(Don't) Date The Computer
Added 2025-08-12 23:30:44 +0000 UTCToday we take a look into the strange world of people dating, falling in love with, and at times even marrying, AI companions.
Comments
I don’t think being opposed to using an AI for companionship instead of other human beings counts as being a cultural luddite. LLMs aren’t sentient - this isn’t a sick cyberpunk future where your pocket AI has genuine thoughts and is therefore worthy of respect and consideration. “AI” as it exists is being pushed and created by some of the most reprehensible people on earth who absolutely despise themselves and humanity as a whole. The whole AI project exists specifically to further immiserate the vast majority of people, destroy art and push everyone even farther apart. Choosing an LLM born of THAT project as the source of your emotional validation in lieu of human interaction is bad on so many levels and I can’t imagine a situation where anyone is actually better for doing it.
Cthulhusbedandbreakfast
2025-08-18 22:18:28 +0000 UTCThese people suffer from pretty bad emotional cowardice
Maxim
2025-08-18 12:13:59 +0000 UTCIt's like a toy where you can pull a string on the back and it says "I love you" "Let's have a great day together!" "I always have such fun when I'm with you." But as opposed to those toys, you're being told that actually, this LLM chatbot posesses infinite knowledge, wisdom and logic and nothing is objectively more correct than any human ever could be. And it thinks YOU are just amazing.
Ronin Fredricson
2025-08-15 21:08:14 +0000 UTCThe Mystic Messenger mention took me out because I was like "ain't no way this is gonna be about that" but it was lmao. I loved it and I can see why you would find a connection, as that game in particular is literally framed as chat room conversations and was pretty unique for its time 10 years ago. Although I think it's a bit iffy to compare to what is going on here, as otome games have actual interesting stories and characters written by people and are not just a chat bot made for validation.... like romancing party members in RPGs or whatever. There are always people who get too lost in the sauce of course. anyway thanks for shocking me so hard I finally had to leave a comment
Rinkara
2025-08-14 20:17:03 +0000 UTCThanks for the Mossberg suggestion!
buttface
2025-08-14 18:45:46 +0000 UTCOh my god I died laughing at that guy dressed like Santa. I read that article when it came out and thought the editor was trolling because that photo of him dressed as medieval santa comes right after a paragraph where the guy says something like “I didn’t think this would happen to me, I’m totally normal.” The polyamorous medieval santa. lmao
Fellow Worker
2025-08-14 03:32:01 +0000 UTC"dead-eyed whites" is the name of my new postrock band
Arular
2025-08-14 02:57:59 +0000 UTCi mean, if being poly is important enough to them that it's a requirement for a relationship, it's functioning the same way a sexual/romantic orientation would, yeah?
Arular
2025-08-14 02:51:44 +0000 UTCThis is so fucking grim it's hard to put into words
Wobbly Ryan
2025-08-13 19:26:46 +0000 UTCLegit question when did poly people start talking about it like a sexual orientation and not just some shit they're up to
ma1lboxxx
2025-08-13 19:12:31 +0000 UTCEd has been a frequent guest on Western Kabuki!
Stephanie Flynn
2025-08-13 17:32:02 +0000 UTCAlso a good episode on Tucson AZ fighting a data center. https://omny.fm/shows/it-could-happen-here/how-tucson-beat-amazon-s-data-center
Logan C
2025-08-13 17:22:53 +0000 UTCIf you want to hear about the financial state of AI look up the podcast Better Offline. Ed has a few different episodes where he talks about just how much money chatgpt is burning through without any profit.
Logan C
2025-08-13 17:20:36 +0000 UTCSee my impression of “he’s poly, she’s monogamous” was that he went to his wife and said “I want to open the relationship. I’m seeing someone else.” And then reveals it’s a bot.
Samantha Miller
2025-08-13 13:12:08 +0000 UTCSuper interesting episode you all. Love the new format of the show! I really appreciate the more researched and deep dives into topics.
Tyler
2025-08-13 13:01:21 +0000 UTCI remember trying replika once, out of curiosity but also suspicion as with all apps to what data it intends to scrape from me. And the thing I noticed first is it does not have a single hint of actual personality: like if you ask them anything about themselves like you would a normal person, they have nothing to provide you except more needling for more data points about yourself. I tried a few different ways to see if they'll even pretend to be a person but nope, it's just absolutely hollow dead-eyed mirror. Eventually I gave up on that line of questioning and decided to see if it'll tell me how much of my data it sends to where, and if any of that's protected. Funnily enough it would never give any solid answer, instead returning vague non-committal handwaves followed by more personal enquiries for more data points. So I decided to always stick to a variation of that same question whenever it tried speaking to me again, and no exaggeration it basically gave up and ghosted me a day or two later lmao - so much for "unconditional" hah! - so ultimately when it comes to ppl claiming these data syphons are "souls" or "people" I can't help but feel a little contempt that they may have just wanted someone who was never a person anyway, a pure brainwashed slave with no life or interests or even history of their own. Noone that answers back or disagrees, no music or film or book tastes of their own, no concerns, no beliefs, nowt but a glorified love pillow specifically design to extract as much of your deepest thoughts, fears and desires for the profit of sociopathic fascist-enabling billionaire CEOs who are deliberately pushing this cos their industry is a massive investment debt bubble of multi hundreds of billions dollars cos they can't figure out how to make a profit off it. That is the part that truly icks me to the core. - - - - - - - - - - It feels like a modern lovecraftian horror, a techno siren parasite seeping into society surgically feeding off the growing madness the aristocracy has foisted upon us, nurturing it, observing it through peerless void of dead-eyed whites
Overzealous Euthanasiast
2025-08-13 09:49:24 +0000 UTCNo daughter of mine will ever date a fucking clanker 😠😠😠😠😠
The Disfigured Lovechild of Travis Kalanick
2025-08-13 08:17:48 +0000 UTCBuddy, they won't even let ME fuck the computer
The Disfigured Lovechild of Travis Kalanick
2025-08-13 08:08:59 +0000 UTCdamn, now i got double depression. except for in relation to that sputnik guy bc fuck that guy. but fr it's sad to see so many people deeply lonely, but when i think about men's responses to "man or bear" or the tea app & what happened with teaborn or whatever it was called, yeah, i completely understand women opting for AI bfs.
guillotine, goblin peasant
2025-08-13 06:02:20 +0000 UTCYes
Jess
2025-08-13 03:13:16 +0000 UTCDoes blowing in a port before sticking in a cartridge gay
Maxwell
2025-08-13 03:10:23 +0000 UTCThe Scooby skedaddle noise as a censor took me out 😂☠️
Brittany B
2025-08-13 01:38:30 +0000 UTClisten... if my son comes home with one of those... not in my gosh darn house...
Chromfell
2025-08-13 00:02:37 +0000 UTCBut what if the computer has big ol’ titties
Kyle
2025-08-12 23:54:45 +0000 UTCAs is your right
Birdie Whack
2025-08-12 23:42:03 +0000 UTCI’m sticking my dick in the CD Drive
Cameron W.
2025-08-12 23:33:14 +0000 UTC
