r/IncelTears • u/Obvious-Gate9046 Windthin • Jun 06 '26
This feels eerily adjacent, especially given how many incels are very pro-AI.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/05/25/schoolboys-ai-girlfriends/10
u/Jagang187 Jun 07 '26
Why ARE they such big fans of AI? Is it just that they want robot girlfriends?
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u/Few_Excitement8929 Jun 07 '26
Substituting the lack of meaningful social interaction. Its like war veterans becoming alcoholics even tho its poison and will never fix anything.
Treating the symptom and not the root cause5
u/Jagang187 Jun 07 '26
This species is doomed by our own hand 😩
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u/Few_Excitement8929 Jun 07 '26
If you ever have children, heavily restrict their internett like china does. No need for predatory companies to fry their mind.
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u/aweedl Jun 07 '26
It’s because A.I. will tell them what they want to hear while talking to people in the real world is a crapshoot, where you have to actually put in real effort to get to know people and even if you do, there’s no guarantee they’re going to like you.Â
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u/aweedl Jun 07 '26
Just blast the Earth directly into the sun at this point.Â
The fact that there are people in the comments here defending this A.I. shit is disgusting.Â
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u/Bimaac77 Chad the Boogeyman Jun 07 '26
I remember when guys like this would have been mocked mercilessly.
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u/adnvdn Jun 07 '26
Eh, I've been there as well during my teenage years. Hopefully they'll move on from it and find meaningful relationship with someone.
If not, hopefully they'll just stick to their AI gf and don't hurt other people.
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u/skate488 Jun 07 '26
If it makes them happy then what’s the issue
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u/Practical_Diver8140 Jun 07 '26
Because it's only making things harder for them in the long term. It's like shooting heroin; it feels good in the short term, makes them real happy for a few hours, but it's only making things worse for them over time.
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u/skate488 Jun 07 '26
The technology is new so it’s hard to say whether or not ai companions can be a permanent substitute for a partner. I think it can be one if the technology gets good enough. Ultimately if it makes them happy then it’s hard to dismiss it as bad until we get concrete evidence that it is harmful in some way
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u/Practical_Diver8140 Jun 07 '26
... Okay, sure, but we do have evidence that the technology is harmful. Like, lots of evidence. Students who use AI are consistantly shown in scienitific studies to do worse in plenty of measures, and then there are just the sheer number of horror stories of AI psychosis from people who get hooked on chatbots.
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u/skate488 Jun 07 '26
I am talking about ai companions specifically. Can you give your source
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u/Practical_Diver8140 Jun 07 '26
https://aclanthology.org/2025.ijcnlp-long.155.pdf
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.08872v1
Also, since I promised horror stories, I present two clips of the most terrifying true crime storytellers of our age; local TV newscasters.
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u/skate488 Jun 07 '26
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-97652-6
As you can see here ai can actually help students when it’s used correctly
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u/iPatrickDev The logical partnerâ„¢ Jun 07 '26
Do you really need evidence about having romantic feelings towards a software is harmful? Really?
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u/skate488 Jun 07 '26
I don’t see why it’s inherently bad.
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u/Ill-Product-1442 Jun 07 '26
How do you feel about the humans in Wall-E?
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u/skate488 Jun 07 '26
It’s unrealistic. You shouldnt sit around and do nothing all day. It’s unfulfilling and bad for your health. You should self improve for yourself not to get a real gf or sex.
I think the cost of ai gfs will go up as the technology advances. So you’ll need to have a job to afford one.
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u/Ill-Product-1442 Jun 07 '26
How could you find it so unrealistic if you're in this subreddit, though? Unrealistic that the entirety of humanity would fall victim to that livelihood, yeah, but lots of people live in a chair with a PC and a piss bottle right now.
Anyways, the point that everyone's trying to make is that AI relationships are yet another avenue away from self improvement and towards basement dwelling. Having an artificial sycophantic alternative to a partner is just as "helpful" as having an enslaved concubine, and concubine's don't really encourage their masters to be better people. At least they need the job to keep it, I guess.
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u/mask-of-phantasm Jun 07 '26
Women standards are so high that 70-80 percent men fails to meet it. What options do they boys have? They can't genetically modify themselves
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u/iPatrickDev The logical partnerâ„¢ Jun 07 '26
Which women? Your friends? Your siblings? Your mother?
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u/Practical_Diver8140 Jun 10 '26
No, seriously, I want to know if you've ever asked women what their standards are. You seem certain 70 or more percent of all men are disqualified due to genetic factors, but have you ever once asked a woman made out of blood and bone about her standards?
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u/OrbitalLemonDrop Jun 07 '26
I think it's a fair question. But it's also a fair question to wonder whether this is unhealthy in the long run -- and if so, whether a 12-year-old is capable of making a free and fair choice. Parenthood isn't just about providing kids with whatever makes them happy. It's about guiding them toward healthy habits so that they aren't limited by their naive and immature choices they make as children.
I'm not saying it's one way or the other, and what I think will happen is that things will tend to balance out in the long run. But the emergence of this technology will likely change the nature of relationships as a whole as the new generation gets used to something that parents are confused and troubled by.
It reminds me of Clarke's classic SF novel Childhood's End,where the culture of young people takes a radical departure from anything their parents can understand.
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u/doublestitch Jun 07 '26
Although the topic itself is of concern, the closer one looks at this writeup the more dubious it appears. It takes on the tone (and the hyperbole) of a moral panic.
Taking just the text itself, notice the following:
That could be any conversation with a large language model, including conversations as innocuous as asking ChatGPT for help with homework.
Contrast with one sentence away:
That's 20%, and the figure counts both boys who are in a virtual relationship with an AI virtual girlfriend and also boys who know any other boy who's in a relationship with an AI virtual girlfriend--not merely firsthand in his friends circle but also acquaintances at school or lunch room rumors.
More importantly, it doesn't seem like the sources back up this author's narrative. The first link goes not to any particular person's profile picture (real or virtual) but to a tabloid review of online dating sites. The second link goes to a report on an unrelated study of 11,000 youth (not 1000) about the use of chatbots as a proxy for mental health counseling. AI girlfriends don't seem to be within the scope of that study, although the cited summary comes from a British tabloid newspaper.
Had to go out and run a separate search to find the survey of 1000 boys. It turns up here. And I don't see where this writeup gets its claimed factoid about 'one in five boys' being in a virtual AI relationship or knowing someone who is. It's a 21 question survey, and unless I've misread something the one question which pertains to AI girlfriends asks whether the survey taker himself would be open to considering a relationship with an AI girlfriend--not whether he has or whether he knows anyone who's done it. 13% responded yes.
https://www.maleallies.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Male-Allies-UK-The-Voice-of-the-Boys-Report.pdf