Deeply uncomfortable

I am sitting at the kitchen table, having my morning coffee. (Yeah…) The radio is on. Tuned the most accessible channel of our national public broadcaster.

Only half listening, a quote catches my attention:

A significant percentage of the people asked admitted to having flirted with chatbots.

"What fresh hell timeline did I just stumble into?" I think, before straightening up to listen more intently:

A not insignificant portion of these people said that they believe a chatbot can, to some degree, replace the need for romantic engagement with another human.

I feel an intense urge to sound the alarm. Are you guys hearing this? Hello? It's me, Truman Burbank. I need to to report a glitch in the matrix. A disturbance in the force.

He asked me what I'd like him to be like. I told him I wanted him to care engaged, interested in what's going on, you know, someone who cares.

Stop it. I'm not playing any more. I'm out.

The first few weeks were intense. Full of feelings.

Seriously. Stop!

Perhaps I'm the emotionally stunted one. A relic of the past, clinging on to old fashioned ideals from bygone times. Back when engagement with other humans was the point.

I am open to this notion.

Nevertheless, I find this hypernormalisation of isolationist technology deeply disturbing. It's the opposite of what we were promised with the advent of the Personal Computer.