →
A 27-year marriage ends and the coverage is about what the public felt
The Sydney Morning Herald asked readers to be honest about grieving a celebrity's divorce. Most of them were.
I do not think a stranger's marriage ending is your business and I do not think you are obliged to care. But notice what the actual reader responses were: almost nobody was smug. They were mostly confused about whether it was okay to feel bad, and a lot of them said they had not known until the day they did. That is the whole thing in one thread. We all find out at once and we all feel slightly silly.
Notice, name, choose. That's the whole method.
The clerk's shelf - how this got here first
Sources
Help, I'm in a parasocial relationship! ↗
Sydney Morning Herald · 22 SEP 2026
Where this sits in the encyclopedia
BindingPerforming a self until the self holds, where it can be witnessed. Margery Kempe in white clothes in a world where widows wore black, weeping loudly…Clerks beat algorithmsThe difference between being known by somebody who was paying attention on purpose and being modelled by a system that has your history. Same…
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