how I got addicted to armchair expert
aural parasocial relationships hit different
I’ve been on sabbatical (see: unemployed) for ten months now, and I’ve realised something uncomfortable.
I have an addiction.
To a podcast.
An American one, no less.
Usually, you wouldn’t be able to waterboard this kind of information out of me. I find it that embarrassing to admit. But they say shame dies on exposure… so here goes.
The podcast I’m addicted to is called Armchair Expert.
For the uninitiated: Armchair Expert (henceforth AE) is an umbrella term for Dax Shepard and Monica Padman’s podcast empire.
It was Spotify’s seventh most popular podcast in 2023, and they’ve just entered into an $80 million distribution and ad sales deal with podcast network Wondery, which is owned by Amazon, which is owned by Jeff Bezos—who, hilariously, recently got his brokers sued for failing to disclose his identity as a buyer while haggling a fellow rich dude for a $6 million discount on a $79 million property.
But I digress.
Before Dax and Monica signed with Wondery/Amazon, they were contracted to Spotify in a multi-year deal speculated to be worth at least $50 million, given that Joe Rogan allegedly signed to Spotify for over $100 million.
What follows— necessitated by my personal experience of AE addiction—is a deep dive into what’s making these podcasters so valuable to these platforms.
I don’t think the term “parasocial relationship” is breaking news to anybody.
But do we, as media consumers, understand enough about the mechanics of how parasocial relationships and media addiction affect personal agency—especially in the context of the podcast as an aural medium?
A content addiction origin story
I crossed a line I could only see in hindsight the day I found the subreddit.
Already a daily listener for about a year by then, it was like stumbling into a magical place where all of my silent thoughts and reactions to Dax, Monica, their guests, and their idiosyncrasies were being said out loud.
I confined myself to reading other people’s hot takes—okay, and maybe the occasional upvote—but I swore I’d never, ever post anything.
People who anonymously shade celebrities on the internet—especially on Reddit—are sad people.
I am not a sad person.
Months passed. I started visiting the sub every day. At some point, I convinced myself that, deep down, this was actually a very healthy, humanistic community. Whenever someone shitposted about Monica, another user would call them out for internalised misogyny or failing to recognise that human beings can be complicated little bags of contradictions.
The subreddit, like the podcast, seemed to become a space where fans practised radical acceptance and reminded each other that seemingly opposite things can be true at the same time.
In no time at all, both the podcast and visiting the subreddit became subconscious, non-negotiable items on my daily to-do list.
To be clear, that—in and of itself—is insane.
Before the Wondery/Amazon deal (which excluded two non-Armchair branded shows formerly under the same feed) Armchair Expert posted a new episode every single weekday, amounting to a minimum of eight hours of content per week. So, if you’re an AE ride-or-die with an addictive personality—like myself, and around 20 million others—you’re spending upwards of thirty-two hours a month (or sixteen days a year) immersed in this content.
That’s a massive amount of time and attention to be gifting to a couple of multimillionaires sitting around chatting to other multimillionaires.
So… why do we do it?
Enter the parasocial relationship as coping mechanism
Coined by social scientists Horton and Wohl in 1956, the term ‘parasocial relationship’ (PSR) refers to the one-sided relationships that media consumers develop with media personalities. In these interactions, the media figures start to feel like friends to the audience, despite the fact that the audience is unknown to them.
Research suggests that factors like loneliness, need for belonging, and insecure attachment styles heighten susceptibility to these parasocial bonds.
In truth, the moment I crossed from casual AE fandom into something more obsessively parasocial wasn’t when I found the subreddit, really.
It was the day I did the thing I said I’d never do: I posted a comment.
That day, I was the first person to post in a new episode thread. When I reached 49 upvotes, I was so uncomfortable I added a clarifying edit, making sure people knew I was still a fan, despite the negativity in my comment.
By the time my post hit 100 upvotes, I deleted my Reddit profile and swore never to visit the site again; absolutely disgusted with myself.
I cringed for weeks after.
I’d wonder, at random moments in the day, how had I become the kind of person that gets emotionally incontinent enough to rant online about how I experienced a segment of a podcast I chose to listen to?
Who did I think I was? Worse, who did I think they were, these hosts, in relation to me? Why did I care so much about what they said or did? Why had I, and so many others, become so emotionally invested in every word uttered by two people we didn’t know?
I’ve never been one to form parasocial attachments to famous people. Not even in childhood and adolescence. I’m pretty sure I liked the Spice Girls and Josh Hartnett a completely normal amount.
All of this to say: The whole AE experience was so egodystonic for me, I knew my fragile self-image could only be saved by peer-reviewed research.
Thankfully, a cursory search confirmed: It’s not just me.
Research has indeed shown that aural parasocial relationships formed with podcasts hosts can be a lot more intense.
The anatomy of an aural PSR
By the time I realised what had happened, I was in deep.
This definitely wasn’t just about content anymore—it was about the relationship I seemed to believe I had with the podcast’s hosts. The connection felt real, even though it was entirely one-sided. I felt like I knew them well. Well enough that I could predict their actions, or intuit their intrinsic motivations. I found myself eagerly anticipating new episodes every morning, as if I were catching up with friends.
You know, just friends who have no idea I exist.
Because PSRs involve real emotional bonds that form between media consumers and media personalities (by definition, the viewer or listener perceives a genuine, personal connection with a stranger) PSRs mimic and are an extension of real-life relationships, apparently activating many of the same psychological and emotional processes.
Studies describe how podcasts intensify this dynamic because they engage listeners in intimate, unfiltered conversations for extended periods of time. Go figure, listening to someone’s voice for hours every week creates a powerful sense of familiarity.
Others posit PSRs with podcast hosts may be stronger because of the sheer volume of available content, or perhaps because “listeners are able to focus their consumption on more specific interests.”
But the one thing most people seem to agree on? The secret sauce for cultivating parasocial relationships is “self-disclosure”—in other words, It’s about how much a podcast host willing to share.
Multiple researchers have come to the conclusion that the strength of a PSR is influenced by many of the same things that influence the strength of friendships in real-life—like sharing personal information, and being perceived as authentic while doing so.
“A recent experiment revealed that greater self-disclosure by a podcast host increased perceived levels of parasocial interaction among listeners,” says a study which also, notably, found audio media to be capable of fostering PSRs that can have a significant impact on listeners’ attitudes and behaviours.
Another study found that the longer people are exposed to a media figure’s “self-disclosures”, the stronger their parasocial bonds become.
Self-disclosure is pretty much Dax and Monica’s whole bit in a compound-noun nutshell. Dax regularly delves into deeply personal topics, from his struggles with addiction to parenting mishaps; Monica reflects on the nuances of her career, friendships, and shares vulnerabilities in the realm of relationships and parenthood.
These candid conversations make listeners feel like they’re a part of the hosts’ lives— and the illusion of a reciprocal relationship is part of the attachment that forms.
Now, I’m not for one second suggesting that when Dax relapsed and did the Day 7 episode back in 2020—admitting to the whole world how he messed up and lost sixteen years of sobriety—he was thinking “this will make people parasocially attach to me and be really good for my podcast.” I don’t even vaguely believe that was his intention. Nonetheless, for a lot of people, that definitely was the impact.
And yes: There are upsides to engaging in PSRs. Academics are interested in how parasocial relationships can be helpful to people in marginalised communities, for example, in societies where representation is nonexistent and basic human rights are denied on the basis of race, gender, or sexual preferences.
Those kinds of podcasts, however, are not the ones signing multi-million dollar deals.
The economics of attention and the ethics of influence
I like to think I’m a reasonably autonomous thinker, but it’d be naive to believe I’m not being heavily influenced by people I’m listening to for eight to ten hours a week.
To use two light-hearted, easy examples from Armchair Expert: Recently, a recurring topic of conversation was ranking people according to how they present as either hot, funny, or cool. I’m not saying this is ‘wrong’ or a big deal in any way.
All I’m saying is it's not necessarily how I like to view the world; nor is it how I want to be framing or categorising the people I know—whether consciously or subconsciously.
I was also influenced to buy and read Miranda July’s All Fours by AE; a book I almost definitely would not have purchased without this endorsement.
My actions track with this analysis suggesting that having a PSR with a podcast host significantly decreases “evaluative persuasion knowledge” about a promotional message presented—which subconsciously or indirectly “intensifies listeners’ intentions to seek out more information about a promoted product or brand.”
Because of this profound ability to influence listener behaviour, studies have posited that the ability to foster a parasocial experience “might be the most important quality of a podcast host.”
This hypothesis seems to follow from a model in entertainment and narrative persuasion research called ‘The Entertainment Overcoming Resistance Model’ or ‘EORM’, which states that when people perceive media characters as friends, idols, influencers, or mentors, they will also “welcome and rely on” their guidance.
In this way, “a parasocial relationship (PSR) with a celebrity—such as a podcast host providing a persuasive message—is expected to reduce reactance to persuasive attempts, diminish counterarguing against the message, and ultimately result in greater compliance.”
Supporting studies show that aural parasocial experiences with audio personalities are “a predictive indicator of positive perceptions of brands and products recommended by them.” Aka: By encouraging and fostering PSRs with their listeners, podcast hosts can massively influence purchasing decisions, which is, of course, extremely attractive and valuable to advertisers, and in turn, distributors like Amazon’s Wondery.
For people who like to make conscious choices, the fandom to parasocial relationship pipeline always leads to the same destination: A deep personal reckoning.
Same with Taylor Swift.
Granted, she made it easier for us with her Kamala/Harris endorsement for the 2024 election. But you know what would’ve been even more inspiring? If she used her unbelievable power to stop wars—which, inexplicably, are still happening, in the year of our lord and saviour 2024.
Taylor Swift won’t speak on Gaza for the same reason Dax and Monica actively shy away from talking about politics: Money.
Isn’t that batshit, when you really think about it? That we live in a world where no amount of money is enough for rich people to risk the chance of making more by speaking out against injustice?
Even during an extremely obvious and objectively reported on by trusted international bodies mass violation of human rights akin to genocide, on pace to match the holocaust’s efforts to wipe out an entire group of human beings, who, at base, are just like us?
(How do we fall asleep at night..? Personally, I listen to old episodes of AE.)
The necessity of the illusion of a reciprocal relationship
During my time served on the subreddit, I noticed many commenters seem to believe that other commenters respect Monica less than they respect Dax simply because she’s a woman.
I’d like to propose a new theory to add to this soup.
People experience Monica as less likeable than they like Dax for the same reason people initially had a visceral response to Chappell Roan’s insistence on not being assaulted by fans: Both women are daring to break the illusion that this thing is, in any way, a reciprocal relationship.
When Monica finally spoke out against negative comments, she used such a fascinating phrase: “This is mine.” In context, the collectively assumed implication was: How dare you think you have a right to dictate how I manage this wildly successful thing I created, and, furthermore, how I present to you, my audience, as my success and financial prowess increases, as it well should..?
When Monica said, “This is mine,” she was asserting that the podcast—and her public persona—are her domain to control, regardless of her audience’s emotional investment, or, parasocial relationship with her.
Unlike Dax—who not only reads comments on Instagram but responds to them, and seems to still need his brand to echo that of “a man of the people”—Monica is more at ease with the one-way nature of the relationship between the successful producers of mass media and their consumers.
And by god, can we not stand that.
Research evaluating how PSRs with Korean celebrities result in brand credibility and loyalty towards the products they promote found that celebrity endorsements gain more trust and confidence among their followers when they are also “constantly interacting with them through social media”—which, I think, is another reason people go easier on Dax than they do on Monica.
Dax reads and replies to comments. Monica makes a point of ignoring them; subtly reinforcing the uncomfortable message: This is not a two-way street. You are not my equal. I am not your friend.
A fearless moral inventory
I studied journalism. I’m supposed to possess above average media literacy. But—just like most people—when I’m listening to my favourite podcast hosts shoot the shit, my critical mind is less engaged than it is with other types of content. Their way of seeing slowly becomes my way of seeing. Their values slowly become my values.
cultural imperialism. noun. The influences of an economically dominant culture on others, typically spread through trade, the mass media, and the internet. Often applied pejoratively to the global diffusion of American brands, popular culture, values, customs, and practices, allegedly at the expense of other cultures. (source)
Colonising minds has always been the big win of the cultural imperialism project.
Most people I talk to about this agree: We’re all just mildly different flavours of American, when it comes down to it.
I guess what shocked me about my experience with AE was how far I got down the rabbit hole before I realised what was happening.
It wasn’t an obvious, well-documented flaw in logic owing to too much time online, like getting into QAnon conspiracy theories or climate change denial.
It was a far more subtle, insidious addiction to a world in which the key messages are: Money, fame, and being good looking are the most important things on the planet; topics and people that challenge dominant or centrist worldviews are best avoided entirely; and Hermes handbags are aspirational, as opposed to an appalling symbol of all the worst things about the world.
That’s the thing about podcasts like AE, as I’ve come to understand all too intimately. They can cultivate such intense parasocial relationships—by blurring the lines between entertainment and personal connection—that it can lead to a form of content addiction that can, left unchecked, consume time, thoughts, actions, and even identities.
I’m not in any way attempting to detract from much of the great work and meaningful contributions I believe the AE podcast empire has made; particularly for people struggling with addiction.
All I’m saying is, I’m a person who’s now got a severe addiction to this podcast—and maybe I should self-reflect on precisely how and why that occurred; what its impact has been on my perceptions and biases; and what it’s true cost is, in terms of how all of this time and attention may have been better spent.
Now that I understand more about the mechanics of parasocial relationships—and how big creators and platforms benefit from cultivating them—I do feel better equipped to be a little more mindful about my media consumption.
If our collective attention is worth $80 million dollars (far more, if you’re Rogan), shouldn’t we be making them work a little harder for it, at least?
At most, imagine what we could achieve if we all decided to start focusing our attention elsewhere..? A fun thought experiment.