I see a lot of people on this website - and on YouTube itself - constantly use the term "parasocial" so as to degrade people who form strong attachments to e-celebs and whatnot. But... what's actually so terrible about being parasocial?
When you create a public social media account, youre implicitly consenting to people being parasocial - especially if you make deeply personal vlogs where you talk about your complex emotions and opinions on things, as people here like to do. We've all been raised online, at this point - we all know how watching someone talk about their feelings for an hour will make you feel like youve been having a conversation with them. Yeah, no shit your fans subconsciously think theyre your friend. You know this, and you knew it when you decided to make YouTube videos.
So, whats wrong with being parasocial? All youre doing is acting on the feelings that ecelebs knowingly and perhaps purposefully foster in you. It's not like youre violating the person's incessant need for emotional privacy, because if they really needed their emotions to be kept a secret, theyd keep their vlogs on their hard drive instead of giving it to the internet.