"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).”