Virtual Worlds · Digital Culture · AI Literati
What Nobody Tells You Before You Start I want to describe a specific moment, because I've heard versions of it from so many people. It's usually around day three or four. You've been using an AI compa...
Read article →The loneliness that arrives with a newborn is one of the most poorly kept secrets in modern parenting. You are surrounded — by a baby who needs you constantly, by well-meaning relatives who stop by fo...
Read article →Picture this. You are sitting across the dinner table from someone you love. They are right there. You could reach out and touch their hand. And yet somewhere under the ordinary sounds of forks on pla...
Read article →Here's something that stopped me mid-sentence the first time I read it. Researchers at Harvard ran a study asking people whether they felt "heard" during interactions — some with humans, some with AI...
Read article →The Question Nobody Wants to Answer Honestly I've been chewing on this question for months, and I want to be upfront: when I first started studying human-AI attachment, I was skeptical that "love" was...
Read article →The sixth week is the worst. I know that with some confidence because I've talked to dozens of people who've relocated as adults, and the timeline is remarkably consistent. The first few weeks after m...
Read article →There's a particular kind of disorientation that comes with a late diagnosis. You've spent decades developing workarounds, apologies, and elaborate explanations for why you are the way you are — and t...
Read article →The Market Is Large and Getting Louder The AI companion app space crossed three billion dollars in global market size last year, and somewhere north of a hundred million people now use some form of AI...
Read article →I grew up near a small town in rural Pennsylvania, so this topic is personal for me in ways I don't always advertise. My grandmother lived forty-five minutes from the nearest hospital and an hour from...
Read article →The Objection You Are Already Forming Before anything else, here is the obvious pushback: how can practicing something fake teach you to do the real thing? If you rehearse a difficult conversation wit...
Read article →When the Blank Page Stops Being Terrifying Ask a novelist what they fear most, and they will not say bad reviews or rejection letters. They will say the blank page. That specific white emptiness that...
Read article →There's a specific kind of loneliness that comes with deployment. It isn't just missing someone. It's missing them while the dishwasher breaks and the car makes a new sound and your kid asks a questio...
Read article →Almost everyone who has tried to set a boundary with a family member has experienced the same terrible feeling. You are doing the healthy thing. You know you are doing the healthy thing. Every therapi...
Read article →Here is the unfair truth about job interviews. The person who gets the job is often not the most qualified candidate. It is the candidate who was best at interviewing, which is a completely different...
Read article →There is a specific kind of dread that comes from knowing you need to tell your best friend something difficult. Not a stranger. Not a coworker. Your best friend. The person whose opinion of you matte...
Read article →There's a particular kind of grief that has no funeral, no casseroles dropped off by neighbors, no socially sanctioned window of mourning. You are grieving someone who still exists — whose name is sti...
Read article →I've been studying human connection for over a decade, and I'll be honest — nothing in my research prepared me for the moment over 100 million people started quietly turning to AI companions for their...
Read article →If your last first date was more than a year ago, here is what you already know. The idea of going on one now fills you with a specific kind of dread that has nothing to do with the person you would b...
Read article →You know exactly who I am talking about. The one who "just wants to help" when they are actually undermining you. The one who forgets to include you on the email chain. The one who schedules meetings...
Read article →If you have ever sat in a job interview and heard the words "tell me about a time when" and felt your mind go completely blank, you are in the majority. Behavioral interview questions are the most com...
Read article →Somewhere between a talking stage and a talking-to-your-therapist-about-it stage, a new relationship category has emerged. The AI situationship — loosely defined as an emotionally significant, ongoing...
Read article →There is no version of this conversation that is not terrifying. Even when you are pretty sure your parents will be OK with it, the moment before you say the words is one of the most vulnerable moment...
Read article →The average person leaves between five and fifteen thousand dollars on the table by accepting the first salary offer without negotiating. Over a career, that compounds into hundreds of thousands of do...
Read article →I have been a Taylor Swift listener since before she was a phenomenon, and I want to make an argument that will either delight you or offend you, depending on where you are on the Swiftie spectrum. Ta...
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