It isn’t rare for me to get a comment of a woman saying, “I miss your old content” and/ or “what happened to the old content”. At first it didn’t bother me until it finally did. Social media has created an open space for people to learn more about the work you do but more importantly, the creator (you) and as the reward is connection, conversation and community, the flip side becomes the forming of a parasocial bond. Not only are these parasocial bonds unhealthy but it becomes even more of a problem when the woman who she is parasocially bonding with, evolves.
Parasocial Bonds Aren’t Neutral
These bonds seem innocent, but they’re not neutral and they aren’t natural.
They freeze women in the exact version of you they discovered: This is why when you upgrade the content, you immediately get pushback from women who knew you from when they first discovered you. They’ll think you “switched up” when really you simply upgraded and shifted the content and yourself without their approval.
They confuse access with ownership, so when you evolve, they feel abandoned: They feel personal feelings for someone they never personally met and thats the danger in parasocial bonds. You begin to feel feelings that only make sense if we had a conversation 1:1 before. When the creator evolves, the audience who was once plugged to the creation has to make a decision, do I stay or do I leave.
They become a subtle demand that you stay smaller to soothe their comfort zone: “I miss your old content” isn’t just a comment. Its a woman who have made nostalgia the baseline. A lot of women have not evolved in the past 3-5 years. All they know is the past. This is why future focused and driven women are deemed as too fast for them.
What makes it dangerous is that the bond isn’t rooted in reality, it’s rooted in nostalgia. And nostalgia is a trap. Nostalgia pretends to be harmless, it whispers, “Remember when things were simpler? Remember when she posted this type of content?Remember who you used to be?” But underneath that softness, nostalgia is one of the most effective traps that keeps women from evolving. This is how a woman will stay trapped in a certain income for years on end or she’ll stay stuck in a relationship she know isn’t serving her highest self….
