Is “Parasocial,” Cambridge Dictionary's Word of the Year, Describing Your Bar Prep?

Cambridge Dictionary has officially named “parasocial” as its 2025 Word of the Year, defined as a one-sided connection that someone feels with a person they don't actually know, often a celebrity, influencer, or online personality.

Most of the coverage focuses on celebrities, fandoms, and even AI chatbots. But I think law students and bar examinees have their own version of “parasocial,” and you can see it play out every day on Reddit.

You know the pattern. You log onto r/LawSchool or r/BarExam and see a post like,

• “I scored 52 percent on my MBE set. Am I doomed?” or

• “My outline is 90 pages. Is that normal?” or

• “I failed once. Should I switch bar prep companies?”

Within minutes, there are dozens of replies from usernames you have never met and will never meet, telling you what your scores “really” mean, what you “must” do next, and whether you should panic.

I understand that Reddit isn't truly anonymous in a technical sense. But it is heavily pseudonymous. Most people post under handles that don't reveal their real identity, and it is easy to create throwaway accounts. In practice, it feels like taking advice from complete strangers. Some of those strangers may be brilliant. Some may be struggling more than you are. Some may be flat-out wrong. You usually cannot tell which is which.

That's where the parasocial piece comes in. After you spend time in those communities, certain usernames start to feel familiar. They comment a lot. They sound confident. They use the right acronyms and jargon. Your brain fills in the gaps and treats that username like a “trusted voice” in your bar prep journey, even though you have no idea who they really are or what their track record looks like. It is a one-sided sense of connection that feels like mentorship but might just be volume and confidence.

None of this means Reddit is “bad” or that you should never read those threads. In moderation, those spaces can be incredibly reassuring. They remind you that you're not the only one feeling anxious, tired, or confused by your practice scores. They can normalize the emotional side of bar prep, which is important.

The problem starts when emotional support quietly turns into strategic guidance. It's one thing to say, “I feel better knowing other people are struggling too.” It is another to say, “A stranger told me that essays don’t matter” or “Someone insisted that I have to do 100 questions a day or I am not serious, so now I am rearranging my entire life around that advice.” For a restaurant or movie recommendation, that level of risk is low. For a high-stakes professional licensing exam, the consequences are very real.

A healthier approach is to treat Reddit and similar spaces as a place for feelings, not formulas. Let them remind you that you're not alone. Let them give you a sense of community during a lonely season. But when it comes to changing your study schedule, interpreting your practice scores, or deciding whether to switch courses, verify strategy advice with people and institutions who aren't hiding behind a username, like your law school’s Academic Success or Bar Prep faculty, your bar prep provider's guidance, and your jurisdiction’s published bar exam information.

If a piece of advice from Reddit is truly solid, it will usually line up with what these more accountable sources are saying. When it doesn't, that is a sign to slow down and ask more questions before you build your study plan around it.

Parasocial connections aren't going away. They're part of how we live, study, and even prepare for the bar exam in 2025 and beyond. The key is to recognize when you're starting to treat a faceless username as a trusted advisor, and to gently redirect your most important questions to people who actually know you and are responsible for supporting your success.

Let parasocial communities make you feel less alone. Let real relationships and real, evidence-based guidance be what gets you across the finish line.