A famous author was saved by a fictional family and then wrote a novel about it
Meg Mason on Nancy Mitford, a lonely teenager, and the strangest thing to happen to this entire field this year.
The GuardianRead →
Have we hit peak parasocial? An actual magazine asked
Vogue Australia wanted to know if the pendulum has swung. The answer is that there is no pendulum.
Every generation decides it invented this and that it is about to end, and every generation is wrong, and this is the fourth or fifth time in my lifetime I have watched it happen. The one genuine change is that it is now measurable, which means it can be monetised, which means the people who were going to be normal about it have a financial interest in your discomfort. Peak was when nobody was profiting from the question.
Notice, name, choose. That's the whole method.
The clerk's shelf - how this got here first
Sources
In a celebrity-obsessed world, have we reached peak parasocial? ↗
Vogue Australia · 23 SEP 2026
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A widely-shared explainer on why every single person has a parasocial relationship and why most of them are fine.
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When a famous person dies it can feel like losing someone you loved
The Guardian ran this on the exact week Dolly Parton, Gloria Steinem and Liam Payne died. The timing is not the story. The timing proves the story.
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A woman died in Seoul and by the next day the argument was about whether the fandom was toxic
The pivot from a death to a discourse about ourselves, in about a day, in front of a diaspora that had to watch it happen.
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