In a current dating recession, the male loneliness epidemic, and the rise of the independent women, people have came up with ways to fill that void. Parasocial relationships and ai relationships are scarily on the rise and are almost normalized in everyday life. Being involved in fandom culture myself, it popularly known that parasocial relationships are extremely dangerous, but to what point do we need to hold back. People get a lot of backlash for developing these parasocial relationships with celebrities, and all in all it can be harmless to other people, however how harmful are these parasocial relationships to the person themselves? It just makes me think we are so deprived of affection and relationships that we result to these coping mechanisms that are giving us constant dopamine boosts, and it's so appealing that people would rather have a parasocial/ai relationship than connecting with a real person in these life. But for the people who get out there and date, how far can we go until we say that crushes are parasocial relationships? Like is that not where we derive the term "delulu" because imagine this whole life with someone we barely know? But I beleive the fine line is that crushes are on people we personally know and we do not cross the line of believing we are actually in a relationship with this person... unless you do then I suppose you are in a parasocial relationship. Chat GPT becoming the new therapists and AI girlfriends and boyfriends are increasingly scary and I wonder how long until it is truly normalized and having AI partners can be an option. Are we all so lonely that we resort to unconventional relationships or are we so antisocial that we would rather talk to AI than a real person? I personally have not met anyone with a robot partner (if robot is "offensive" to AI then apologies) yet which is reassuring that there is still some form of human connection still out there. Are AI relationships parasocial relationships?