I’ve Never Met Mike Tyson. It Felt Like I Bumped Into a Guy I Know.

In the late 1990s, I was in traffic in Silver Spring, Maryland, when I spotted Mike Tyson in the passenger seat of a passing car.

I smiled, waved, and gave him a nod. He made eye contact, smiled back, and gave a friendly wave with the back of his hand as the car went by.

We’ve never met. He has no idea who I am. But I’d followed his career since the 1984 Olympic trials, and for a moment it felt like I’d just bumped into a guy I know.

That feeling has a name.

In 1956, sociologists Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl noticed television viewers forming relationships with the people on their screens. They called it intimacy at a distance. Today we call it a parasocial relationship.

It runs one way: you feel you know them, and they don’t know you exist.

It isn’t a flaw in your judgment.

It’s how trust works. We feel we know the people we’ve spent time with, in person, on a screen, or through their words. And we trust the people we feel we know.

When they recommend a book, we buy it.

You don’t have to be famous for this to work. You only need people to spend time with you.

If your name is on the business, your prospects are having this feeling about someone in your field right now. The only question is whether it’s you.