Taylor Swift
Artist announced engagement with athlete Travis Kelce and almost seems that the earth stopped turning to know everything. Psychologists explain the obsession unfounded by the lives of the famous.
Celebrity novels have ceased to be the subject of pink magazines. Now it’s news like the others, because people look increasingly imported with the lives of the famous.
This Tuesday, it was the turn of singer Taylor Swift to announce her engagement with athlete Travis Kelce-the world seems to stop. A day earlier, adapting to the Portuguese reality, it was known that the “girlfriend of Portugal”, the presenter Catarina Furtado, dates to musician Carlão-was spoken of few other things that day.
According to psychologists, this intense reaction is due to the calls “parasocial relationships”: Unilateral emotional links that fans establish with public figures that really seem authentic, although they are not.
Two main factors help explain this strange phenomenon, explains psychologist Mark Travers in.
Love stories in which we review ourselves
Despite the brightness, celebrity novels reflect universal themes: hope, stability, disappointment, resilience.
When a famous couple remains united, fans feel extra-retracted with the idea that love can resist even under extraordinary pressures.
The happiness of the pair becomes a symbolproof that fairy tales still exist.
The case of Zedaya e Tom Holland It is a great example. His alleged engagement generated enthusiasm far beyond Hollywood. For many, the relationship that began in the days of Spider-Man is a modern romantic story, and every stage of his life for two acquires almost personal meaning for fans.
But the inverse effect is also verified. When a very cherished couple separates, the experience can be lived as a kind of collective mourning.
Science supports this perception. A 2021 study in Psychological Reports magazine concluded that fans’ reactions to celebrity relations tend to mirror their own linking styles. People with safe bonds can admire famous couples without getting too involved. Who has anxious ties tends to design their fears and hopes in the ups and downs of these relationships, feeling more emotionally implicated.
Other researchers argue that celebrities do not function as much as attachment figures, but before as symbolic companions that reinforce the sense of belonging.
The illusion of intimacy
Another reason for this fascination is the sense of proximity that celebrities cultivate through social networks. A simple publication, interview or photography can create the illusion of privileged access to your private life. The singer Billie Earth He managed to conquer his fans with such excellence, putting them to everyone on the list of friends arrived on Instagram.
Taylor Swift’s example is paradigmatic. For many followers, she is not just a singer, but a confidant, an older sister, a moral reference. The way you share episodes of your life and the emotional burden of your songs reinforce a connection of intimacy and loyalty to your fans. And your love life is accompanied with intensity: fans debate whether partners are “appropriate”, defend it against criticism as protected a close friend. Many of your lesbian fans guarantee on social networks out that Taylor Swift is lesbian, without her ever said.
When admiration becomes possession
Fame brings a paradox: the more beloved an artist is, the less his life seems to belong to him. Fans sometimes feel allowed to give their opinion on who to date, how to behave or when a relationship should end.
But real relationships are complex, private and impossible to capture in paparazzi headlines or instant. The couple that the public “knows” is often a construction – part reality, part projection, recalls the psychologist.
