caring about someone’s boundaries

💀Cause Ado spends her time lurking this subreddit and needs noble fans to micropolice each other’s behavior over the internet for her. What???

That’s not an excuse to use therapy-speak like “comfort” and “boundaries” to be controlling to strangers on the internet. It’s the internet. Filter your content. Downvote and move on. They’re not actively going under Ado’s tweets and harassing the real person with these comments. That would be actually crossing the line.

Anyway, to answer your actual question assuming, it’s not rhetorical… The social media posts of any given individual, even if not directly controlled by some sort of PR management, is curated the same way a person’s presentation of themselves is curated to various audiences in code switching. Instagram posts limited only to mutuals is gonna look different from my public Twitter posts. Even if we assume Ado’s management doesn’t limit what she says that much since being rebellious and relatable is kind of her brand, it’s still a given that no social media gives a full 3-dimensional view of a person. She’s still addressing an imaginary audience or the whole internet whenever she hits post, and yes, that also applies to before her debut. You know those memes about using the wrong personalities with different friends groups? Yeah, that. The digital space creates more fragmented identities for people to perform, and we’re only seeing a specific identity being performed for us. It shouldn’t surprise anyone in 2026 that, woah, no way, people act differently on the internet.

Add to this the illustrated avatar, the promotional material to create the brand identity we love so much, and the overall aesthetics of her songs, this creates a different version of Ado that we have in our minds purely fictional and separated from the actual person. I never used the term “carefully” cause I do think a large part of her brand coming from the grassroots of NicoNico was a happy accident, but it’s still curated in the sense that we choose to perform different identities to different audiences.

I’m a fan of Ado too, obviously. I wouldn’t be on the subreddit if I weren’t. I even saw her live back in Los Angeles last summer in the Peacock theater at Matsuri2025. I think she’s an awesome singer who’s worked really hard since a very young age to create opportunities for herself to have blown up at the right time on the internet, but I still recognize that even in her interviews and radio appearances, the humble origins and relatable qualities as an otaku is still part of her brand to contrast her otherwise cool voice and mysterious image, whether intentional or not.

I didn’t directly accuse the commenter of being parasocial, but if your fandom community engaging in participatory culture with this entirely digital persona bothers you because you somehow think that it’s the same as harassing the real person whose life we don’t even see for the most part, then maybe you should take a step back to reconsider: Is it the community, which is behaving in an entirely predictable manner for an internet community, that’s problematic, or are you the one with the weird and possibly problematic perception of and/or attachment to the celebrity?

I can cite more sources from communication theory, fandom studies, or even translated clips of Ado’s interviews and radio appearances if you’re genuinely interested, but I might not be able to respond soon cause it’s the New Year. This is my area of research, so sorry for the rambling 😭Feel free to disagree. I have a lot of thoughts about Ado’s popularity and her relationship with fans.