Sure, and cars can beat human runners under most typical racing conditions.
I might be adding epicycles here but imo in chess and sports the competition itself is what’s exciting (whether you’re watching or playing), whereas in the arts most people care more about the finished product than how the arts ranks or fits in the meta.
Like I happen to care about who’s the best writer in XYZ circumstances and how they compare to others, but I think this is unusual. Has more to do with being someone who enjoys this “meta-game” and fancies himself good at this type of pop literary criticism, than about how much I care about people vs ideas per se.
There might be some subgenres of writing that are majority parasocial (like memoirs, or traumaposting blogs) but weighted by either commericial revenue or literary merit I’d expect in way under half of writing for the primary draw to be parasocial.
I’ll consider it! I probably won’t because I think I’d find the social dynamics etc annoying. (Writing about fiction writers is easier both because I think I’m more able to be semi-objective about fiction writing, and because there’s more widespread affordances/understanding for the ways in which I may not be objective).
That said, I’ve enjoyed other people’s writings in this vein:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RWxG3jGbkZzeHQsen/be-more-katja
https://strangecities.substack.com/p/how-and-why-to-read-drexler-on-ai