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While I understand on one end that it's hard for people to adjust to sudden fame like Dream, they really shouldn't be encouraging unhealthy parasocial relationships. As unpopular as it is to say online, the idea of a "comfort creator" is inherently unhealthy.
There's multiple layers as to WHY it's unhealthy, but the main is that people have a one sided relationship that's bound to have psychological consequences. Content creators at Dream's size cannot "love all their fans", because they don't know everyone personally & they can't.
It's fine if someone's content helps you get through rough times. But you need to make that distinction between the content and the person, which I feel a lot of people aren't. People like Dream encouraging the behavior just makes it worse, and in the end hurts everyone.
Because when you encourage it, then you have fans going past boundaries that were never set. And while you shouldn't need to set boundaries for seemingly obvious things like personal privacy, encouraging their actions makes them breaching seem more acceptable.
Like it sucks that he got doxxed, yeah. But he also heavily encourages his fan base to "stan" him and his friends, so that's seen as slightly more socially acceptable than it would have been seen a few years ago. We need to go back to treating "stan" as a bad thing, like it is.
I don't "love" any of my followers or subscribers, because I don't know them on a personal level. It's impossible to do so when you don't. I appreciate them, and that's the correct term. More personal phrases create an illusion that there's a relationship there when there isn't.
We're only going to see this stuff get worse and worse the longer content creators don't call the behavior out/start interacting with their impressionable (mostly child) audience more responsibly. That content creator doesn't care about you the way you care about them.
It's a hard pill to swallow, but trust me. The sooner you make that realization, the healthier your relationship will be with yourself. It's fine to care about the influencers who you follow and keep up with. What isn't, is fooling yourself into believing they feel the same.
