mossyfawnron

I haven’t told you how much I looove Jenna and Julien. As in, JennaMarbles and her husband Julien Solomita. I’m feeling particularly nostalgic and parasocial tonight, as today is Jenna’s birthday.

Jenna is an OG YouTuber who I watched like it was my religion as a kid in 2010 and teenager (notedly in 2016) up until 2020 when Jenna quit YouTube. She had a podcast with Julien from 2014-2020 that I watched every week. Jenna came out with new videos every Wednesday (even though they usually came out early Thursday morning, a fact Jenna herself laughs at).

Parasocial relationship- yeah. I’d say this is a textbook example of it. I cried when she left, as I’m sure thousands – or millions – did. Jenna had just hit 20 million subscribers on the platform, when she decided to step back. I respect her decision despite feeling devastated. I grew up with her content, and her dogs, and I was witness to her relationship with Julien growing and progressing, and when I found out he and her got married in 2022, I cried as well. This time because I’m so happy for her, and so grateful to know she’s happy and thriving.

But back to being parasocial, what even is that? According to simplyneuroscience, “Parasocial relationships refer to a type of psychological relationship that is typically experienced by an audience when they encounter celebrities in the mass media.”

I think I’m somewhere in between the green and yellow category, in that I don’t believe it’s a reciprocal relationship I have with her and her media, it’s purely for my own enjoyment, and I don’t have any delusions that if I walked into her house she’d be happy to see me. That’s in the red category. I don’t believe she and I are friends at all in the yellow category. But I do feel extreme emotions from things that happen, like if one of her dogs were to pass I’d probably cry from sadness. Like I said, when I was a kid I was able to see her adopting 4 of the dogs she currently has. I got to see grow up and then turn grey in the face. Whenever Julien shares a photo of the dogs or streams with them (because he’s still on the internet thankfully), I get a sense of relief to know they’re still doing good.

When you go from watching someone twice a week on a schedule for years, to absolutely nothing, people can go through stages of grief. A user on an online Jenna Marbles group says it’s like processing a death. Whenever I catch glimpses of Jenna persisting and being happy, I get inspired to do the same.