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This is the optimistic take I’ve held.

Bots get so good that they become indistinguishable from humans. If that’s true then it doesn’t actually matter if your community is all bots. But it does matter because authenticity matters to humans. They will seek authenticity where they can successfully sense it, which will be in-person.

Human simulacrums will one day cause a repeat of this issue. Then we’ll have a whole Blade Runner 2049 issue about what exactly is authenticity?

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Yeah, you're completely right. Maybe this will be the impetus a lot of people need to detach from online.
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Counterpoint: https://reddit.com/r/MyBoyfriendIsAI/

People will prefer the bots that give them head pats and tell them they're so smart and that they love them

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I don't necessarily think that is a stop-gap against people socializing more offline/being socially productive online.

Especially considering the fact that it seems more the case that the bigger stop-gap is what we already have:

In asian (especially Japan) it's host(ess) clubs.

Globally for friends it's influencers exploiting loneliness.

Those are things I think has to go for people to embrace offline socialization or using their online time better.

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> Perhaps not the worst thing in the world?

Definitely not. “Terminally online” is as deleterious as it sounds.

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