Lebron is my boy.

​As I have gone through the semester, I have noticed some things about myself and others. One of the biggest things I have noticed is that if you believe that you do not have a para-social relationship, then you are kidding yourself. With all the conversations that I have had throughout the semester, I have noticed that people have these relationships with famous people and they do not even know it. Almost every night at dinner, my friends and I always talk about sports. I have noticed that it doesn’t matter what sport we are talking about, we always refer to players, especially great players, by their first name only. There are times where we act like we know them personally and even defend them like they are our best friends. I will admit that i feel like i know LebronJames personally becauseof his twitter and my lovefor theway heplaysthegameof basketball! If you step back and look at the conversation, it is a little ridiculous. But I have started to notice it in different places that are in different contexts, but the exact same thing. My fiancé loves the show “Buck Wild”. One of the stars of the reality show just passed away and on hearing it, she was very upset. She went on to tell me all about him for about 20 minutes. She talked about his personality, his likes and dislikes, and even his family. At the end of the conversation, she stated “I feel like I know him personally.” This is a classic example of what a para-social relationship looks like! At first when we learned about this in class, I almost thought that I was crazy for acting like sports figures were my friend, but upon further investigation, I have noticed that people do this no matter what the context!