We Don’t Have Celebrity Crushes Anymore, We Have FBI Investigations.

I miss when having a celebrity crush was simple and fun.

We would see an attractive person in a film or TV show, decide they were our future life partner and move on with our day.

Now the minute someone is deemed good-looking online, the internet collectively turns into FBI agents.

The speed at which the internet can find out who they’re dating, where they live and what star sign they are is astonishing. A new TV series will air, and suddenly the Musical.ly they posted in 2018 is circling social media.

The icing on the cake for these internet sleuths is finding out if they’ve ever posted anything slightly controversial. If so, dream fantasy – ruined.

Social media has made it so easy to FBI background check your celebrity crush.

“Background check” made on Canva by Scarlett Johnstone

Apparently, there’s a name for these intense and passionate relationships these detectives have with celebs: parasocial.  Cambridge Dictionary even named it their 2025 word of the year. The Guardian reported that the term has recently become more relevant as social media makes celebrities feel more accessible to the average person.

Platforms such as TikTok don’t help either. A 2025 study found that social media use is often associated with stronger parasocial attachment to celebrities.

But honestly speaking, I don’t think every celebrity crush needs to become a major psychological case study.

All I want is to see an actor in a film, think they are ridiculously attractive and know absolutely nothing else about them.

Because if I find out they had a terrible haircut in 2020 or God forbid hate my favourite movie, BAM, the illusion is over.

I beg, bring back the mystery of celebrities. After all, isn’t that what makes them so intriguing? I’ll never actually know them.

So please let me have my celebrity crush in peace. I don’t need to know their entire digital footprint.