A couple of days ago Marina Joyce was a relatively well-known youtuber that had over 600,000 subscribers. But now she is the girl whose face is plastered over every social media outlet and who everyone is praying for. In the past couple of days her social media following and the number of subscribers her channel boasts has grown exponentially.
This all started after subscribers noticed a change in her demeanor in her videos and a strange scattering of bruises all over her body and they took it upon themselves to figure out what was truly happening in Marina Joyce's life. Fan theories ranged from abuse to drug use and no detail was left unexamined as fans picked through every video and social media post for any sign of distress. As the theories picked up speed and more people joined the search, what started as a simple desire to ensure that a well-liked youtuber was okay spiraled out of control. At the peak of the mania there were even people who insisted that she had connections to ISIS.
Despite the fact that the police have confirmed that Marina Joyce is "safe and well" and Marina herself has denied being abused or using drugs and explained that her bruises were a result of a nasty tumble in the park many people continue to speculate about what might be going on in her life.
The situation with Marina Joyce raises important questions about the relationships between celebrities or public icons and their fans. Did Marina Joyce's fans go too far? Should they not have assumed that they knew what was going on in her personal life? Or did they have a responsibility to attempt to help her if they believed she was in harms way? I think it's somewhere in between.
There is a perceived friendship and familiarity between celebrities and their fans which psychologists call a para-social relationship. Even though fans may have never even met these celebrities and everything they have seen has been carefully controlled by them, viewers feel as if they know the celebrity intimately. They feel like they are one of their friends and as a result they feel a responsibility and need to ensure that they are safe and happy the same way they would with any other friend. This perceived intimacy is only furthered by the fact that YouTuber's method of filming and putting out videos seems to be more genuine “vlog” channels that showcase their day to day lives.
Despite this fact, we as audiences have to remember that while we may idolize celebrities, what we see is only a small fraction of their real lives. In Marina Joyce’s case because fans assumed they knew what was best, what started as a well-meaning attempt to check up on her became a media circus.
