228: Grieving for a Social Media Influencer: Exploring Parasocial Relationships on Reddit with Emily Rose

The concept of parasocial relationships has been around for decades, but with the rise of social media influencers, it's become easier than ever to form a connection with someone you've never met. Dave Hollis is one such influencer who used his platform to reach millions of people and inspire them to make positive changes in their lives. From his successful career at Disney to his bestselling books and popular podcasts, Dave Hollis had become an influential figure in the world of self help and personal growth. He was also the ex husband of Rachel Hollis. But when they were together, the two of them built a robust community that would follow their every move, from business to conferences, to even their personal events at home and their family and their kids. And then the divorce. And after the divorce, a disenfranchised community. From this community, a subreddit was born that has grown to over 13,000 followers who comment every day about Dave Hollis, his more popular wife, Rachel Hollis, and even Dave's recent ex girlfriend, fitness influencer Heidi Powell. Last week, many in the community were left reeling when it was reported post by post by post, that Dave Hollis had passed away at his home at the age of 47. In this episode of the Indestructible PR Podcast, how to Cope when the Other side of a One Way Relationship Experiences a life event. A tragic life event. I'll be speaking with my guest, Emily Rose. She's from It's Become a Whole Thing podcast. Emily and I have discussed Rachel and Dave Hollis on both of our podcasts in the past. So we felt it was the right time to discuss the impact of Dave's death on a social media community and also to discuss parasocial relationships in general. This is my conversation with Emily Rose. Emily, hello. Thank you for joining me on an episode that's a little different for us, wouldn't you say? Navigating Social Media and the Parasocial Relationship.

It really is. Although it's safe to say that in the world of social media, every day is different from the last.

Fair, fair assessment. You and I are both on social media a lot and we talk about this. You and I have had two conversations on a podcast. You come at it as Elder Millennial, correct?

Yeah, yes, exactly.

And I'm a Gen X. I'm not gonna call myself an elder Gen X, I'm just Gen X. But you and I certainly swim in the whole social media world. And we wanted to talk about this topic in general because of an event that happened a few days ago, and that is the. That Dave Hollis, the ex husband of self Help guru, lifestyle guru, for lack of a better word, passed away over the weekend. And so many people are experiencing this death through social media. And since you and I did discuss it on your podcast earlier, I thought it would be a good opportunity to discuss the relationships that people have with someone like a Dave Hollis and his ex wife, Rachel Hollis, but also just navigating parasocial relationships and parasocial relationships when something abruptly changes in that relationship.

Yeah, yeah. And there's just so many layers with which you can discuss it because there's the parasocial relationship that the public has with that person and then there's the very unique position that we're in where you have this tragedy happen. And yet in the SEO results, you have us last year talking about this in a very tongue in cheek, funny way, sort of poking fun at the whole situation. And it's very interesting to navigate a world where your words are kind of cemented in the Google searches, despite all the changes.

Yes, and this is why we're talking, because let's just start at Monday night. We'll start there. So we'll start in the very micro moment of Monday night. We'll expand from there. I was traveling, I was on the road, and I happened to see the Variety article about Dave Hollis's death. Now you and I have discussed, as you mentioned, Dave Hollis on your podcast. So immediately when I saw that Variety article, I started googling and looked at the Dave Hollis search results. Now, granted, I'm on Google, so Google's going to feed me the Molly feed. But there it was, our conversation, a very heavy SEO laden post about our conversation that we had with Dave Hollis. So you and I are part of that search result. So when you reached out to me, I thought, you are exactly the person who I want to hear from about this because we need to discuss, or as I said in an Instagram story, we need to close the loop a little. Wouldn't you agree?

Oh, completely. Because the way that I found out was SEO related, because on TikTok, it's one of my most viral videos to date. It was one that I made last year. Just a general overview of the Hollases. So Rachel and Dave talking about their rise and where they are now or where they were last year. And so I guess on Monday when the news broke, I had people searching on TikTok. So as we both know, it's becoming more and more of a popular search engine. And so all these people were commenting on my video like, he passed away. Where's the follow up oh, my God. Like wanting to discuss it in this post, that obviously has a very, very different tone to the situation.

And that tone is what let's now move the conversation to where people can really see and feel tone, and that's in Reddit. And my whole connection to the Hollis universe, as I wasn't a fan per se, I never invested one penny in the couple. But just being in the online space, I was very familiar with their work, very familiar with who they were, how they operated. As someone who has an online business, you know, you as well, I track online influencers and I've always been quite fascinated and now highly scrutinizing practices of a lot of these mega influencers that became big in a certain time of the Internet, when communities were a lot easier to grow and there was more fertile ground for them to grow and they became much bigger mega influencers. But this business model where they all work together in these masterminds, they all feed each other, have affiliate links with each other, and help each other grow while peddling this advice, how easy it is to grow these communities. So I come at it with a little bit of an edge. And so that's why when Rachel Hollis and you and I have discussed this, when she had her TikTok moment in toilet Gate, where we saw the glimpse, the veil was lifted and we saw the real Rachel Hollis look down on her followers, and then from that came the divorce, certainly, and then this whole social media zeitgeist, you know, as you would call it, that all these people were just kind of drawn in to this drama that happened. So just talk a little bit about that type of culture and why that grows and why people are so interested in it.

Well, I mean, yeah, like you and I have talked about it from a very critical point of view. And when I say it, I should specify we're talking about the public face that these folks have put forward. Obviously we don't know them. And I don't know if you ever get this comment, but I'll be talking about people. I'm generally always talking about it from a reporting, media literacy standpoint. And so people will say, like, oh, you're exploiting this situation. And. And I'm like, well, you wouldn't say that to the news. Because the way I see it, like, TikTok in some ways is a bit of a democratization of news. It's like, it's like decentralized. Anyone can give their takes and people come to my pages. I'm sure they come to yours for your version of the news. And so we've been very critical of that. And then when this happens, it's so deeply personal and yet public, because life and death, these universal concepts, they really scare and haunt people, yet we're all going to experience both. And so it really makes people stop and go through a very pretty visceral reaction that is both separate and yet inextricable from the public face and from their body of work that they've put forth. Because I'm talking about when the Hollises were still together and even I guess after their divorce, their whole business model was quote, unquote, being open about their lives, being like very vulnerable about what's going on in their lives or their version of that, and talking about the ins and outs of the difficulties of their relationship and their fights and their intimacy. Everything was kind of like out there and in some ways for sale. So what do you do with that when you have this horrible tragedy of half of that pair going before their time?

Yes. And it's quite a journey. And I think this is the first time, as someone who tracks parasocial relationships, this is the first time where I'm noticing this event create such an abrupt shift in people's feelings towards another person. Because it's remarkable to me to follow a subreddit for the better part of two years and have most of the people snark on Rachel Hollis, her ex husband, Dave Hollis, his girlfriend, former girlfriend, you know, Heidi Powell, the whole group or cabal of them. And then all of a sudden, in a moment, this event happens and how it makes this hard turn into a subreddit now focused on grief. So let's just even talk about parasocial relationships in general. I taught a college class last semester on social media and just social media relationship and how we interact with the media behind it. We did have a section on parasocial relationships and I ran the students through a questionnaire and asking about people who they follow, like, who do you have a strong connection with online, you know, who do you follow on YouTube, who do you follow in television? And I would ask these questions, you know, what's their name? Where are they from? What do they like to wear? What are their favorite TV shows, What's their favorite musicians? And the students followed it through and they realized at the end that they had this almost tight intimate relationship with this person. And then I ask in the end, have you ever met them? No. And so, and that's the definition, it's a one way relationship. In often cases, it's people who frequently touch base with them. But there's no chance of rejection from this person because there is no relationship. So people kind of feed into it. And so celebrity and social media influencers is just natural fertile ground for these types of relationships to happen. So do you see it in your world at all, people having these types of relationships?

I mean, of course. And what's so fascinating is you have all different kinds of relationships. From on one end, you have extreme fandoms where if you so much as imply that Harry Styles doesn't breathe, every breath is precious that comes from him, it's like they feel the need to attack and leave him alone. That sort of thing. That's on one extreme. And then on the other, you have, I would say, Reddit snark, where it's like these people who, many of which are not doing well in their lives and live to pick apart every single part of these people's lives. I'm not saying anyone who's ever tapped into a snark page is unwell, but a lot of these people who spend so much time on it clearly are going through something and choosing to project it onto these people. And then you have this moment that it puts all of that on hold. And like you said, there's an immediate shift, and you mentioned you hadn't really seen such an abrupt shift. And for me, I'm also coming at this from the perspective of grief and loss is something that's very interesting to me. I have a book that I have, I'm writing in the background. It might see the light of day, maybe in a decade, but it's a pretty ongoing work where I would like to be talking about all the unexpected parts of grief and death that I don't really see people talking about. And this is not really to do with celebrities. This is more to do with my own personal experiences with these things. And one of the things that I've written about a lot is how people can be very vilified. And then the moment they pass that quickly shifts and they sort of, not to be crude, but they can do no wrong. And they're sort of sanctified a little bit.

Yes. Which is definitely happening in the subreddit right now as it relates to Dave, because the snark level on him was so high. And then no one heard from him online, you know, over the course of 48 hours. So that was even ratcheted up. And then you have this abrupt. It's almost like just hitting a wall. All of a sudden, it's announced that he had died. And, you know, and to discuss this from a parasocial point of view, I think you and I both feel the same about it. It's not necessarily a positive or negative relationship. It's really just the neutral relationship in the sense that by definition it's just having a one way relationship with someone who's in the public space. It was created, and this is straight from my syllabus, you know, from last semester. The term was coined in the 50s by two sociologists, Horton and Hole. And what they were talking is they're looking at it as the illusion of a friendship between a spectator and a. So it's creating this excitement. If you think back into the 50s, you were around Elvis Presley and Confidential magazine tabloidism. It's where we wanted to bring people closer to the celebrity. So they're more invested and more invested emotionally and then also, you know, financially, you know, in the end, so they buy tickets and posters and they get really excited and they actually think maybe one day, you know, Elvis Presley will marry me or Paul McCartney will pick me out of a crowd. But because of social media now, the distance has now been shrunk. We are now so much closer to the people who we see online through not only just video and chats and podcasts and YouTube videos, but also chats like DMs. Sometimes we'll hear back from these people or they'll reply to a comment. So people who are seeking something love this connection with them. But to be clear, it's not necessarily a bad thing. You know, we don't want to paint everyone who is invested in these people are invested, you know, in the Hollis universe as necessarily bad.

Well, actually, I would say the contrary, because I think that the worst thing that could happen to a public figure is for them to become irrelevant, is for no one to be talking about them. Then they don't book gigs, they don't. They don't get to hold onto their wealth. Then they fade into obscurity. That is ultimately, I think, the worst thing that can happen to a quote, unquote celebrity. Because as we've seen time and time again, from influencers to A listers, whatever, no matter how negative the controversy, people talking about them generates buzz, it generates attention and eyes on them. And even if they have to pivot and shift what their career looks like, they're being talked about. They're in the public consciousness, so they need that. And so when I get these comments like, oh, leave XYZ person alone, I think a lot of the time it's from Much younger people. And I get that you don't fully put. Put things together when your prefrontal cortex hasn't really. Isn't really formed yet, it's okay. But ultimately, I want to say, like, what do you mean, leave them alone? I don't have their phone number. There's a very slim chance they even know who I am. And also the reason that they're on tour, that you have this love for them that they get to make music, is because we're talking about them good, bad, and everything in between.

Yes, you are bringing up a very, very good point. So if we were to match this and overlay this with a diagram again. So I'm going back into my classroom. So if you think of a parasocial relationship in an inverted triangle, so at the top of that triangle, it's just pure entertainment. So where it came from, it's Elvis Presley, then to Austin Butler. Now it's just we love to follow celebrities. We love to listen to their music and find out who they're dating. And it's just from a pop culture, just entertainment point of view. But then the middle line of it, it becomes more personal and more intense. And there's different layers to that intensity. And then at the bottom of that triangle is that borderline pathological where it gets dangerous. And so for my generation, I think anyone my age would remember Rebecca Schaeffer, who was in a TV program and she was killed. God, his last name was Bardo. I should have researched this. But she played a character on. Oh, my gosh, I should have Googled it. Sam. Like her character was Sam on television, network television, and she was stabbed. He came to the house and stabbed her. Or just like John Lennon when he was killed, you know, those are extreme cases of parasocial relationships.

But for man, the Manson murders, you know, there's.

Or even the Manson, of course, there's so many different examples of them that are out there. But what you and I are talking about is that middle layer where it's intense and it's very, very personal. And so when people like you or me discuss these people online, some people take great offense to it. And it could be a Meghan Markle, for instance, or it could be someone like a Dave Hollis. Now you're talking about the relevancy, like, I wonder in that. So if we were to bring it now back to Dave Hollis, and I know I should just say as a trigger to some people, I've looked at that Reddit, that subreddit before you and I were chatting There are people in there who are grieving intensely over the loss of this person who has been in their life almost daily when he was married to Rachel and then after Rachel. And certainly there's a lot of guilt that's attached to it too, because being a part of this community. So what can you say if someone who's experienced grief personally yourself, just with the loss of a parent, and then you see a parasocial death, like, what's the difference there other than the obvious? But what do you think from a parasocial point of view?

Well, it's so interesting because obviously they're very different things when someone personally or when it's just a celebrity. But when I was mentioning that, one of the things that I'm interested later down the line in my career, I'm interested in talking about what that relationship is with that person after they pass away. I think it's a disservice to treat that person as a one dimensional being. But that includes acting as if they were a saint. I know for my mom, wherever she is out there, she was a very pretty cutthroat lady. And she would be calling BS on anyone saying, oh, she was this just sweet as pie. She'd be like, oh my God, give me a break. So that's part of what motivates me is to. I think honoring the person involves addressing them as a fully formed person. But when you have someone like the Hollases, who, I mean, you know, I'll just say it. People love to hate. Then it gets messy. I'm not saying no. Anyone who is on a snark page needs to stay snarking. Like, I'm just saying to anytime you discuss these matters, whether it's someone in your life, you're talking about a celebrity, people go into their reptile brain where they start really thinking about their own mortality or the people around them, they aren't really thinking fully rationally. I completely understand. You see, it's the biggest fear for a lot of people tied with public speaking, something like that on people's minds. So something like that will trigger this. And so then I understand the guilt. And I understand trying to figure out what your role is when you've spoken public words about this person. And in a lot of ways we're a part of that. This situation is out of my control, but I would be lying if I didn't say there's a part of me that feels a little guilty that when you now Google David Hollis, there's like me basically last year kind of Poking fun at him, even though I do feel that I am coming at it from a respectful point of view. And I don't think I was saying anything super out of line, but still just on a human level, I don't love that that's now out there in the SEO world.

Yes. And I feel the same way as someone who has analyzed really more of my ire, if you will, or my focus. My focus was on Rachel Hollis because of my work in public relations, crisis communication and focusing on that reputation renewal piece. When Rachel Hollis went through Toilet Gate, that's what drew me in. I was so fascinated from a professional point of view, watching her navigate that and waiting for her to apologize in the right way, and she never did it. But then the personal aspect of it is they happened to go through a divorce the same time I was going through a divorce. So that's where the parasocial piece came in. Because I was fascinated watching that marriage fall apart. And it was sad. But I'm a parent of four kids and I'm someone who is online, so to watch a couple fall apart online was fascinating to me.

Who also have kids themselves together.

Yes, exactly. And then watching Dave Hollis then become his own brand was interesting to me. And as a runner, I was interested in Dave Halls because he was running and, you know, filming. I was running. But then it's this natural. As I gravitated towards the subreddit page, I was looking at it from a professional point of view as well, because I do work in the response. There's a PR crisis. How do you respond? And watching this community of now, over 12,000 people, all saying the same thing. They're all demanding the same thing. So when I found out about Dave Hollis, I was in Ohio speaking. And what I was speaking about in my keynote was how to respond properly when you've been called out for something. When people are pushing back at you, how do you respond? And Rachel Hollis, to this day, still hasn't responded in a way that her community has accepted. There's been no full accountability there. And that has bled over into Dave Hollis as well. And so now with him out of the picture, there's a lot of people who are just left almost gasping, like, what do we do with all this? It's really about energy. They have all this energy and they don't know where to put it. So they feel kind of guilty that, like you said, we have to sanctify them at this moment. But do we really need to do that?

Yeah, I mean, the answer lies somewhere in the middle. And that ties into something that I've really learned from you. It's one of the best pieces of wisdom I've gotten from just all of our conversations, which is the middle ground exists. Speak to the middle. We talked about this in terms of PR crisis. But it also can apply to parasocial relationships where there's the extremes. There's the 10%, there's like the dangerous, there's the stalkers, there's the people who spend 18 hours a day on a snark page. Then there's the adoring fans who be up in arms about any criticism. And you need to keep in mind that those two extremes are very, very noisy. They're very loud. And it's hard to remember that they're not the majority. So the middle exists. And that's also something that I've gone into just this recording with that in mind, that the two extremes I don't think would be able to hear us chatting about this, having this debrief and take it as we intended. But the rational middle crowned folks will understand that we are trying to address the nuances of a parasocial relationship in a very unique situation like this.

And it is very unique because you can follow other people, like Hilaria Baldwin, for instance. You know, Alec Baldwin's wife. He was recently charged with involuntary manslaughter due to a shooting on the set of his film Rust, where he was an executive producer as well as an actor. And we've seen Hilaria Baldwin really put herself out there. And I recently did an interview in Australia, television interview, where they were asking about Hilary Baldwin. And I said, I think she's kind of running as a diversion right now to take the heat off of her husband Alec, because he's under such legal jeopardy that she's kind of drawing in these people to come chase her, if you will. And people have a.

You and I are in sync in that way because I hadn't seen you do that interview, but I made a TikTok saying similar things where, like her.

Oh, did you?

Yeah, I actually like slowed down the clip of her yelling like vena qui to the paparazzi.

I think I saw that. Yes, yes, you and I said the same thing.

And I'm like, okay, we've had the accent, but we haven't had you full on speaking just in a full Spanish sentence to the people of New York. The fact that this is happening in the aftermath of the charges coming out against Alec, I don't think is a coincidence, whether consciously or Subconsciously on hilarious point.

Oh, absolutely. And so this is another example, right, of this abrupt shift. Like, so these people in these. There's a snark page, you know, dedicated to Larry Baldwin that I only stumbled on because I was on it, because, you know, it came up in an SEO search because people put some of my videos on there talking about her, which again, kind of weird that you are now indelible forever, you know, talking about the discussion there. But again, she's someone. People have an intense relationship with her of dislike. I don't know. There's a lot of pro Hilaria people out there, but again, a very deep relationship. So when her husband has charges against him, that intensity builds in a way. But she wants it. And I think that brings it back to full circles. What you said, they need the relevance. And certainly in that Hollisville, I'll call it, and Dave Hollis's now ex girlfriend, Heidi Powell, in the Subreddit Daily, someone will say, you know, we know they're in here. We know that they're creating and curating content for this subreddit so they can increase engagement and get people talking. And that speaks to. What you're saying is you are playing off and leveraging that parasocial relationship for engagement and views and ultimately money.

Yeah. And in the case of Hilaria, I think, again, I don't think any of us can really understand fully what makes her tick because I think she's very committed to the bit and has been called out and just continues to double, triple down. So it's not a fully rational thing that you can try to understand how she's working, how she works.

We want to, though. We want to. Don't you want to know the playbook that she and Alec discuss as they move forward with this?

Well, I have what I imagine has gone on, and I've done my own podcast, deep dive on Alec and Hilaria. But whether she meant to do this or not, I think it was masterfully done. Her little impromptu press conference, her running around New York in an empathy sweater doing coffee runs. I'm like, like I've ordered coffee to my house when I've been tired. Like, just nothing going on in my life other than I just don't. I'm just uber eatsing, like over, you know, like a nice latte because I'm just having a day where I just need that. She didn't need to do that. And yet she was and was running. And, you know, we both, we both made content about this, about her ushering in thick, thick accent, thicker than ever with the Spanish. Holding her child, Hilaria, without the H. Yes. And like talking about, you know, leave my kids alone. And it was so well done. And what I think the intention was, which was to take the heat off Alec, because I would say 75% of the headlines that I saw that week were about Hilaria Hillary from Boston, and not the manslaughter charges against Alec, which is. It doesn't get much more serious than that. Other than first degree murder charges.

Oh. Oh, absolutely. And this is why I find this so interesting, because it's an interaction that's. For now, you know, this is not a discussion that we had two years ago, but creating online social media viral content with video because we've moved from Twitter. Like the cancel culture started in Twitterland, when people would write statements or they would post the notes. App would go up there. But now everything works in a video world. So people have to manipulate. Manipulate public opinion in a much different way. And Hilaria is masterful at it in a crazy way. She's crazy good at it. I mean, that's what we'll give her is she knows it's. She has to draw them. It's, you know, it's just to draw these people, like, just put her into her fray to create that SEO and video, which, you know, is much more powerful online to push down any of that Alec content. And the crazy thing is it worked. It actually worked.

Yeah, yeah, you're making me. I mean, like, if TikTok and short form video wasn't the thing at the moment, I guess the Twitter equivalent would have been a Spanglish statement where it's like, you know, deja man, pass. Like, leave my ninos alone. Like, you know, just that sort of thing. But it's. It's so much more powerful in video form. And it really. I'm amazed at how it did the trick because I also dug into the charges against Alec to see what is the meaning of these manslaughter charges, involuntary manslaughter charges, and where does the fault lie? Obviously, it's not for me to say, but looking at all that went on on set, and I won't get fully into it here today, but the fact that he was a producer, the fact that there was so many red flags that popped up on set, while there were very risky conditions, in my view, it seems warranted the charges, and that will be obviously not for me to decide whether they should move forward and the final verdict on that. But I'm just So amazed at how little of the discussion centered around that.

Yes. And my theory on that as well is I feel like when those charges in New Mexico, when they're discussing what these charges are going to be, I think public opinion, particularly online public opinion, weighs on these types of decisions. Because if he did get off scot free or without any charges now, the scrutiny would be on them. So they needed to match the charges or at least get close enough so there'd be the public acceptance that the charges matched the crime. And so again, this is where social media and just online communities, whether it's a curated community like you might see on a Reddit, or if it's just a mobilization of people, ad hoc mobilization, people who come together around an idea, it's an incredibly powerful force.

It really is. And it's so much more complicated than it used to be. Whereas if you had like a public figure in this type of scenario, the court would do their best to select jurors who it's like, okay, don't read, you know, one of the three newspapers that are talking about this during the trial. We can't do that now. What are you gonna do? Take everyone's phones away for six months? Like, right. They're going to be exposed to news about it, therefore public sentiment. So that will influence them no matter how much they can try to be unbiased about it.

Yes. Okay. Oh my gosh, Emily. Well then for a final piece of it, let's loop back and again, when we were discussing, you know, how we got here from the beginning, discussing just the death of someone who had a significant following, which we'll say it fell in these certain positive and negative sentiment. Some of us were in the neutral, but a lot of people love the Hollis's, Rachel and Dave Hollis combined. But then after the divorce and so many of their fans and former fans, feeling that the two of them just lacked accountability. And the word that you see a lot on that subreddit is grift. They all felt taken. And when people feel that there's an injustice there, they want to seek some type of retribution. They want to have some type of action happen. And so I think that's why this left people so many people shocked, is because they were waiting for something to happen, either to, you know, Dave Hollis or Rachel Hollis or Heidi Powell even, but no one imagined that that happened would result in one of them just passing away in their sleep, which is incredibly tragic.

Absolutely. And until there's if or when there's a statement on the cause of death, we don't know what happened. My main thought is really for their young kids and how tragic that is for them. My thoughts of grief go towards them and ultimately all the speculation in the world. It doesn't really have a place. I had people because I'd made content. So people were asking me in a group chat, like, okay, well, was it this? Was it heart? I'm like, we don't know. Yes, he's had medical problems recently. You have no idea. There could be any one of infinite things. So there's not really a point in speculating until if or until they decide to let the public know.

So just even the cause of death is interesting in a Reddit world because people followed them to such precision, like detail. They knew what they ate, they knew what they didn't eat. They knew the competitions, you know, how much they ran. People speculating, was it because he was a runner, which I hated personally, because I'm a runner, was it the vaccine? You know, then we had to go down the whole anti vax hole and all that other stuff.

Yeah, then you get QAnon thrown into it.

Exactly.

And we know in the case of Rachel Hollis, because she had written a book about the aftermath of the passing of her brother. We know how she has handled previous passings in her life. Obviously each one's different, but we've seen so many facets of what she's put forth, so.

Absolutely. And so now I think what makes this unchartered territory is people know intimate details. You know, about these three. I put Heidi Powell in the mix because she is, you know, like you said, she is someone who is curating her life around engagement in so many ways that there is so much speculation, but nobody wants to say it on that Reddit. No one wants to be the person that has their remarks, that question of, well, what was the cause of his death and have that indelible post live forever on there. But certainly people are curious, and I think what a lot of people are curious about, was it something in the lifestyle? Because in that subreddit, there are a lot of people who are concerned about his health. Dave Hollis was open about addiction and drinking, and a lot of people saw him in this intense physical competition, bodybuilding competition, and there was just a lot that he put on his body and a lot of people in there worried about his health. And I don't think because Dave Hollis was public, but he's not at the realm where it would make news. When the autopsy was released, like, I don't think this is something the public will ever know. So people will always be left wondering what really happened.

I guess I'm coming from it from the point of I imagine that I think we would find out just through.

Rachel Hollis if we leak somewhere. Leaking?

Oh no, I'm saying through Rachel Hollis. I just imagine her maybe not immediately and obviously completely. This is just, completely speculation, but just from the fact that she has published works about personal grief in her life. She talked about Dave's issues with addiction before he had made any public statements about it. She just has been pretty open about every category of her life, which even the categories that tend to be fairly off limits for most people and what they want to speak about publicly. So that's a guess on my behalf, but maybe we won't. And whatever the family wants to do.

That's a good point.

Yeah, whatever the family wants to do, obviously we respect that. I'm not saying I want one or the other, but I'm just saying based on the nature of Rachel Hollis relationship with the public and the work that she puts out, I would imagine that this could be on the table at some point.

That's interesting take because you're bringing in the content aspect and the online Persona aspect of it and someone who has apparently a serious satellite radio contract and I believe a book coming out. So she's someone who needs to continue that relevancy, as you say. But also. Which is a Rachel line, you know, but also she needs to navigate this as a full time parent. Now the other piece of it that you bring up about her talking about being so open with Dave and talking about his addiction and kind of laying the skeletons to bear. The way I'm coming at it, again, parasocial because they were going through a divorce. I saw the ping ponging. To me, that was a couple that was no longer together having a divorce in public because Rachel Hollis exposing conversations with her therapist and exposing the secrets inside their marriage, that speaks to. What are you saying? Is she doing it just to get it off her chest? Is she doing it to help other people going through it? Or is she doing it for engagement?

And when I'm talking about like what she might make into content or not, keep in mind, like going back to what I mentioned earlier, I plan on writing a book about my own loss in my life. So that is not a judgment call on her. It's simply saying that her talking about personal taboos is a common thread in her career. So in that way, I wouldn't put that out of the realm of possibility.

Yeah, that's a very good point. I'm going to agree with you on that. I think we probably will hear something. To what level, to what extent we don't know, because certainly she'll want to protect her kids. And ultimately that's how I look at it. When we all, you know, and you had brought up death. It's so personal. And when someone dies, what is their reflexive action? We think of ourselves. And I immediately thought of, oh my gosh, this is a parent of four young kids. As a mother of four kids, that's where my head went. And it still lies there thinking about, you know, their kids and even wondering. This is total parasocial. But having kids who play sports, I know he's a kid who plays travel ball. You know, we know that because of the subreddit. And I'm thinking, okay, who's driving this kid to travel ball? Because the mom lives in Austin and he plays travel ball where his dad lives. So all those complications is really a part of a parasocial relationship.

Yeah. Well said.

But speaking of well said, Emily, thank you for sharing your insights, not only from the social media perspective, the parasocial, but also just grieving and how we grieve ourselves personally, but how we do it it through our work and through our missions and through our value systems and tying in your experience, your personal experience with the loss of your mother and, you know, kind of comparing it to what we're seeing with this family as well.

Oh, well, I. I mean, I appreciate it. And I'll say this is one common commonality between me and Rachel Hollis. I wouldn't say there's too many, but this is one of them, is that I think we both feel compelled in a certain way to talk about taboo topics and find that a very interesting thing to talk about publicly. So, yeah, this has been a very fascinating conversation and very much top of mind for me. So thanks for allowing me to come on and chat about this with you.

Okay, something you said. Now before we go, I have to say this because I did not think of this until you just said it right now. Is this the reemergence of Rachel Hollis coming off of her experience of what is happening with her family right now and herself and not looking at it disparagingly, like not monetizing grief or you know, another term is called being a grief tourist, where people latch on to other people's grieving and is she going to latch on to what happened to her ex husband? But she may find this as a way to help her through the healing and with her kids as well. That might be interesting to see. So thank you for bringing that insight.

We'll find out, I guess.

I hope we were respectful. Were we respectful in this? This is a dodgy topic. You and I both wanted to be respectful with this.

I defer to the Molly McPherson School of PR. Like seriously, the way that I went into this because we're both very, very, very aware and concerned and at treating situations with the respect that it deserves. So as I was thinking about today, how can I approach this from the most respectful point of view? I thought again the MP school of talking about these things publicly. I'm going to speak to the middle. I'm going to speak to the 80% of people that will be level headed, might be having similar thoughts themselves, might find it interesting or maybe even cathartic to have a debrief about this type of thing. And for the 10% on either end, there's not much that we would be able to do to get to them anyway. So all I can do is just try to hone in on my moral compass and you. I know the same. And we both try to really keep that as sharp as we can. And that's all we can do.

Yes. Very well said. Thank you so much Emily for taking the time to have this conversation with me. A difficult one, but an important one. And I really enjoyed hearing from you. Thanks.

I appreciate it Molly. Thanks. Thanks for having me on.

My thanks to Emily Rose for joining me on this discussion about parasocial relationships. You can find our original discussion about Dave Hollis when we discussed it on her It's Become a Whole Thing podcast in the show Notes. I've also included a link to a previous podcast and video from an interview that I did with marketing expert Dave Irwin where we discussed the Hollis brand and their million dollar downfall. Now in every episode I include one indestructible PR tip. It's that easy to remember takeaway to help you build an indestructible reputation. And here it is. It's important to remember that everyone grieves differently and there is no one size fits all approach to dealing with this type of loss when you are experiencing the death of someone who you do not know and you only know them from social media, but you feel it deeply. It's also important to remember that grieving in private is much different than grieving online. We should offer grace to other people when they're going through grief and it's okay to call people out when they are being a grief tourist, but it's important to remember this also, that if we're doing it publicly, those remarks and words, they'll live forever. That's all for this week on the podcast. Thanks so much for listening. Bye for now.