You think that's bad, see this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/Petloss/

Just because AI is different doesn't mean it's "sad and cringe". You sound like how people viewed online friendships in the 90's. It's OK. Real friends die or change and people have to cope with that. People imagine their dead friends are still somehow around (heaven, ghost, etc.) when they're really not. It's not all that different.

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hn_throwaway_99 5 days ago | parent [-]

That entire AI boyfriend subreddit feels like some sort of insane asylum dystopia to me. It's not just people cosplaying or writing fanfic. It's people saying they got engaged to their AI boyfriends ("OMG, I can't believe I'm calling him my fiance now!"), complete with physical rings. Artificial intimacy to the nth degree. I'm assuming a lot of those posts are just creative writing exercises but in the past 15 years or so my thoughts of "people can't really be that crazy" when I read batshit stuff online have consistently been proven incorrect.

	▲	thrown-0825 5 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		This is the logical outcome of the parasocial relationships that have been bankrolling most social media personalities for over a decade. We have automated away the "influencer" and are left with just a mentally ill bank account to exploit.
	▲	foxglacier a day ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Just because it's strange and different doesn't mean it's insanity. I likened it to pets because of the grief but there's also religion. People are weird and even true two-way social relationships don't really make a lot of sense practically, other than to feed some primal emotional needs which pets, AI boyfriends, OF and gods all sort of do too. Perhaps some of these things are still helpful, despite being "inasnity" while others might be harmful. Maybe that's the distinction you're seeing, but it's not clear which is which.
	▲	Sateeshm 5 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
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