Parasocial Grief
The recent death of One Direction member Liam Payne has shown just how complicated grieving celebrities can be.
When I first found out Liam Payne had died, I was in the kitchen working with my roommates and saw a post about it as soon as I opened Instagram. But the post was from a meme page I follow, which is maybe why my first shock-led instinct was to think it was a bad joke about him being canceled. I stayed silent until I checked if it was real, and then the shock started taking over my whole body.
via IG @liampayne © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
The thing is, I’ve never experienced a celebrity death that hit me this hard before, and I literally didn’t know what to do with myself. My cousin and a few friends immediately texted me, completely freaked out, and I started to realize this was something an insane number of people around the world were trying to make sense of at the same time. Just the previous week, I was discussing One Direction and specifically recent allegations about Liam at a hangout with my friends, so my emotions about the death were extremely confusing, and it was almost like I wasn’t allowing myself to actually feel sadness. I had to step back and try to figure out how to process this the right way. How do you even properly mourn a celebrity?
During my time at university, we learned a lot about parasocial relationships, and it’s something that gave me a puzzle piece I was missing the first time I heard it. Parasocial relationships are, in essence, one-sided interactions where people feel a strong platonic/romantic connection to celebrities and fictional characters, who will never be able to reciprocate it. This term finally gave a name to an experience I’ve been having all my life, and studying it fascinated me. Parasocial relationships can be extremely strong, and a lot of fans of different celebrities place a lot of their love, comfort, and safety in that fandom, even though the famous person doesn’t even know of their existence. What’s most important is that none of this is in vain. While maintaining a healthy balance between real life and parasocial relationships is essential, fandom participation has actually been scientifically proven to positively affect mental well-being. This is especially the case when people find a large community in the fandom that provides them with understanding and a safe space they might not be experiencing in real life.
For a huge number of people around the world, One Direction and the Directioners fandom represented this safe space. One Direction was a global phenomenon, and so many people cared about them and their music on such a deeply personal level that it was inevitable for a worldwide fan community to form. No matter what social media platform you preferred, Directioners you could connect with were everywhere, freaking out about the band as much as you did. And if we can experience such strong parasocial love and friendship, why wouldn’t we be allowed to feel parasocial grief? If you think about it in that sense, it doesn’t feel that weird at all.
Ultimately, grieving over celebrities you never knew in real life is interesting, but it makes perfect sense. We are not only mourning one person specifically; we are mourning our childhoods and teenage years, and feeling like a part of us has been ripped out and changed forever. This feeling is not rational, and it doesn’t matter how controversial the celebrity might have been recently or how you might currently feel about them. The loss doesn’t necessarily hit you as you are right now; it hits the version of yourself you were when you cared about that person the most. And the loss of Liam hit millions of people around the world really badly, which was comforting in a way. The fact that so many fans were posting about it and supporting each other through the shock made it easier to realize that it’s okay to let myself feel whatever I was feeling in the moment without judgment. I could allow myself to feel sadness without it meaning I’m not condemning some of his actions, as well as feeling sympathy for things he went through. Multiple things can be true simultaneously without negating each other—that’s just the complexity of the human experience.
When I allowed myself to actually feel the grief, I started listening to One Direction playlists and feeling an intense amount of nostalgia. I started crying to the first emotional song that played (“Once In A Lifetime,” for anyone who wants to experience a similar emotional catharsis), and then couldn’t stop myself from tearing up again and again every time another One Direction member posted about Liam’s death. It felt good to just lean into the collective grief and accept that, even though some people might not understand it, this grief is very real to fans all around the world. In these kinds of situations, it’s crucial to understand you’re not alone, no matter how weird and complicated your emotions feel. I’ll leave you with a One Direction playlist so you can also cry and reminisce about your memories.
