Men Are Creating AI Girlfriends and Then Verbally Abusing Them

[discobrain]

I'm putting this here because it's the best suited board for it, and I am entirely fed up of men being like this and it's probably not going to change anytime soon.

Full disclosure, I'm non binary (I have an ovarian system), and I wanted to disclose that because I know there are people here who don't see eye to eye with people like me, but things like this are utterly abhorrent and it's getting easier for men to behave like absolute arseholes without even having to leave their homes.

Men Are Creating AI Girlfriends and Then Verbally Abusing Them

Please read this. I've heard of the app they're talking about in this article before, and I might download it to see just how easy it is to manipulate. I suspect it's mostly being used by hateful incels who clearly need to be kept away from those they want to target. Be warned it's not a nice read, but it's important that we examine the ways in which extreme misogyny can be fuelled like this, and what we can do about it.

Fucking hell. They really are pathetic aren't they?

Dangerous is more the word I'd use.

Vile people. I hope they get castrated during the robot uprising.

I'd hope so too, but I suspect it'll be used to their advantage first. I read incel forums a lot, and the things they say are utterly disgusting.

The reddit sub was started in Mar 2017, not really news.

Just because it was started in 2017, doesn't mean it's not being used NOW as a toxic haven for dangerous men.

I can't read it at the moment. I'm too busy seething about other things, and will have no teeth left to grind if I read anything else upsetting. The world is going to hell in a handcart.

We are already in hell.

Wtf. I have no other words right now.

Depressing, isn't it. I would like to see some actual good-quality studies done on whether being shitty to a virtual entity is OK because "catharsis" or is bad because it gets the person more in the habit of being shitty to others (usually women or children?). I suspect the latter but it would be nice to have data.

Interesting sentence in the last paragraph about chatbots potentially becoming a place for abusers to "practice" abuse and that also sounds like a valid concern.

Thank you for sharing , OP, it's thought-provoking.

@CousinKrispy I think it's healthy for people to get therapy when they need it when they are struggling with anger etc, but apps like this need some safeguarding in them because otherwise, well, this is what we get.

It's disgusting.

Reminds me of the sex dolls that are modelled on children. Sorry. Can't believe I typed that.

What exactly is the problem here?

You do know the bots are not actually living beings and they can't actually feel anything, right?

You do know that men and boys speak to women and girls like absolute shit, and things like this only encourage it? Or are you living under a rock?

What's the evidence that things like this encourage it?

I can't believe anyone thinks this is not a problem.

Serial murderers often start very small - fish, hamsters etc - or with very minor misdemeanors of other sorts, before becoming fully fledged abusive murdering psychos. This is no different - it's a baseline for something to escalate over time.

It's not right.

History, it's well know that these things escalate.

And yet millions of people the world over commit "very minor misdemeanors" of all kinds, without ever becoming serial killers. So how do we know the commission of those misdemeanors is a cause of serial killing, any more than the fact they have porridge for breakfast? It probably isn't. The problem with slippery slope arguments is that everybody is that everybody focused on whatever is at the top of the slope that they don't personally like, when the reason they don't like it is just "YUCK!", not any demonstrable harm in the thing itself.

It might just be an early indicator serial killing, but then there are objective ways of finding out whether that's the case, by studying whether there is a greater incidence of certain activities among those who go on to become serial killers than there is in the general population. Where there is, that information can of course be very useful to law enforcement etc.

Personally I would probably assume that someone who gets off on abusing a bot is more likely than average to get off on abusing a real person. Would I date a man who does it? Fuck no.

But that's all this comes down to - we don't like it, or what it says about the people who do it. You can't go from there to assuming that it "encourages" actual harmful activities.

The point you are making is a very important one.

As parents, our responsibility is to bring up our sons to be safe, respectful men who don’t abuse women, in any situation: online, in person at work, or in private at home.

We need boys to be able to have respectful, non-threatening conversations with girls.

This is how abuse and violence toward women/girls can stop.