With the current rise of streamers, there has also been an alarming increase in dangerous social interactions. There is a large community within streaming that solely focuses on streaming real life events. It can be as simple as them walking to do errands, to other streamers traveling around the world along with a chat. However, with these streamers, we’ve been introduced to the dangers of parasocial relationships. This has been especially evident with many women IRL (in real life) streamers.Â
With streamers in general, many large craters have been open about their parasocial interactions with fans. “Parasocial” refers to a one-sided, imagined connection or relationship, often with celebrities or fictional characters, where a person feels a sense of intimacy or familiarity despite having no real-life interaction. This has caused many uncomfortable interactions to be filmed for thousands of people to see. Although most of them are just simply uncomfortable situations, some of these have become a graver situation.
Some of the largest female gaming creators (that consisted of Emiru, Cinna, and Valkyrae) were doing a IRL collaboration when they were met with a “fan”. This fan immediately asked for the girls’ number. After he was rejected, they continued their walk. About 20 minutes later, they noticed that they were being followed by the same guy. After the camera man confronted the man, he immediately got violent and stated, “I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you right now.” The police were immediately involved, however the man has yet to be charged with anything.
Unfortunately, this is not the worse of the worse. A Japanese IRL streamer Airi Sato had to face one of these parasocial fans. While she was on stream, the man came up behind her and stabbed her multiple times. This all happened live and so police were immediately called and she was rushed to the hospital. Unfortunately the 22 year old streamer did not make it. For this to happen in Japan, which is considered one of the safest countries in the world, we must fear for the safety of this woman.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/12/world/asia/japan-influencer-stabbed-livestreaming.html