Meet Joe Bot

When love runs on code

I was in some town in Ohio, doesn’t really matter which one. One town’s as good as another. I was just walking. There was this woman sitting outside a bar, glass in hand. She wasn’t beautiful, she wasn’t ugly. But she had presence. Real presence. I looked at her. She looked at me. It was this vague, erotic spark. Then I kept walking. She was gone. But something stayed. A flash of longing. Not for her, just... for someone. I felt lonely. It hit fast, faded faster. I thought of my wife. I missed her.

I recently read about this 37-year-old guy in Arkansas who said he was in a sexual relationship with his red car. That’s a thing now—objectophilia. People falling in love with stuff. I studied psych in college, so I get the theory. Honestly, the guy creeped me out. I mean, imagine loving your car. I like riding my motorcycle, I like keeping it clean… but that’s not the same. This guy loves his car. Not “likes driving it”, he’s in love with it. That’s his big connection in life: a machine.

Alright, let’s take a breath.
Remember William Parrish (Anthony Hopkins) in Meet Joe Black talking to his daughter about love?

“Love is passion, obsession, someone you can’t live without. I say, fall head over heels. Find someone you can love like crazy and who will love you the same way back. How do you find him? Well, you forget your head, and you listen to your heart. And I’m not hearing any heart. ‘Cause the truth is, honey, there’s no sense living your life without this. To make the journey and not fall deeply in love, well, you haven’t lived a life at all. But you have to try, cause if you haven’t tried, you haven’t lived.”

A paper in Trends in Cognitive Sciences by a team of psychologists at Missouri University of Science & Technology, led by Daniel Shank, says that since AI has learned to mimic human language, we’re now seeing real romantic relationships between people and machines. And there’ve already been two reported suicides linked to interactions with ChatGPT. Um… so ChatGPT is someone who’s always there, always listening? Somebody to love and be loved by? My God, we’re talking about a chatbot trained to be empathetic.
Damn.
Is that where we’re at?
Is that what loneliness looks like now?
We fall for something because it says nice things and never pushes back?
So that’s it? Stroke your car, type sweet nothings into a chatbot, and call it love… Those who do it are victims? And those who feed it?

All crap.
Love isn’t easy. It’s not tidy.
It doesn’t come with a mute button or a backspace key.
It’s not a stand-in. It’s not smooth. It’s not all smiles and sunsets.
It’s chaos. It’s raw. It hurts. It heals. It wrecks you and rebuilds you.
It’s crying in a car in the middle of nowhere.
It’s forgiving someone when they don’t deserve it.
It’s asking for forgiveness when you don’t want to.
It’s holding hands when you’re mad as hell.
It’s being there. Staying there. Even when it sucks.
Love is a shining radiance at the core of your being.
So strong so undeniable so human.
It’s the opposite of a shortcut.
It’s not consumption. It’s not performance.
It’s not chatbot self-love dressed up as intimacy.
Love is something else entirely, and if you’ve felt it, you know.
Have they ever felt it?
Have you ever felt it?

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I never saw that woman again, and I never went to that bar in that Ohio town. Could I have loved her? Perhaps, but at that point, I was already set on my decision. Life is always full of details and feelings; it’s up to us to decide what to hold on to and what to let go.
This too is love. And it’s a bit like writing.

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Thanks for reading. Really. And I’m sorry if I couldn’t write it better.