A.I. Chat Bots And The Harsh Truth About Friendships

With the increase in A.I. usage and more advanced chat bots being created every few months, there have been more and more people indulging in A.I. friendships. I find it so sad to see people using A.I. as a substitute for friends, even when they have irl friends. I acknowledge that friendship is hard, very hard. However, the increasing trend of A.I. friendships really show how most folks don’t really know what it means to be and have a friend. For starters, let’s address how the “making friends is way easier when you’re a kid” statement is such an overused myth. The reason why we lose most of our friends once we leave school is because those people weren’t really our friends to begin with, they were acquaintances. Just because someone you share the same space with is nice to you doesn’t mean they’re your friend nor want to be your friend. Being nice to strangers who share the same space is what a functional member of society is supposed to do. It’s impossible for anyone to be friends with everyone within their shared space because no human can reasonably keep up with and give an equal amount of attention to that many people. Really think about all those kids who were nice to you in school. Did you hang out with them during weekends, holidays, or summer vacation? Did your conversations go beyond casual small talk? Did y’all invite each other to y’all’s birthdays? Have y’all ever been to each other's houses? If the answer to all of these is no, then you had an acquaintance the entire time, not a friend. Hence why y’all stopped talking to each other once y’all permanently left the shared space. Once people leave the restricted and uniformly regimented confines of a school, they realize just how hard it is to fit another person in their lives. The harsh truth is most folks don’t know how to move past the acquaintances stage because that’s the most difficult part of making friends. Being nice to someone you see five times a day for 8+ hours is easy. To share information about your personal life, interests, and beliefs with another person requires a level of vulnerability, humility, and empathy that some folks aren’t willing to give or just don’t have.

True friendship also requires people to understand themselves enough to know who they want to be friends with and what they want out of friendship. If you’re not getting the attention or care you want out of your current group of friends, then they’re the wrong friends for you. Most people aren’t unwilling to take the initiative to find new friends because they don’t want to go through the transitional state of being alone. On the one hand, I empathize with that because I’ve been there. On the other hand, I can’t emphasize how important that transitional period of loneliness is when finding the right friends.

I’ve moved 10 times throughout my life. Growing up, social media wasn’t nearly as mainstream as it is now, so I regularly lost contact with every friend I made. By the time I graduated from high school and went to college, the one friend group I did manage to make disbanded and moved on. I didn’t really make an effort to contact my other high school friends because it became more apparent just how different we were as people once we were away from our shared environment. How different our personalities, hobbies, and long term goals were as we got older and more independent. As I soon realized that, I became more aware of how little social or emotional satisfaction I got from being their friend. Even though I still cared for all of them dearly, it was clear that we didn’t make that big of an impact in our lives considering how easily we all moved on from each other once we went our separate ways. It wasn’t until I was truly friendless that I realized that I didn’t know who I was outside of my previous friend groups. Moving several times compelled me to develop a habit of artificially retrofitting myself into any clique that would accept me. Even if we didn’t share any common interests, it was better than being known as “that kid with no friends” in school. So instead of finding a new clique to be adopted into, I spent my college years being in deep introspection. I tried to reconnect with myself and really think about what my ideal friends would be. It was during that introspection that I soon discovered that I was queer and agnostic. That’s when I had the ultimate epiphone. My queerness and agnosticism were the reasons why I never truly fit into any of my school friend groups. All of my former friends and the people I tried to befriend were girls that were cisgender, straight, and/or came from conservative Christian families. None of their interests or life goals aligned with mine, therefore, we had no common strong ground to build a friendship. While this wasn’t true for all of them, it made me realize that I always just went along with whatever they wanted while never talking about my own interests because I was desperate for acceptance. Leaving my high school friends behind and being alone for 4 years was hard, but it was a necessary step to discovering myself and finding my real friends. Now I have more friends than ever because I was finally able to choose the right community. The community where I felt truly accepted and seen.

I’m not saying that it’s impossible for cisgender, straight, and/or came from conservative Christian to befriend people who are the opposite of that. What I am saying is for me personally, all of those traits were why I could never truly connect with my former friends or the other people in my shared space. People severely underestimate how much someone’s upbringing and beliefs affect their ability to befriend people who are different from them. People also don’t understand how being part of a community who have the same upbringing as you and whose beliefs align with yours is a privilege that not everyone has. Anyone who’s lived in a small town knows how isolating it is to be the odd one out in a uniform community. It’s why many people have to leave their small towns behind in order to find where they truly belong.

So as tempting as it is to laugh at all those people who claim an A.I. chat bot as their friend, I can’t help but empathize because I’ve been there. I’ve been in a position where I was lonely even when I was surrounded by people. I’ve been the perpetual outsider in a friend group and an entire town no matter how hard I tried to fit in. However, I took the initiative to step away from it all and come to terms with my identity and needs. The people who use A.I. chat bots are simply using it as a crutch. Crutches can be helpful, but eventually you have to learn how to walk on your own because it’ll make your life so much better and easier. It’s easy to rely on machines for companionship because they’ll agree with everything you say, and never insult you, they’ll always be available whenever we want them. However, human connection isn’t meant to be that easy or convenient. We aren’t meant to have easy access to other humans 24/7 because everyone has their own life. We aren’t meant to always expect unquestioning loyalty and positivity from other people. It’s being able to work around those common inconveniences and unpredictability that makes human friendships so rewarding and something to be proud of.

Where my empathy and sympathy runs dry is when it comes to the people who are simply too egotistical and/or narcissistic to make genuine friends. The fact that folks were rioting over one of OpenAI’s previous updates that made the chat bots less unquestioningly agreeable really shows just how many people can’t handle any ounce of disagreement. Friends aren’t supposed to give unconditional encouragement or blind agreements. The best friends you’ll ever have are the ones who aren’t afraid to call you out on your dumb ideas or out of pocket remarks. It’s the same principle behind why parents punish their kids when they do something wrong. They do that because they love you and want you to be a better person. Unfortunately, some people only care about instant validation more than genuine connections. Even though it’s been apparent several times that companies have the ability to take their “friends” away by altering their data or locking them behind a paywall, they still choose the head empty convenience of A.I. or humans. Those people are a prime example of how the loneliness epidemic is, in many ways, self-inflicted.

P.S. There's another can of worms regarding A.I. romantic partners. I’m aromantic, asexual, and an introvert with no desire to get married. So I have much else to say besides that human connection of all kinds will always be healthier and more rewarding for people than anything a billion dollar tech company can produce. Especially considering a company can’t shut off a human or restrict the ability to talk to them behind subscriptions fees.

Becca Bloom, And The Myth Of The "Good Billionaire"

There’s a TikTok influencer called Becca Bloom. I don’t use TikTok, so I don’t watch her nor care about that kind of content. However, I do watch YouTubers who talk about social media drama. YouTuber Kiki Channel introduced me to Becca Bloom and the wider “RickTok”community. Her video explains who Becca is and how she became popular by  flaunting her wealth in a way that people don’t find annoying. She also presents herself as being everyone’s friend by speaking in a gentle casual tone. Her fans see her as an example of “riching right.”

My stance on Becca is that no one will ever convince me to like billionaires. I don’t care how “humble” and “kind” some of them may seem. There’s no such thing as a good billionaire because a good person would never be a billionaire. A good person wouldn’t hoard wealth just to waste it on oversized mansions. They’d distribute their excess resources to those in need. The “kindness” that Becca’s fans praise her for is how she gives financial and life advice for free. Personally, I find all of Becca’s financial and life advice to be a complete sham because, again, she’s the daughter of billionaires. She’s never known anything outside of ultra wealth. Not a single piece of life or business advice that she gives will ever be remotely helpful for the vast majority of the human race. Billionaires can play dumb all day long, but money talks, and nothing is louder on a resume than a high net worth. Becca’s family name alone gets her foot into every single door. So the fact that there are people out there taking her words as gospel shows how no one has learned anything from the post COVID Hustle Culture influencer boom. Billionaires never give practical advice on how to be rich because they don’t want to admit that step one is being born in a wealthy family, step two is to regularly and subtly commit fraud, and step three is to pay off any cops and judges in your general area.

Becca’s fans also claim that she’s “not like other rich people” because she works hard. I personally find her whole “I grind like my life depends on it” and “I have that same 20 days off as all of you” schtick laughable. Becca also brags about how part of her work ethic is that she walks to work every day. A lot of people walk to work. Not because they want to, but because most of them can’t afford a car or gas money. I genuinely don’t know how anyone could buy her surface level motivational slop. No matter how much she “works hard,” it still doesn’t change the fact that she’s, you know, the daughter of one of the wealthiest families in the world. Becca will never know the perpetual looming dread of possibly losing her job if she misses a deadline, takes too many sick days, or having her hard work end up not paying off in the long run because she’ll always have the ultimate safety net. She doesn’t even have to work. She and her whole family could stop working now and be able to live off their savings and be comfortable for the rest of their lives. Becca is just like Kim Kardashian saying “get your ass up and work,” or Rachel Hollis saying “yes, I’m extremely privileged, and I also work my ass off.” There’s nothing that disgusts me more than billionaires who act like they, in any way shape or form, can relate to an average 9-5 white or blue-collar worker. I guess this would be considered a hot take to Becca, but most people in general work their asses off. If hard work directly translated to earning billions, then the highest earning jobs would be food service, farmers, sanitation engineers, and public school teachers. Becca is also no different from the post-COVID Hustle Culture influencers who said the key to success is waking up at 5:00am every day and working 12 hours every day. Many people wake up at 5:00am every day and don’t stop working until 11:00pm. The difference is they don’t get to earn billions of dollars. They don’t get to go on yacht vacations or buy luxury vehicles. They don’t get free expensive gifts from companies or get invited to exclusive parties. Nowadays, many people work 12+ hours a day and still barely afford groceries. Yet Becca, the other richfluencers, and celebrities like her have the audacity to act like they’ve earned their wealth. To quote YouTuber RenegadeCut, “No one ‘earns’ a billion dollars; they steal it from the employees that their companies exploit.” That quote especially rings true when you notice how neither Becca nor her parents talk about how well their employees are paid, what their benefits look like, or what their working conditions are. Yet they have no problem bragging about how hard they work. It, once again, demonstrates how billionaires love to play into the boot straps facade to avoid being too open about the disgusting truth behind their blood money.

Like all popular influencers, Becca has an army of rabid fans ready to jump to her defense at the slightest hint of criticism or negativity. “You have no right to judge Becca because you don’t know her.” Ok…neither do you. You’re not someone’s friend just because you watch their TikTok videos religiously. If you think that’s how that works, then you’re parasocial. If Becca’s fans think I’m not allowed to criticize her because I don’t know her, then by that logic, they’re not allowed to defend her. “So you want rich people to do performative charity?” Honestly, if the only alternative is they don't do anything that benefits society at all, then yes. I’d wholeheartedly love to see videos of billionaires paying for refugees’ and cancer patients’ GoFundMes, campaigning for grocery stores to be built in food deserts, or donating to under funded public schools than seeing them buy jewelry that costs more than what most people make in a lifetime. “It’s not Becca’s job to make the world a better place.” Then you understand why most ultra-wealthy and/or old money people stay away from social media and keep to themselves. Rich people know that the world is in a crisis and folks are ready to sharpen their guillotines. There’ve been several instances where richfluencers have been robbed at gun point, had their mansions broken into, or in some extreme cases, had their own friends plot to kill them to take their money. Those are the consequences of public wealth flaunting. Most billionaires know the last thing they should do is be all like “Hey poor people, look at me! Look at all this money I have that I’ll never share! Here’s also my mansion/upscale pent house that can be easily Googled and the exact brand and model of my security system.” I’m not saying anyone who posts a video of their new Gucci purse is asking to be robbed, but there’s a reason why children from old money families are taught to be quiet and subtle. “Well if you don’t like Becca’s content, then don’t watch her.” Well for one, I don’t, and never will. I’m content with writing this blog post because she’ll gain nothing from this. For two, at the end of the day, social media is public. TikTok, especially, is the most public of all the social media platforms. Even though I’ve never used it, from what I’ve seen from users who complain about it, the algorithm shoves everything in everyone’s faces regardless of whether they even liked it. The “not interested” button is more of a light suggestion rather than a functional tool. So if a billionaire chooses to flaunt their wealth publicly, then they also choose to have a giant target painted on their backs. Plus, you know, free speech goes both ways. Becca has the right to ignore and block the haters, and people have the right to call billionaires out for their greedy, wasteful, overconsumption lifestyles. The most laughable defense of all is, “Well no one in Becca’s comments has a problem with her, so maybe you’re just an envious hater.” Yeah, no. There’s no way someone as popular as Becca doesn’t get hate comments. Anyone who’s used any social media knows that’s logically and mathematically impossible. Folks seem to forget that influencers can just pay other people to scrub her comments sections clean of any negativity and block certain words. If influencers outside of RichTok do that, then I’m pretty sure Becca is smart enough to know how to artificially boost her public perception.

I also find the insistent defending of Becca from her fans to be kinda infantilization. Folks are treating this 27-year-old married woman like she’s an emotionally compromised teenager who’s too delicate to handle being on social media. I feel like her being a skinny, pale skinned, soft spoken, East Asian woman causes her fans to inadvertently play into the China doll stereotype. I know damn well that she wouldn’t receive a milifraction of this unanimous protection if she was fat and/or black.

My conclusion to all of this is people need to understand that rich people, especially billionaires, have never nor will ever be yours, mine, or anyone else’s friend. There’s a reason why rich people only associate with other rich people. If Becca, Kim, Rachel, or any other wealthy influencer was approached by any one of their fans on the streets, they’d smile, maybe agree to take a selfie, roll her eyes in disgust the moment the fan stepped away, and go right back to hanging out with the people who are in the same tax bracket as them. I’m not saying folks need to start a hate campaign. I’m saying that a person’s first instinct when seeing a rich person in their social media feed should be to just block them. Attention is the new currency, and the last thing billionaires need is to get richer. Folks need to stop licking rich people’s boots just because they act nice. The sooner people get that through their thick, doom scrolling, brain-rotted skulls, the sooner society can actually show some semblance of societal progress.

Introduction

Hello, I’m Maddox. My pronouns are they/he/she (in order of preference), and welcome to my blog. I’ve never made an official blog before. The last time I tried to make one was on Tumblr, but anyone who’s familiar with that platform knows it’s more for blogs about media centered fandoms. This blog will be used for my various thoughts and opinions about any topics that interest me (social politics, movies, art, online communities, etc.). I have a lot to say about many things, but no real outlet for them. Even though I have a Twitter account (I’m never to calling it X because fuck Elongated Muskrat), Twitter isn’t a place for long detailed discussions on…well… anything. Anyone who’s used Twitter knows that people never read beyond two lines. 

My main outlet for my opinions was YouTube comments sections. I love writing out long detailed comments that thoroughly articulate my exact thoughts on a video. However, not many people appreciate those types of comments. Most Youtubers don’t read the comments of their videos after its been uploaded for 24 hours, and people in YouTube comments sections, much like Twitter users, don’t really read anything beyond two lines. I know that’s my own fault for posting long comments on a platform that prefers short comments, but at the time, that was my only outlet for my opinions. Especially considering one in my family is interested in the media I consume, nor do any of my friends enjoy having deep conversations about topics I enjoy. 

I avoided starting an official blog for years because I was never confident in my writing, but this is why I’m using Blogger instead of a more professional site like Substack. I know I’m not a professional writer, and never will be, but I’m a firm believer in doing something you enjoy even if you’re not good at it. In an age where people can’t be bothered to spend one minute thinking of how to write an email without chat GPT, I think it’s more important than ever for people to do something that motivates them to write with their own two hands. Writing is my favorite method of communication because it offers the most clear and digestible view of a person’s thoughts. While verbal communication is easier, I prefer writing because my problems with stage fright, voice volume, and stuttering make speaking more difficult. This is why I wanted to start a blog rather than make a YouTube channel. Plus I hate video editing XD. 

So this blog will serve as more of a dumping ground for all the stuff that circles around in my brain on a daily basis; mostly from Youtube videos. I know that makes the name a bit misleading. Full disclosure, I mostly chose it because it was available and sounds cool. I don’t consider myself a philosopher, intellectual, or a scholar. I’m just a person with opinions. I don’t expect many people to read this, but knowing that it is possible for someone to see what I have to say gives me a sense of catharsis. 

Also, don’t expect me to post consistently. This blog is nothing more than a hobby.