“Para-“ tends to mean “around” or “beside,” kind of in the sense of “close to" or "almost”--paraprofessional teachers or lawyers, paramilitary groups, parallel lines, parasitic symbiotes. In this specific context, American sociologists Donald Horton and Richard Wohl (1956) [0] coined the notion of “para-social" relations, in order to describe audience members’ intensifying, one-sided sensations-of-relationships with media characters as American-style mass media came into its own:

> The most remote and illustrious men are met as if they were in the circle of one's peers; the same is true of a character in a story who comes to life in these media in an especially vivid and arresting way. We propose to call this seeming face-to-face relationship between spectator and performer a para-social relationship.

They contrast para-social relations with face-to-face ones, which they call ortho-social:

> The crucial difference in experience obviously lies in the lack of effective reciprocity [...] To be sure, the audience is free to choose among the relationships offered, but it cannot create new ones. Whoever finds the experience unsatisfying has only the option to withdraw.

> ...the media present opportunities for the playing of roles to which the spectator has–or feels he has–a legitimate claim, but for which he finds no opportunity in his social environment. This function of the para-social then can properly be called compensatory, inasmuch as it provides the socially and psychologically isolated with a chance to enjoy the elixir of sociability.

It's a brisk accessible read, and spookily still relevant. Thanks for the impetus to dust it off :)

Anyway—in the 2010s, social scientists began to use the idea to think about the emerging class of even-more-intimate, confessional celebrities—like the Kardashians—as those celebrities started to use the socials ‘round the clock and to broadcast seemingly intimate, unguarded moments [1]. “Healthy” doesn’t seem to be the word the researchers and clinicians tend to choose...

[0] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00332747.1956.11...

[1] e.g. https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research_all/7/

Life as an OnlyFans 'chatter'