Online voices get heard when they feel like friends

Getting an audience online often depends on something warmer than qualifications, the sense that the person on screen is speaking to you alone.

That is the point made by Tom Scott, a maker of science videos with a large online following. He traces that feeling to what are called parasocial relationships. The term was invented in the 1950s by researchers Donald Horton and Richard Wohl to describe a lopsided bond in which the viewer feels emotionally invested in the performer, while the performer does not know the viewer exists.

The idea is not new, and neither is making money from it. Any celebrity who ever charged for an official fan club was selling the same feeling. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, celebrities including Corey Feldman and Corey Hart set up paid phone lines where fans could hear private messages and leave their own, for two dollars for the first minute and 45 cents for each minute after.

For Scott, social media made the illusion stronger. A reply from a famous account can feel like friendship, and game streams with a chat running alongside draw children who would rather watch someone else play a video game than play it themselves.

They are not there for the game. They are there to hang out with a familiar person, alongside a chat full of other fans, except that one person holds much more sway than the rest and often seeks money without asking outright.

Scott says television learned this early. The presenters who built loyal followings were not those who addressed a crowd, but those who spoke as if to one person watching at home. Picture quality, sound quality, and factual accuracy all help, but not as much as giving the audience someone to connect with.

That is why authority often follows connection. A faceless institution can have better sources and better research, yet be ignored. To be heard, a communicator has to tell a human story, preferably their own, and accept a one-sided closeness with the audience.