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#110: Why Parasocial Relationships Are Destroying Authentic Art

And Why I’m Writing This for No One (and Everyone)

Alexander Lopez
9 min readSep 20, 2024
Photo by Bertrand Gabioud on Unsplash // A man sits alone in a stadium of empty red seats.

There is a chance you won’t see this. That is by design. If, somehow, you do happen upon this piece, welcome. It’s almost like we’re sharing a secret that only we can hear. Please feel free to interact with this piece in any way you like. I welcome criticism, praise, constructive dialogue, shares, love, and anything that suits you, but I did not send this via email. And I did not promote it in any way. Both as an experiment and as a statement of intent, a promise kept to my current and future selves.

For the longest time, I’ve been avoiding my writing. I haven’t been able to understand why it had gone from me, or rather, why I had been dodging it in the first place.

Writing has, for much of my life, been as natural to me as breathing. It’s been a necessary way for me to express myself, to learn more about what I think and why I think it, to reflect on experiences in their fullness — experiences I might have otherwise sleepwalked through, as we so often do in a modern world dizzy with bings, pings, scrolls, and other endless distractions.

What did I really think about that breakup? About that job? That city where I lived? That person I was? This person I am now? All of these…

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Alexander Lopez
Alexander Lopez

Written by Alexander Lopez

Hi y'all! Happy to be here! My name is Alex. I am a writer & content creator. BA from Dartmouth and MFA from NCSU. Also @alexlopezwrites (44K) on TikTok

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