“Anthony Bourdain is my father” – The Varsity

The children are uncomfortable with their mortality

Although many people believe that the COVID-19 lockdowns around the world have become something of ancient history, there is still much to discuss about the negative impact the pandemic has had on the young people who have experienced it. One of these effects is the longing for connections beyond friends and family, because to survive the pandemic we have had to become hermits, remote and distant from everyone – especially those we loved. Of course, we were looking for something more – like parasocial relationships.

We've heard it all before. Apps like TikTok, YouTube and Instagram offer anyone with a phone and dreams of talking to any celebrity or influencer of their choice. Because we lived to talk to our friends online, those authentic friendships began to mix with the completely random feelings we felt toward celebrities. This created a dark tunnel for the growing bond between celebrities and their fans. For example, a 16-year-old was in a parasocial relationship with actor Josh O'Connor when I was watching season 3 of The crown as I rotted on my bedroom floor.

Bed rot became something of a daily ritual. Of course, this was a response to the relentless mass catastrophe, isolation and death of the pandemic, but also part of the wave of overly corporatized indie sleaze and “messy girl” aesthetics. As a result, this ritual took a questionable turn.

Teens who grew up during lockdown suddenly started swapping their imaginary friends and Discord relationships for an “emotional support dead person.” A now-deleted tweet that started this trend was posted on October 23, 2022 by @saintpdf – aka Baby Bri – and simply read: “Every girl has a dead guy with emotional support.” No punctuation, no capital letters, just another random train of thought.

But Baby Bri's words didn't go unsung, and suddenly there were countless slideshows of pictures of Elliott Smith, George Harrison, Heath Ledger, Kurt Cobain, and others racking up thousands of likes on TikTok and X.

One of my best friends has a spiritual connection to the late chef Anthony Bourdain that goes beyond your average celebrity fan relationship. These emotional support dead dudes aren't just your friends: they're your brothers, fathers, and spiritual guides.

Another facet of Dead Guy's emotional support that needs to be understood is the way grief was perpetuated through TikTok. Many believe that it is not a new criticism that it is not normal for people to get bored if a video is longer than 30 seconds. However, since many of us grew up with this fast-paced content, we started consuming everything online with the same superficial mentality. Real tragedies quickly become the subject of complex irony posts and the era of “taking serious things seriously” seems to be long gone.

I can only assume that the reason dead men emotional support has overtaken everyone's for you page so much is because the internet has changed the nature of grief. Creators and news outlets alike exploited death for content. To cope, many teens chose just one person—often someone who died young and tragically—to express their grief. We were stuck at home with nothing to do, consuming media, rotting in bed, making celebrity slideshows to the sounds of TV Girl and Big Thief.

The emotional support dead guy stays with you even after the trend dies. If it wasn't for my friend's passion, I honestly would never have sat down and truly enjoyed it Parts unknownand finally started cooking for myself without hating every second of it. The slightly shitty origins of internet trends can be ignored forever, but the truth is that everyone needs some emotional support, dead dudes.