I Thought You Were My Friend

This chapter argues that livestreaming platforms promise friendship. This promise is partially fulfilled by platforms cultivating “friendships of presence”, or friendships based on spending time around one another for the sake of being present and human together. These friendships are genuine and profound. However, they raise concerns about livestreaming platforms facilitating deep friendships. This is because livestreaming fosters parasocial relationships – characteristically one-sided and technologically mediated relationships that create epistemic and power-based inequalities that impede the possibility of serious friendship. The chapter closes by arguing that platforms such as Twitch profit off of the illusion of intimacy and do little to take responsibility for their social consequences or to correct their illusions.