alt Hacker NewsI don't think it's the same. People usually don't see their "relationship" with celebrities as peer-to-peer. They either look up or look down on them (i.e., idolize or hate). So the attention you get from fans as a celebrity is actually a lot more meaningful. People go to great lengths to tell you about the impact you had on their life and they don't forget you easily. The scale makes it awkward, but the emotions are real.
On social media, we usually don't care about the other person at all. Likes and comments are 100% transactional. I have thousands of "followers" on X. If I die tomorrow, they won't even notice. The space on their timeline will be filled by other content to retweet or like.
I always thought fandom was '3rd party.' Like, you have an actor in a high-exposure job, but the more the middleware companies boost the allure of any arbitrary celebrity, the more money they'll make. The actor may address 'the people at large' during press events, but by-and-large, don't really interface with fans all that much.