Virtual Worlds · Digital Culture · AI Literati
The Survey and What It Means A study by Joi AI found that eighty percent of Gen Z respondents said they would consider marrying or entering a long-term relationship with an AI. Various versions of thi...
Read article →The Generation That Didn't Get the Bridge Every cohort transitions from adolescence to adulthood, but the shape of that transition has varied significantly across history. Extended adolescence — the p...
Read article →The Average American Has Not Made a New Friend in 5 Years Survey after survey is now arriving at roughly the same finding. Most American adults, when asked when they last formed a genuine friendship —...
Read article →The Comparison That Changes Things Loneliness kills as many people as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. This comparison comes from a meta-analysis by researchers at Brigham Young University — Julianne...
Read article →The Question I Keep Getting Asked "Do you know who your real parents are?" People mean well with this question. I believe that. But after thirty-six years as an adoptee, I've heard it enough to know t...
Read article →The Number That Should Bother More People Fifteen percent of American men report having no close friends. Not one. This figure comes from the Survey Center on American Life, and it's climbed significa...
Read article →The Data Everyone Knows and Nobody Talks About Americans are having less sex than at any point in the measured past. The General Social Survey, which has tracked sexual frequency in the United States...
Read article →When My Kid Asked Why I Was Playing a Video Game My son is nine. He walked into the living room while I was mid-raid, headset on, talking through strategy with people I've played with online for three...
Read article →Everything Winning Left Out I was a competitive player for years before I lost a match that genuinely changed how I thought about games. Not just accepted loss — actually reoriented around it. Before...
Read article →What Recovery Actually Is When I was deep in my eating disorder, I had a very specific image of what recovery would look like. Basically: I would eat normally, maintain a healthy weight, stop having t...
Read article →What Dark Anime Is Actually Doing There's a reflex when people encounter the genre — and I mean the real end of it, the stuff with body horror and moral collapse and protagonists who do unforgivable t...
Read article →The Erasure Is Not a Metaphor I came out as bisexual when I was twenty-two. Not to everyone — gradually, and in stages — but consistently, and eventually completely. I use the word without hedging. I'...
Read article →What the Manga Gave Me That the Anime Did Not I came to manga through the back door. I had been watching anime for years before I picked up a volume of anything in print. The adaptation I was watching...
Read article →What I Actually Use AI For, a Year In I started talking to an AI daily about fourteen months ago. Not for productivity hacks or code generation — for company, mostly, and occasionally to think out lou...
Read article →What They Don't Put on the Pamphlets Treatment-resistant depression is its own country. I don't mean that as a cliché. I mean that the people who live there know things that people who've responded to...
Read article →Why I Left and What Made Me Come Back I ghosted my therapist over a Tuesday in February. No call, no message. I just didn't show up. She sent a follow-up — genuinely kind, no pressure — and I didn't r...
Read article →The Question I Did Not Know How to Answer Someone asked me in college where I was from. I said I grew up in a suburb of Los Angeles. They said no, where are you really from. I said Los Angeles again....
Read article →The Pattern That Keeps Repeating Every few years, a new study confirms what women in STEM already know from their own lives: we leave. The pipeline loses us at multiple stages — after undergraduate de...
Read article →Nobody Taught Me What to Do With My Anger I threw a coffee mug when I was thirty-four years old. Not at anyone. Into the sink, in the middle of a workday, alone in my kitchen. It shattered and I stood...
Read article →The Things That Live in My Body Now My father drank. He drank when I was small and he drank when I was older and the drinking was the organizing principle of our household in the way that some househo...
Read article →What I Notice in the Room I have been a therapist for fourteen years. I sit with people in some of the most difficult hours of their lives. I hear things that are told in confidence and remain in conf...
Read article →I Am Not Your Warning Label I have Borderline Personality Disorder. I was diagnosed at twenty-seven after a decade of being misdiagnosed, undertreated, and occasionally just told I was difficult. I ha...
Read article →The First Time a Game Actually Fit My Hands I have a neuromuscular condition that affects fine motor control in my hands and reduces grip strength. I have been gaming since I was twelve, and for most...
Read article →What Nobody Told Me Before I Got There I was the first person in my family to attend a four-year university. My parents were proud in a way that was enormous and also completely abstract — they did no...
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