Because we care too very much about the sex lives of dead people like Ludwig Wittgenstein.
(That’s not sarcasm and you know it lol.)
Introduction
I have been, since about the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, thinking about the idea of “parasocial” relationships. In isolation, many countries (western countries in particular, I think) tilted into a heavily online culture, with social media becoming the main mode of communication and, eventually, a battleground for ideological warfare. Sometimes sportsmanship is optional. Cognitive dissonance being what it is, it’s easier to think “sportsmanship” can’t exist when all the marks of human presence—a face, a voice, the physical being—are missing.
Maybe it’s all just a choose-your-own Goosebumps novel in 0s and 1s. Literature, of course, is never read the same way between two people. Not really. It’s both an oversimplification of how our brains operate and something purposefully opaque. Interpretation, like translation, is not linear. It is nuanced, requiring knowledge of the original author’s tone and style but also an interpretation of intention.
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