I've said it before and I'll say it again. If you're lonely and hurting, don't fall in love with anything that doesn't have a pulse. It's only going to fuck you up worse in the end.
this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2026
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What about electric pulses? Is 4GHz the enough?
I agree, last time I dug up a corpse I got into alot of trouble. I'm no longer allowed to be within 6 feet of a corpse.
damn autocorrect, I wanted to write "hard"
If there are any guys here who are in the UK, I can strongly recommend Andy's Man Club, a charity that does weekly peer support social sessions for men.
They've got groups all over the country, and although I personally haven't been (I'm a woman), I've heard so many good things about it from guys I know.
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I never bought into religion, never bought into astrology, never gonna buy into chatbots
You can tell me I'm great and everything will be amazing 1,000 times. It doesn't matter at all to me if it's not real
I like to escape into music or movies, but real life is real life and must not be corrupted
My work offered an AI chatbot therapist. Like to, I'm not putting all my negative feelings into a company sponsored LLM to fucking have it say, "no relax guy, it'll be OK." Like it's a fucking clanker. It doesn't have feelings. It's not fucking real. It's a slap in the face that they even offer it.
I’m not putting all my negative feelings into a company sponsored LLM to fucking have it say, “no relax guy, it’ll be OK.” Like it’s a fucking clanker.
I'd be more concerned with any company sponsored AI chatbot therapist using what you say influence your employment relationship.
Employee X: I'm worried about losing my job so I work unpaid overtime and that is affecting my marriage.
Therapist chatbot to management: Employee X should not be given a raise. They already have enough external motivation to work without additional financial incentives.
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You're telling me that you believe you are not vulnerable to validation? Right before using the word "corrupted" uncritically in a way that suggests there is a universal and normative "real life?"
What if someone who you respected the authority of, like a prominent scholar or filmmaker, said your obviously incorrect stance on things was correct? You'd trust me, Online Internet Bastard, when I tell you that you are wrong?
AI has been sold as something exceptionally capable of mimicking human knowledge, and its existence is compatible with liberal notions of "objectivity" in that it is quite literally not a human being. Most men subscribe to this authority, and are also statistically bereft of emotional intelligence or management skills. You ever try telling a man what they want to hear? I've never ever met one who doesn't just eat it up.
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I found pornbots to be boring and dumb.
It's mostly novelty. But wears off eventually when you start noticing very obvious patterns emerge in the way it answers and quality degrades significantly as context size grows. It also will always talk to you in the way YOU tell it to which also becomes boring as time goes on.
It's always funny to me how people on the news talk about AI partners and so on when you know if they have 2 brain-cells, next month they will drop this whole stupid idea. When you're talking to it about your problems you're just talking with yourself.
Now this is quality journalism
This is why I only read Playboy for the articles
How does this make someone "feel heard"???? I feel like I'm losing my mind... It's the same to me as if someone went to the front of a McDonald's to talk to the building about their problems. It seems completely insane, and it's making me feel crazy that this is our world now.
It's the same thing as prayer.
Placebo works for simple people.
It's not you. These people aren't mentally well. They can't differentiate between a real person and an LLM. Probably contributes to why they're having woman problems too.
People care about being heard, not listened too. It's one-sided. I'm guessing they just like that the thing responded, and may not even bother reading carefully what it said. Like a friend who says supportive murmurings as you prattle on about whatever, "Really?", "Umm-hmm", "Oh, I know what you mean!", "Right, exactly", and, "It's nice to talk to someone I get along with."
This is definitely true for at least a small number of people.
I've ran across more than I care to remember over the years, people who could just prattle on 24/7 if they had the energy, while not actually really saying anything or conversing in any meaningful way.
It's a living hell for me.
My guess would be the same phenomenon that existed with ELIZA. People want to be heard, especially lonely people, and LLMs are pretty good at that, asking questions and acting supportive, by design.
This whole situation reminds me of that fact that some people hire escorts to just have someone to talk to.
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We are so lost.
It's easy to point fingers but we should probably be offering solutions instead of shitting on them. Like more Men's Sheds.
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Meanwhile I get pissed off whenever I talk to AI about books I'm reading because they have no idea of the concept of spoilers, they consistently simp to my opinions and when they spew falsehoods and "misremember" facts from books I've already read, they simply say "GREAT CORRECTION! I WAS SO WRONG THERE, YOU'RE RIGHT, PROTAGANIST DIDN'T ACTUALLY DIE IN CHAPTER 3. MY LAST 2 PAGE SYNOPSIS ABOUT HOW PROTAGANIST DIED IN CHAPTER 3 IS A BIT INCORRECT, AND NOW HERE'S A 300 WORD ESSAY ON HOW I NEVER ACTUALLY SAID PROTAGONIST DIDN'T ACTUALLY DIE IN CHAPTER 3!
Seriously. How can anyone talk to an LLM and not feel like they're talking to a glorified phone answering computer?
Talking to AI is so cringe to me. Literally on par with having waifu pillow.
Eh, if I knew someone had to use a body pillow for whatever reason and was a hatsune miku fan, I'd totally get them a hatsune miku pillowcase for their body pillow. Both as a joke and not as a joke. Like, go for it cuddle up with that hatsune miku pillow whatever makes you smile.
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This is more sad and pathetic than anything. But this is the result of toxic masculinity.
It is extremely sad. and it isn't just a toxic masculinity thing (maybe only for porn bots). we are so atomised and isolated.
I remember when GPT came out, told it about my projects and it responded as if it cared. I knew ot was bs, and in retrospect it was sad and pathetic, but I genuinely cried at seeing text directed to me that was nice.
I'm in a better place now, but we as a society are way too atomised and isolated.
Yeah, I think saying “toxic masculinity” and moving on like it’s these guys’ fault they’re isolated is a large part of the issue. While I don’t recommend befriending every single lonely guy out there, it won’t kill people to listen or care about others.
Saying it’s “you’re” fault and absolving oneself of fault doesn’t do that. It just pushes someone else into more isolation. That’s how you end up with guys talking to porn bots: because no one will listen to them. That’s how you get incels following Andrew Tate or Nick Fuentes: people called out their “toxic masculinity,” but weren’t willing to help, just protect themselves.
While I get it that boundaries are a good defense against legitimate threats, as someone who was in this demographic, it literally took just one person being nice to me and now I’m not just some “nice guy” on Reddit (Now I’m a piece of shit on Lemmy). Now I’m married and can show incels I meet that there is a path forward where they aren’t lonely and they don’t have to listen to virgin wannabe rapists to learn how to be cool.
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It's probably more directly related to the system of getting the help you need with having to sacrifice a significant portion of the money you make that needs to go elsewhere.
And it's a history of it from one generation to the next so there's not good male role models in most people's lives for mental health.
It's not like it's some magic thing to go see a therapist and all your problems will be fixed. It can take a long time and a lot of trial and error to find someone you feel comfortable speaking to
Yes toxic masculinity is a problem, but your comment doesnt really acknowledge the difficulty of breaking that cycle. Not a very helpful and kind of alienating to anyone who needs help and isn't from a background that creates good outcomes.
And it's a history of it from one generation to the next so there's not good male role models in most people's lives for mental health.
Through my own observations in life, It has become abundantly clear, how important having at least one good male role model (mainly fathers) is on the development of boys into men.
Absent, or I guess one could say, low quality, (I dont like that, but shitty) fathers have such a terrible impact on thier kids, and you see it follow them into adulthood. My entire bio fathers side of my family, the men are all fucked up, lost, and.. just lost.. through the generations, all of them. The women are 50/50. Some are okay, some committed suicide, or did drugs, but not all. The men... no one survived unscathed, drugs, violence, SA, prisions and homelessness.. and those my age now pass the garbage to their kids. I was raised outside of my bio fathers reach, so learning more into adulthood, its been wild to peer into the family objectively.
It is so important young men have good male role models in their life. It's become abundantly clear to me the impacts of this.
But this is the result of toxic masculinity
Is this also the result of toxic masculinity or does it just go one way?
The women in love with AI companions: ‘I vowed to my chatbot that I wouldn’t leave him’
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/09/ai-chatbot-love-relationships
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I tried one just for shits a giggles awhile back to see if there is any merit to the widespread use of them. The only way you'd find these even remotely realistic or interesting is if you've never had any kind of sexual encounter with a real person before, whether in person or through text. After about five minutes of "chatting" with one of these bots it started to respond like half baked fan fiction that didn't understand the basics of sex or even anatomy. The cadence is very predictable and it tends to repeat the same wording and phrasing constantly. If you have real world experience with people, it just feels like a generic chatbot.
In my opinion, this is more proof that these people need to interact with real humans. If these chat bots seem at all human to you, you need to interact with more actual humans.
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