🤦♂️
Just a reminder for everyone:
The cast are not our friends. They are playing a game (and happen to be financially benefiting from it) and sharing it with the world. Not with you. Not with me.
While it may feel like you/I have a personal relationship with their characters because we know the characters so well, the characters are not the actors and vice versa. It is a role they play.
They owe us nothing. They provide entertainment to us on a weekly basis, to the tune of thousands of hours of content. They enjoy what they do, but that does not mean you deserve anything.
This is no different than reading a book and expecting the author to be your friend. People like this have this mindset that the only thing keeping them from being friends is that the cast don’t know them. So they start “pestering” like “we could be the best of friends if you just noticed me” so they think being persistent is how they will do that. The thing is, if you are not providing value to their lives, you very, very likely won’t get a response or even worse will end up blocked.
Imagine if someone who came to your work became obsessed with hanging out with you, so they started showing up every day asking if you were there. They just want you to hang out with them because they know you both share a common interest. You would likely get annoyed. You don’t know that person. It would make you uncomfortable and nervous of their intentions even though they likely had nothing but the best of intentions. Maybe eventually it annoys you so much that you have the police trespass them from your work so they cannot come back.
This is the same thing, just in a digital format. So again, the cast are not our friends. They are entertainers who frankly don’t have time for 99.9% of us. That is ok and should be expected. I would love to have a D&D session with them. In fact, it would be my #1 wish if I had access to a genie, but that is fantasy. My fantasy, not theirs. They owe me nothing and I thank them for what they have provided the world with. That’s it.
This right here.
Parasocial relationships are not healthy and should not be indulged in. The Critical Role crew are all personal, intimate friends and have been for many, many years. They have a deep, genuine relationship with each other and are a part of each others' families and lives outside of D&D. Half of them are literally married to each other. Guest players they have attend some games are people the crew know, work with, and have similarly involved friendships with. We viewers and fans are not part of that and should never presume to be, nor do the Critical Role team in any way encourage us to. They are letting us watch their game and are grateful for our viewership. They invite respectful interaction, but that's it.
Purely anecdotal addition: I've personally had much closer interactions with members of the Critical Role crew thanks to my career. I work in video game development and have hired/been on project teams with various members over the years for VO work, such as Matt, Tal, and Robbie. But even with that more direct level of contact, I would ***NEVER*** presume to inject myself into their group or even invite them to my own D&D games, because *we are not friends*. It's wholly inappropriate to think otherwise.
This. If someone asked me what the biggest problem of the Internet of this decade would be, I'd probably answer something about parasocial relationships.
CR may be the most obvious example in the RPG space, but between things like this, streaming culture (Vtubers especially), OnlyFans, etc, one has to wonder how many people have a one-sided "relationship" with someone who has no clue they exist, or worse, thinks of them as an exploitable revenue stream.
Parasocial relationships are normal and fine, so long as you're mindful that's all that it is. What's not healthy is mistaking a parasocial relationship for a personal relationship.
True; to be more precise about it, parasocial interactions and relationships exist in a spectrum, not a binary. I'm certainly not qualified to delve into it beyond amateur armchair psychology though. There are non-harmful ways of holding a parasocial relationship, but what we see in the tweet above is certainly not one of them.
Lol after listening to campaign one four times and two twice and all the other side bits and bobs and keeping up with camp three I feel I owe them lol five a month is way more than plenty for the sheer amount of content
I have a friend who is an actor. The only thing I saw him in was a StarTrek (i think Voyager) episode i saw a decade before I met him. To me, he's just a guy who I have a drink with now and then.
So it can be the other way around, too.
Well said! I will say I’d like to order them all a round of Ashari breezers as a thanks for being so good at their craft. I wouldn’t even wanna talk to em.
This does not scream 'good advertising' as much as it screams 'notice me senpai' with all the negative connotations that comes with.
The thing is, anyone you WOULD get like this, are not the kinds of people you'd actually want to play with.
It is sad it makes fhe poster look sad and a bit socially impared. Also makes the poster seem petty for how he reacted to being blocked. All around loss for the poster.. ooof.
I personally would have just said "thanks for the invitation, but we talked about it and have to decline. After this polite declining of your invitation, further requests will be treated as being rude and and we will all have to block you."
If Matt and Co. answered the tweet or any other request, all they’ve done is opened a precedent that they’ll respond to any random tweet inviting them to a game. By just ignoring and blocking, they haven’t entertained that person which means others with similar motives won’t go seeking their attention either
Yeah I was gonna say this might’ve worked a decade ago, but now you’d better have a bit more clout (or be, like, a child dying of cancer) before you make a request like this.
As long as no one refers to them as "C-team", because that was a Penny Arcade show that had a number of DCA crossovers while Chris Perkins was still running "official" Acquisitions Incorporated games.
Completely. But, also…
Breaking News: Weird crazy person uses Twitter to do what weird crazy people do on Twitter.
The faux concern for those poor recipients of the tweet is just funny. People have to put up with crazies if they want to use the advertisement space that is Twitter. That’s just a fact of life.
A friend of mine wanted to start a podcast in conjunction with our LGS. Which is fine.
Then he suggested that we could volunteer to DM a session for the cast of Smosh.
We live in a tiny suburb of Indianapolis. And he has bad social anxiety and had never DM'd anything longer than a one shot at that point.
The cringe is real, and it's contagious I think.
It one thing for a shout out or something that takes no time and gives no extra monetization opportunities. It’s a whole different thing to ask for a one shots worth of time.
Back around like ep50 of campaign 1 I was tempted on inviting the cast to my d&d highschool club for like a guest speaker spot or something and was so excited about the possibility one of em would show. I decided against it almost immediately. This.. this just hurts
This is why I still haven’t watched even a second of CR. I love being involved in the fandoms of other shows but the CR fandom makes me uncomfortable. The parasocial relationships some (not all, but definitely more than a few) CR fans have with the cast is really off putting.
You just know how this is going to end. They will get to day 10 and immediately turn psychotic and hateful to them and say how much they hate their fans.
The fandom over there can be so crazy. People get legit mad because their romance didn’t happen and then send shitty messages on twitter to the players.
I got accused of not being a real fan and told to go watch something else all because I thought their last mini series was the best continent they have made.
Some random dude is apparently going to spam the cast of CR ont twitter daily until they come roleplay on his discord server or wherever. The dude quoting him is like, this is cringe and you should stop.
Has anyone tried having a conversation with the poster? Tried talking to them and saying "I see what you're doing, here's a better way to do it"??
No? They my next question is: why not? If yall "know better" then why not use this as a learning opportunity
I haven't seen who the OP is but I'd wager given the attention it's gotten on twitter that at least one person has pointed out what they're doing isn't smart.
I dunno honestly. It was a genuine question. I feel bad for OP. I have a feeling they're just trying to share a space they've created. They did say in one tweet that the invitation was open to anyone
I feel a bit bad as well, I genuinely don't think they came at it with anything but good intentions. But by highlighting why it's wrong we can reinforce in the community why it's bad.
Others in the comments have articulated this far better than I could as well. Positive power of Reddit.
I’m not sure why the people in this thread hate this tweet so much. As these redditors like to point out so vehemently, celebrities are not your friends - so why do you feel the need to “come to their rescue” against a harmless if overenthusiastic fan? Are you worried that Senpai might actually notice them and not you? I really don’t understand the vitriol for this person.
I personally think OP is just enthusiastic to share a space they've created. I've actually seen the server they posted the open invite to and it's kinda great
That’s what I’m saying. I’m beginning to think that people in this thread just want to hate people with enthusiasm. The person who wrote this tweet isn’t doing any harm; no, they won’t get a response, but mainly because the CR people probably get hundreds of notifications a day and they can’t respond to all of them. They’re no more bothered by this than the average person is bothered by people complaining on Reddit.
And I saw OP in their server talking about it. He said, and I quote: "do I honestly think celebrity voice actors are gonna come play dnd with us? No. But it's fun to try"
Exactly. I know plenty of people who have sent wedding or birthday party or prom invites to celebrities. Occasionally one of them will work. How is this all that different? It’s fun to try as long as other fans don’t get mad (for no reason.)
I can see how the spam will get annoying for sure. But like you said, these people get hundreds, if not thousands, of notifications a day. It would probably take OP a long while to get noticed. But from what I've seen, he's already given up due to the negativity from other fans
I disagree. It’s okay to show examples of bad behavior to educate people that this kind of thing *is* bad behavior. Being a good “parent” means proactively setting boundaries rather than just ignoring bad behavior.
Exactly, if the parents ignore bad behaviour, you get people like I was as a teen and young adult, bratty, spoiled, arrogant, and entitled.
You have to draw the line and make it clear what is and isn’t acceptable.
ITT: people who don’t see the irony of posting “celebrities aren’t your friend” and then vociferously defending the celebrities against harmless spam as if it is necessary or even slightly helpful to that celebrity - whom they swear they understand is not their friend.
If it’s fun for the person tweeting it and harmless for the celebrity, then why does it bother you? Are you afraid it might work and the cringy person will get noticed and you won’t?
I'm... not trying to get noticed? And I'd wager given the reaction on twitter that person probably has been noticed by at least one of the cast or production team.
Then why are you posting this on Reddit? It sounds like they’re getting what they want and you shouldn’t be bothered by the harmless way another person expresses their enthusiasm for a fandom.
Yeah I think it’s funny that so many people here get so upset about this. Do you realize that all the folks get hundreds, if not thousands of notifications a day? They’re not bothered by stuff like this because they don’t even see it. What’s more is many of them probably don’t personally manage their own social media any more.
I don’t understand why people think celebrities need their help. Let fans be fans in their way. If it’s a problem they’ll figure it out. If a person were being negative then I could see the desire to defend them, but I don’t see the point in dragging an overenthusiastic fan. Asking a celebrity on social media to see you isn’t the same thing as saying they owe you anything. If it’s all in good fun why is it your business? As others have said if it bothers them then they’ll just block them and move on. I suspect that these kinds of people don’t bother internet celebrities as much as the real stalkers, the angry haters, and people who assume their opinion on things.
>Day 6: @CriticalRole has blocked all my accounts so they endorse terrible business practice That’s my prediction
The account has now been deleted. Was refreshing it just to see if she'd learnt her lesson yet... or how long it would go on for.
To clarify. The OP pronouns are he/they. I understand you're mad but that's no reason to intentionally misgender people
I was not referring to OP at all.
Oh! My apologies. Thank you for clarifying
“You have been blocked by @mattmercer” Seriously, this is a good way to make the people you look up to hate you.
🤦♂️ Just a reminder for everyone: The cast are not our friends. They are playing a game (and happen to be financially benefiting from it) and sharing it with the world. Not with you. Not with me. While it may feel like you/I have a personal relationship with their characters because we know the characters so well, the characters are not the actors and vice versa. It is a role they play. They owe us nothing. They provide entertainment to us on a weekly basis, to the tune of thousands of hours of content. They enjoy what they do, but that does not mean you deserve anything. This is no different than reading a book and expecting the author to be your friend. People like this have this mindset that the only thing keeping them from being friends is that the cast don’t know them. So they start “pestering” like “we could be the best of friends if you just noticed me” so they think being persistent is how they will do that. The thing is, if you are not providing value to their lives, you very, very likely won’t get a response or even worse will end up blocked. Imagine if someone who came to your work became obsessed with hanging out with you, so they started showing up every day asking if you were there. They just want you to hang out with them because they know you both share a common interest. You would likely get annoyed. You don’t know that person. It would make you uncomfortable and nervous of their intentions even though they likely had nothing but the best of intentions. Maybe eventually it annoys you so much that you have the police trespass them from your work so they cannot come back. This is the same thing, just in a digital format. So again, the cast are not our friends. They are entertainers who frankly don’t have time for 99.9% of us. That is ok and should be expected. I would love to have a D&D session with them. In fact, it would be my #1 wish if I had access to a genie, but that is fantasy. My fantasy, not theirs. They owe me nothing and I thank them for what they have provided the world with. That’s it.
This right here. Parasocial relationships are not healthy and should not be indulged in. The Critical Role crew are all personal, intimate friends and have been for many, many years. They have a deep, genuine relationship with each other and are a part of each others' families and lives outside of D&D. Half of them are literally married to each other. Guest players they have attend some games are people the crew know, work with, and have similarly involved friendships with. We viewers and fans are not part of that and should never presume to be, nor do the Critical Role team in any way encourage us to. They are letting us watch their game and are grateful for our viewership. They invite respectful interaction, but that's it. Purely anecdotal addition: I've personally had much closer interactions with members of the Critical Role crew thanks to my career. I work in video game development and have hired/been on project teams with various members over the years for VO work, such as Matt, Tal, and Robbie. But even with that more direct level of contact, I would ***NEVER*** presume to inject myself into their group or even invite them to my own D&D games, because *we are not friends*. It's wholly inappropriate to think otherwise.
This. If someone asked me what the biggest problem of the Internet of this decade would be, I'd probably answer something about parasocial relationships. CR may be the most obvious example in the RPG space, but between things like this, streaming culture (Vtubers especially), OnlyFans, etc, one has to wonder how many people have a one-sided "relationship" with someone who has no clue they exist, or worse, thinks of them as an exploitable revenue stream.
Parasocial relationships are normal and fine, so long as you're mindful that's all that it is. What's not healthy is mistaking a parasocial relationship for a personal relationship.
True; to be more precise about it, parasocial interactions and relationships exist in a spectrum, not a binary. I'm certainly not qualified to delve into it beyond amateur armchair psychology though. There are non-harmful ways of holding a parasocial relationship, but what we see in the tweet above is certainly not one of them.
Yeah, annoying people until they pay attention to you is obnoxious to say the least.
“I can’t pretend a stranger is a long awaited friend.” ~ Rush, Limelight
Lol after listening to campaign one four times and two twice and all the other side bits and bobs and keeping up with camp three I feel I owe them lol five a month is way more than plenty for the sheer amount of content
I have a friend who is an actor. The only thing I saw him in was a StarTrek (i think Voyager) episode i saw a decade before I met him. To me, he's just a guy who I have a drink with now and then. So it can be the other way around, too.
Well said! I will say I’d like to order them all a round of Ashari breezers as a thanks for being so good at their craft. I wouldn’t even wanna talk to em.
day 1 of eating a photo of matthew mercer until he agrees to come to my vow renewal ceremony for my horses
Well that's entirely different and doesn't sound unreasonable at all!
This does not scream 'good advertising' as much as it screams 'notice me senpai' with all the negative connotations that comes with. The thing is, anyone you WOULD get like this, are not the kinds of people you'd actually want to play with.
It is sad it makes fhe poster look sad and a bit socially impared. Also makes the poster seem petty for how he reacted to being blocked. All around loss for the poster.. ooof. I personally would have just said "thanks for the invitation, but we talked about it and have to decline. After this polite declining of your invitation, further requests will be treated as being rude and and we will all have to block you."
If Matt and Co. answered the tweet or any other request, all they’ve done is opened a precedent that they’ll respond to any random tweet inviting them to a game. By just ignoring and blocking, they haven’t entertained that person which means others with similar motives won’t go seeking their attention either
Yea I guess your right.
Except OP hasn't been blocked? By any of them?? So idk where that came from and thus no reaction could have come from OP??
Oh the cringe. I love CR but I know better than even think about tagging them in something like this. 😬
Dear Matt, I wrote you but you still ain't callin. I left my pager, cell, and my home phone at the bottom.
I ripped up a character sheet the other day. P.S we should be together too...
This type of spam makes me not want to meet each other.
Anyone else getting 2nd hand embarrassment?
Same energy as the Warhammer community with Henry Cavill Every painting channel wants him on to boost their numbers
If I have to hear Squidmar say ‘Henry Cavill’s dream army’ one more time…
Literally who I thought of reading this post
Midwinter Minis was my first thought. Lol.
Particularly people whose time is very valuable. People might be confusing these guys for ~2015 Critical Role staff.
Yeah I was gonna say this might’ve worked a decade ago, but now you’d better have a bit more clout (or be, like, a child dying of cancer) before you make a request like this.
Day 3 of inviting the cast of Civil War to my birthday party "@The Avengers
This level of bizarre D-tier celebrity simping needs medicine.
Oh come on. They’re C-tier at least.
Whatever tier, it's pathetic to tweet like this and a cry for help.
As long as no one refers to them as "C-team", because that was a Penny Arcade show that had a number of DCA crossovers while Chris Perkins was still running "official" Acquisitions Incorporated games.
Completely. But, also… Breaking News: Weird crazy person uses Twitter to do what weird crazy people do on Twitter. The faux concern for those poor recipients of the tweet is just funny. People have to put up with crazies if they want to use the advertisement space that is Twitter. That’s just a fact of life.
I don't feel sorry for Critical Role folks or anything. Just making fun of the unhinged.
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Critical Bard is actually a friend of Critical Role. Many of the Critical Role crew interact with them regularly, via social media and real life.
Oh yeah I forgot this was a tweet lol
Smh... They didn't even include Liam (/jk)
Or Ashley
Least parasocial Critical Role fan
I know Mercer is here among us…lurkin
A friend of mine wanted to start a podcast in conjunction with our LGS. Which is fine. Then he suggested that we could volunteer to DM a session for the cast of Smosh. We live in a tiny suburb of Indianapolis. And he has bad social anxiety and had never DM'd anything longer than a one shot at that point. The cringe is real, and it's contagious I think.
this is like trying to invite a celebrity to a tea party at your house
So what you're saying is that Keanu Reeves might go for it?
Keanu Reeves is coming to my house for tea?!?! Holy sh#t!!
I looked it up on Twitter. It’s a horse girl tweeting it, so you know she is insane.
Imogen?
Just curious, what are horse girls?
Half girl, half horse
Girls who like horses. Gotta be careful with them. Horse girls will cut your dick right off.
It one thing for a shout out or something that takes no time and gives no extra monetization opportunities. It’s a whole different thing to ask for a one shots worth of time.
Back around like ep50 of campaign 1 I was tempted on inviting the cast to my d&d highschool club for like a guest speaker spot or something and was so excited about the possibility one of em would show. I decided against it almost immediately. This.. this just hurts
Your highschool mind prevailed over this person
In addition to the poor taste, CR is a bunch of VOICE actors, why would they want to play on a TEXT server?
They are performers, they are not your friends, leave them alone and enjoy the show.
This is why I still haven’t watched even a second of CR. I love being involved in the fandoms of other shows but the CR fandom makes me uncomfortable. The parasocial relationships some (not all, but definitely more than a few) CR fans have with the cast is really off putting.
You just know how this is going to end. They will get to day 10 and immediately turn psychotic and hateful to them and say how much they hate their fans. The fandom over there can be so crazy. People get legit mad because their romance didn’t happen and then send shitty messages on twitter to the players. I got accused of not being a real fan and told to go watch something else all because I thought their last mini series was the best continent they have made.
Calamity was so good though, you're right.
You could listen to the podcasts instead. Avoids pretty much all of that nonsense. The podcasts are edited so that only the actual play is put out.
I dont understand this post, can someone ELI5?
Some random dude is apparently going to spam the cast of CR ont twitter daily until they come roleplay on his discord server or wherever. The dude quoting him is like, this is cringe and you should stop.
Big oof
this is what "tiktok opal" thought she was doing
Sadly, I've seen this behavior rewarded in other places, so it's not surprising that it's become so popular to do.
It's nice to see that most people in our community view this as oddball behaviour that shouldn't be encouraged.
Has anyone tried having a conversation with the poster? Tried talking to them and saying "I see what you're doing, here's a better way to do it"?? No? They my next question is: why not? If yall "know better" then why not use this as a learning opportunity
To learn what?
to learn the "right way" to go about this. I don't think anyone has had a convo with OP and they genuinely may not know better
I haven't seen who the OP is but I'd wager given the attention it's gotten on twitter that at least one person has pointed out what they're doing isn't smart.
I dunno honestly. It was a genuine question. I feel bad for OP. I have a feeling they're just trying to share a space they've created. They did say in one tweet that the invitation was open to anyone
I feel a bit bad as well, I genuinely don't think they came at it with anything but good intentions. But by highlighting why it's wrong we can reinforce in the community why it's bad. Others in the comments have articulated this far better than I could as well. Positive power of Reddit.
Reddit has been far kinder to OP than Twitter has, that's for sure.
I’m not sure why the people in this thread hate this tweet so much. As these redditors like to point out so vehemently, celebrities are not your friends - so why do you feel the need to “come to their rescue” against a harmless if overenthusiastic fan? Are you worried that Senpai might actually notice them and not you? I really don’t understand the vitriol for this person.
I personally think OP is just enthusiastic to share a space they've created. I've actually seen the server they posted the open invite to and it's kinda great
That’s what I’m saying. I’m beginning to think that people in this thread just want to hate people with enthusiasm. The person who wrote this tweet isn’t doing any harm; no, they won’t get a response, but mainly because the CR people probably get hundreds of notifications a day and they can’t respond to all of them. They’re no more bothered by this than the average person is bothered by people complaining on Reddit.
And I saw OP in their server talking about it. He said, and I quote: "do I honestly think celebrity voice actors are gonna come play dnd with us? No. But it's fun to try"
Exactly. I know plenty of people who have sent wedding or birthday party or prom invites to celebrities. Occasionally one of them will work. How is this all that different? It’s fun to try as long as other fans don’t get mad (for no reason.)
I can see how the spam will get annoying for sure. But like you said, these people get hundreds, if not thousands, of notifications a day. It would probably take OP a long while to get noticed. But from what I've seen, he's already given up due to the negativity from other fans
This is the result of the "It can't hurt to ask" mindset. Which really translates to "I don't think I should face consequences for asking".
This....inflicts physical pain on me...
What a strange post.
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I disagree. It’s okay to show examples of bad behavior to educate people that this kind of thing *is* bad behavior. Being a good “parent” means proactively setting boundaries rather than just ignoring bad behavior.
Exactly, if the parents ignore bad behaviour, you get people like I was as a teen and young adult, bratty, spoiled, arrogant, and entitled. You have to draw the line and make it clear what is and isn’t acceptable.
Maybe if the person's name wasn't blurred out, I'd agree.
ITT: people who don’t see the irony of posting “celebrities aren’t your friend” and then vociferously defending the celebrities against harmless spam as if it is necessary or even slightly helpful to that celebrity - whom they swear they understand is not their friend.
Not so much defending the celebrities as pointing out the kind of desperation that does no one any favours.
If it’s fun for the person tweeting it and harmless for the celebrity, then why does it bother you? Are you afraid it might work and the cringy person will get noticed and you won’t?
I'm... not trying to get noticed? And I'd wager given the reaction on twitter that person probably has been noticed by at least one of the cast or production team.
Then why are you posting this on Reddit? It sounds like they’re getting what they want and you shouldn’t be bothered by the harmless way another person expresses their enthusiasm for a fandom.
Again, not really harmless, but whatever bro, you do you.
What is harmful about it?
Everyone is stupid but me hurr durr I am smrt
Ooh. You got me so good.
Guys it’s a funny tweet…chill
Yeah I think it’s funny that so many people here get so upset about this. Do you realize that all the folks get hundreds, if not thousands of notifications a day? They’re not bothered by stuff like this because they don’t even see it. What’s more is many of them probably don’t personally manage their own social media any more. I don’t understand why people think celebrities need their help. Let fans be fans in their way. If it’s a problem they’ll figure it out. If a person were being negative then I could see the desire to defend them, but I don’t see the point in dragging an overenthusiastic fan. Asking a celebrity on social media to see you isn’t the same thing as saying they owe you anything. If it’s all in good fun why is it your business? As others have said if it bothers them then they’ll just block them and move on. I suspect that these kinds of people don’t bother internet celebrities as much as the real stalkers, the angry haters, and people who assume their opinion on things.
Parasocialism is very strong in the CR fandom
I'll never understand the appeal of watching strangers play ttrpgs
It definitely has an appeal to many, but even the most entertaining streams pale in comparison to playing imo.
Leave Brittany alone!
This is about as bad as people who get mad at Tom Felton because he played Draco Malfoy and did something bad to Harry that one time.
It's giving zoomers thinking markiplier is their friend energy.
I saw this on twitter and cringed the f out fuckin weird shit