What does our immersion in the online world have in common with the literary conventions of ancient Greece? Probably more than we can explore here. But after being stopped in the dairy aisle at the supermarket by someone who heard me pontificating on a podcast the other day (and, boy, did they have a bone to pick with the views I aired on jury trials), I was left pondering the meaning of the Cambridge English Dictionary’s word of 2025.
This year, the panel of boffins picked “parasocial” — the erroneous feeling of closeness, even attachment, that can spring from having spent hours watching or listening to people we’ve never met. It’s a relationship that’s unrequited but feels mutual. And these days we probably all have examples of being on one end or the other of this strange dysfunction. Why do we think we know someone when actually we only recognise them?
Some of this clearly pre-dates the internet — even the telly used to cause confusion for some. I once greeted a familiar face in the library at university. The gentleman in question looked hunted as I beamed and hullo-ed at him in an overconfident, chummy way — only to realise later he was the Archbishop of Canterbury. Although he didn’t seem keen on my “hail, fellow well met” bearing, being a man of God he surely will have forgiven me rather than inwardly cursing yet another moron who can’t distinguish someone whose face is known because they are on the news a lot from their Uncle Bob.