A Traumatised Generation: Part Four
January 23, 2022
Are sex robots the solution to the loneliness problem?
When I first picked up ‘Sex Robots and Vegan Meat’ by Jenny Kleeman it was because it had a neon orange cover and robots totally intrigued me. It sat on my bookshelf for months before it became my ‘train book’ two weeks ago. I’ve now read it three times.
When my flatmate and I fell into discussing the solutions to the loneliness epidemic (see the previous post) that have been offered to the world, it wasn’t long before we were talking exclusively about technology. I asked on my Instagram (ironic!) what people would change about our generation and the overwhelming majority said the addiction to our phones and social media. I mentioned something called the loneliness loop last time, I would suggest that technology is the ultimate loneliness loop: we feel lonely so we go on our social media/ gaming platform, only to feel more lonely and isolated, etc etc.
The major technological advances in social media, gaming and the internet have only come about in the last 15 years or so and we are already aware of the damage it all causes, the contribution to, and causing of, serious mental health issues (as well as the common mediocre mental health issues). It is significant that we are so acutely aware of this because historically it has taken generations and lots of scientific studies to find out that something being used by everyone and marketed as wonderful/ useful/ a game changer, is harmful.
There’s a TV show called ‘Hidden Killers’. Each episode focuses on a time period and discusses, with huge drama and great orchestral scores, the hidden killers of the home. Things like lead soldiers (which toddlers sucked on and chewed and then became sick from lead poisoning), or the early design of the boiler, or chicken (look it up). In all cases, there were an alarming number of unexplained deaths or serious illnesses which only decades later were attributed to the correct cause. However, before the internet, social media, robots, and AI - even existed people predicted not only their invention, but that for all the help they would bring they would ruin and control our lives.
Examples to look up:
‘Fifty years hence’ by Winston Churchill
‘The Sovereign Individual’ by Davidson and Rees-Mogg
‘1984’ by George Orwell
‘The Machine Stops’ by E.M Forster
‘The Feed’ by M.T. Anderson
‘Earth’ by David Brin
‘The Stepford Wives’ by Ira Levin
My flatmate and I declared (as naïve 20-somethings are in the habit of doing): Loneliness is a problem made worse by technology, which technology is trying to fix. How frustratingly absurd!
One example of how tech is trying to “solve” (or make enormous profit out of) the loneliness problem, which is wrapped up in the inability to interact face to face, to commit to and sustain relationships and a plethora of insecurities and social anxieties, is sex robots (or companion robots, which sometimes refers to sex robots or sometimes refers to robots that would perform the platonic parts only of a relationship).
Finally, I return to ‘Sex Robots and Vegan Meat’, the reason you are reading this!
The first part of the book investigates the history of sex robots, the pioneers of the technology, the users, and the current and future developments in the field.
Here’s what you need to know:
- There’s a guy called Matt McCullan, a failed rockstar, who heads up a company based in the USA which is at the forefront of the race to create a fully animatronic, AI-enabled sex bot. The company create mostly female sexbots, who are disturbingly realistic in all but appearance (unless an obscene amount of plastic surgery becomes de rigour) but there is a male version - who is modelled on Matt. Make of that what you will.
- Those who currently own versions of sexbots (and are eagerly awaiting the fully animatronic updates) fall largely into two categories: men who are socially isolated and seek comfort, company and sex from things that do not cheat, lie or make them anxious in some way and men who hate women (misogynistic incels) who want to live out their abusive, dominating, r*pe fantasies without dealing with actual women (and consequences).
- It would be a lot easier, and cheaper, for all these users (99.9% men) to go to therapy but as Jenny Kleeman writes “rather than dealing with the cause of a problem, we invent something to try and cancel it out”.
- Things that cost this much to make, are not made without a guaranteed buyer. There is a guaranteed market for sex robots (and Kleeman interviews a few of them). There are enough people who are very sad, lonely, and unwilling or unable to have sustained intimacy with another human.
- Kleeman concludes that sex robots, for whom you need have no empathy or care for, but you will receive attention from, are modern-day slaves. Slaves are people treated as commodities, sold and bought, for whom you are under no obligation to treat as anything more than an object.
This is all pretty bleak, disturbing, and maybe morbidly fascinating but how likely is it that sex bots will actually be accessible to the masses anytime soon?
In a Guardian review of the book it says:
“Is Kleeman worrying us over nothing? Not entirely, since it seems likely they will go on the market one day, even if there’s no guarantee they will be desirable, let alone affordable. Reading her book, you are left dismayed not so much by what lies ahead as by the current reality of the men with planet-sized egos vying with one another to control birth, food, sex and death. It’s a habit that’s as old as the hills.”
So, to conclude, it’s egomaniacal men creating robots for other men who are a product of our time: lonely, socially awkward with questionable and sometimes disturbing views on the role of a woman, and unable or unwilling to maintain emotional or physical relationships with human women.
It’s a lot to take in and not everyone is going to turn to sex robots to combat chronic loneliness (not least because they’re about £6,000+), but sex robots aren’t the only ‘solution’ to the problem that technology has created. We need to identify the other solutions that the world is feeding us and evaluate if they are REAL solutions or simply something invented to distract, numb and further isolate us.
That’s for another time because my head might explode.
Here were our concluding questions:
- If technology is simply circumventing, and worsening, the problem of loneliness, what do we need to do to face it head on?
- What is a ‘normal’ or ‘unproblematic’ level of loneliness to experience and when do we need to do something about it?
- Is sexual intimacy elevated above all other forms of intimacy to a point where sexual loneliness is a more pressing concern? Should that be the case?
- Are we failing the younger generations by not equipping them with interpersonal skills to combat and reduce social anxiety leading to loneliness?
The more we think about, and discuss, these things, the less likely we are to walk blindly into a future that people have been warning us about for decades.
If anyone has any interesting resources on any of this DM me @feepaints and I’ll compile them in another post.