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Levels of Parasocial Relationships
Giles and Maltby (2006) identified three levels of parasocial relationships that a person might have with a celebrity. The first level is the entertainment-social level, where the person keeps up with their celebrity and finds out information about them for the purpose of entertainment. The second level is the intense-personal level, where the person has intensive feelings for the celebrity and might appear obsessed. The third level is borderline-pathological, and this is where the person has over-identified with the celebrity and their fantasies and behaviour may have become uncontrollable; their absorption is more like an addiction.