Column by Paige Hartenburg
Growing up I was attached at the nose to my comfort object: a fabric doll’s hat that I would smell throughout the day. Bears, blankets and binkies are all standard symbols of childhood, playing an essential role in early development. These comfort objects become a stand-in for a parent figure for many children when they are away from their main guardian, serving as a constant in their developing understanding of the world. These items become an extension of their self-identity and are often connected to one's ability to self-regulate and soothe.
However, at a certain age, these items, once holding so much importance, are discarded and replaced. Our self-soothing and de-stressing patterns become increasingly based in other relationships. Through friendships and romantic partners, we find other outlets to relax, gain community, and perspective.
This is incredibly important in our current culture, as technology sometimes allows for social relationships to move beyond the physical world and exist online. This places certain online entities, such as Youtube, in a powerful position. By fostering emotional connections with their viewers, creators and their fan bases form one-sided relationships known as parasocial relationships. Utilizing these bonds, Youtubers form a unique connection among their fan bases, serving as a new-aged comfort object for many outside the early years of development.
Youtubers offers a style of content that lends itself perfectly to becoming a comfort object. Due to the large number of personality-driven videos supported by individual branding, a consistent style and frequent uploads, the platform encourages a pseudo-object relationship aided by the “branded” personality made by creators.
For example, you watch Pewdiepie not for Felix Kjellberg as a person, but for the sarcastic commentary, self-aware humor and Minecraft “Let’s Plays”. You subscribe to the exaggerated personality, not the holistic individual, as personal intricacies and details of his life are not necessarily known to the public.
This is then furthered by the parasocial relationship that develops. The bond that is created is that of an individual and a branded persona, which unknowingly separates the individual from the reality of the creator. The YouTuber’s personality becomes akin to an object that viewers interact with.
This is aided by the ability to replay certain videos for free on command, which mimics the repetitive nature of self-soothing behavior. This is, in part, the basis of YouTube fandom. Through the act of subscribing and watching, an individual integrates the enjoyment of a YouTuber, and subsequently a brand, into their sense of self. They are no longer just an individual but a member of a community, sporting the merch and spouting the slang to match their favorite creators.
This relationship mirrors that of a child and their comfort object, serving as a constant, an identification of self, and as a way to understand the world. This is exhibited through
thousands of fan letters and comments that praise the support provided through a Youtuber’s content, often to the initial shock of the creator.
This is where the dangers of this relationship can take effect. While other forms of celebrity create clear divisions between creators and fans, YouTube prides itself on a lack of formalized production, which blurs these lines, leading to potentially harmful behavior.
An example of this can be seen in the 2016 incident where YouTuber Christina Grimmie was fatally shot by an obsessed fan. Though this is an extreme instance, both the negative and the positive power of the comfort object relationship needs to be recognized to assure the safety of both viewer and creator.
Personally, as someone who is diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a learning disability that complicates my ability to connect with those around me, YouTube has been an instrumental way for me to learn and adjust to social patterns. Growing up, I would repeatedly watch specific videos as a way to learn speaking habits and understand trendy topics my peers seemed so infatuated with. I would develop fascinations with specific videos, rewatching them countless times to the point where I could retell the jokes in time with the speaker. The constant, predictable, and informative nature of this content provided me with the security I needed in a social world I didn’t always understand.
It is common for older generations to discredit this relationship as silly or fake, however, by ignoring the impacts of these connections, it not only doesn’t acknowledge the dangerous aspects of the negatives, but belittle the positives, too. We must respect the legitimacy of these new-aged comfort objects or we will fall dangerously short of defending the development of the human psyche.
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