“I’m just a girl”: Unraveling the Parasocial Relationships Between Female Vloggers and Their Subscribers
This project examines the dynamics of parasocial relationships between female vloggers and their audiences, focusing on the issues of homophily, consent, and platform logic. Drawing from my personal experience as a TikTok vlogger with over 30,000 subscribers, I will explore how the pressures of hyper-curating content to foster intimacy often result in burnout. The study aims to highlight the unsustainable nature of parasocial relationships for female vloggers and the gendered challenges they face when trying to exit these online careers.
My claims are:
- Parasocial relationships influence the decisions of female YouTube vloggers to quit uploading
- Female vloggers in the blind spot when it comes to labor (hyper curation, emotional labor, etc.)
- Parasocial relationships are rooted in homophily
Jess Lee 