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Millions of Lonely Young Men Are About to Get AI Girlfriends
It’s not a super great idea
Let’s face it, men aren’t doing so well.
They’re having meltdowns when they find out their attractive coworkers already have boyfriends. They’re posting anime girls on their dating profiles, telling women not to bother contacting them unless they meet the standards of a cartoon. They’re falling behind in school. They’re dropping out of college. They’re struggling to find everything from jobs to meaning in their lives. They’re getting angry and lashing out, and everyone has an idea about how to fix the problem.
The latest:
An influencer thinks she can cure men’s loneliness by launching an AI version of herself as a virtual girlfriend. She’ll be the first, but she won’t be the last. It’s going to start a trend.
It won’t be long before dozens of influencers are offering robot versions of themselves for consumption, all of them promising something they can’t deliver — acceptance and self-worth.
Well, good luck with that.
I’m trying hard to believe the official branding, that these AI girlfriends will help combat toxic masculinity by encouraging men to talk about their feelings and deal with their emotions in healthier ways. I guess it’s better than other things they could be doing.
You know what, though?
It sounds like bullshit.
Sorry, all this talk about curing loneliness strikes me as hopelessly naive and superficial. Someone has to think pretty highly of themselves to believe their robot double can cure the psychological scars of entire generations. In reality, dudes don’t need a robot influencer telling them to call an old friend or go outside and touch grass for a dollar a minute, especially when that same girl will be just as happy to take their money and talk dirty to them instead.
It sounds like a preemptive defense against the more plausible scenario that virtual girlfriends are designed to extract wealth from lonely people while offering the thinnest veneer of a promise that it’s going to help them somehow, rather than exploit them.
