Jak Ritger, writing for Do Not Research:

While the term Parasocial remains contested, I think it is useful to describe the unique experience of having your comment read out on a twitch stream or sharing commentary on a podcast. Rather than media’s traditional one-way or even two-way journey, Parasocial content creates a liminal space that we return to retrieve a sense of collectivity: the private chat, the running podcast in-jokes. As I wait for Joshua Citarella’s Twitch stream to start, I watch an on-platform ad made by Twitch: a streamer addresses this parasocial collectivity with “Hey Chat.” This new expression flattens and complexifies our relationship to broadcasting.