"It’s a bleak new world that has such virtual girlfriends in it. "
Chatbots by major influencers like Amouranth and Caryn Marjorie let fans pay by the minute for virtual interactions – here, an expert on parasocial relationships walks us through the risks.
Dr David Giles, who specialises in media psychology at the University of Winchester [on parasocial relatioships]. “Typically these are between media figures and members of the audience. The media user knows the media figure intimately, but s/he doesn’t exist for them (other than as part of a homogeneous ‘audience’).”
To some extent, social media has complicated this definition, since audiences have more access to media figures, and can talk back to them by leaving Instagram comments or typing in a Twitch chat. “I’ve always argued that we should understand relationships as existing on a spectrum, in which ‘social’ and ‘parasocial’ are the endpoints,” Giles adds. “So a relationship can be ‘partly parasocial’ – like many with vloggers, influencers etc. Fully parasocial would be something like a relationship with a fictional figure (who has never existed) or a dead human (like Elvis).”
Digital representations of tangible and intangible cultural assets provide an essential basis for research in the cultural heritage domain and are more and more present in the day-to-day work of scholars. Thereby, an ever-increasing variety of technologies and data types is being employed, such as 2D, 3D, audio, video, AR/VR, thermography or computer tomography.
Our overarching goal is to match the production and continuous enrichment of digital cultural heritage with the demands of researchers, GLAM experts and various other audiences. In close collaboration with the digitisation community, we seek to establish a strong network in order to facilitate a regular exchange between producers and users of digital materials. This will be complemented by open and modular services and tools for the capture and enrichment process of cultural heritage objects.
The genesis of the problems faced by the library, which is named after the legendary freedom fighter and scholar Lala Hardayal ( 1884- 1939) – which has a unique collection of more than 170000 books in Hindi, English, Urdu, Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit. ..one of the few Libraries in the world with a collection of at least 8000 rare books ((https://amritmahotsav.nic.in/district-reopsitory-detail.htm?2771)) – has its roots in the bickering among people who are supposed to manage the institution. What one learns that the intransigence shown by someone owning allegiance to Hindutva Supremacist viewpoint has precipitated this unforeseen situation (https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/should-i-have-made-your-wife-cm-instead-of-rabri-lalu-yadavs-jab-at-nityanand-rai/cid/1980987)
May be as you read these lines, wiser sense might have prevailed there and the library might be slowly limping back to normalcy.