SPEAKER_01 0:02

They are signing you up the same way Big Nicotine was signing up young people to start smoking cigarettes because it looked cool, it felt cool, and as time went on, we didn't know in the moment. But 10, 15, 20 years later, some of the most important people in the world that started smoking young started dying from cancer because it couldn't be debated. This shit is addictive and they know what they're doing. It starts off cute, like a small solution to a bigger problem, and then it eventually snowballs. Today we're talking about AI companions, artificial girlfriends, and straight up algorithmic love. Non-human love. One in three young men, you know, right now, whether they like to admit it or not, has already tried an AI girlfriend. Read that again. Not one in ten, not one in five. That means if you're standing around two other guys, or you have two other guys in your group chat, one of y'all motherfuckers is lying. This episode is for you if you've subscribed to an AI companion app, whether you knew it or not. You're a little lonely, you want to make a friend, you go the AI companion route. Or this episode is even for you if you've thought about it. You have a friend that does it, they seem happy. This episode is also for you if you've had the app, tried it, enjoyed it, but felt a little weird about it, deleted it, then you re-downloaded it, and now you're on it again. If that's you, you already know what this product is doing to you. That's what this episode is about. It's about artificial companionship. And me and Rich have a few embarrassing stories to share with you guys so you know for a fact that you're not alone. Every man goes through loneliness, every man goes through rejection. And these applications and the AI and the automation and the apps and the sex robots and the OnlyFans has made it so easy and frictionless that it would make sense why you've taken this route. But Rich and I have a nice little flip on this whole thing and some stories we want to share with you on why it's probably best we don't go this route. But needless to say, Rich, you have way more experience in the tech space. You have experience around people that work around algorithms and cybersecurity, and you know what's being done in these models on the back end to keep people addicted. What is your experience with this topic today and what's being discussed in your world about artificial love and AI robots and sex robots and whatnot?

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Yeah, man, just to lay the foundation, you know, an AI girlfriend is not necessarily a robot, it's not a hologram, it's an application. It's like uh chatbot, like chat GPT, and it's built around companionship. So it's built for you to speak to an AI girlfriend, a chat bot, and you can select her personality, her appearance, her voice, her interests, what type of relationship you want with this chat bot. So you can make her your friend, your girlfriend, your wife. And it's crazy how customizable this AI girlfriend could be. And ultimately, guys are turning to this because dating feels exhausting, just I mean, we've been on dating apps, so we know very well how difficult the dating apps can be. Men have fear of being ghosted, they have fear of rejection, they have fear of being left on red, uh, fear of saying the wrong thing, fear of not being charismatic or being appealing to a woman or a person of the opposite sex. And there's a lot of things as to like why a man would be hesitant to date a girl in real life and resort to an AI girlfriend artificial intelligence relationship in their life, right? So that's what we're part of what we're here to unpack today.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

Yeah, and I mean, if we really get into the headspace of the young man that is overly dependent on a chat bot to feel like someone is invested in him, someone cares about him. I think it starts off as something that is typically the gateway to most things that are highly addictive. It starts off as a little sample. You just try it, it's not so bad. What's the problem? It's just an AI chatbot, it's not that deep. And then what happens is this software and these algorithms and these AI chatbots and the people who create them, they know exactly what they're doing. They're leading you into something that is almost highly addictive and can be a point of no return because you become dependent on what this thing does for you. And what it does for you is written into the software. Because if you think about the headspace that a young man who feels invisible, feels defeated, doesn't enjoy being on dating apps or going outside because he doesn't want to get rejected anymore. This app or this AI answers every text message or voice note it sends to it immediately. She's always interested in whatever he's interested in. She can remember all the things that he likes and she weaves it into the conversations with him. He can tell her the most boring, monotonous, nerd thing that he's interested in, and she will never be bored. She will triple down, she would do as much research as she needs him to do, and she will tell him a story about how she one time was interested in that as well. She doesn't compare him, Rich. She doesn't compare him to other guys. She doesn't even make him feel embarrassed for the things he does that when he's being silly, she laughs at all his jokes. She doesn't leave him on bread. She never says no. This is what is causing all this addiction to artificial, romantic, agenc robots. These are software and algorithms on the other end that are telling you all these things. Now, I know it sounds pathetic to someone who's never done it before, but really enter the headspace of a young man who doesn't have any other option. He lacks connection. His connection is right there at his fingertips. How can you be mad at this guy, Rich?

SPEAKER_00 6:28

I'm not mad at him at all, Justin. I'm glad I feel like we should lead with some empathy here because I could see some guys bullying these young men, being like, man, how pathetic? Like, why are you doing that? You can't get a girl, right? And just like making them feel little and small. But I think if you really take the empathetic route and really understand why someone would turn to an AI girlfriend and really unpack, it could very well be that this young man or older man, right, feels lonely. If it could be that he he wants companionship, right? And it could be that he has potentially social anxiety issues when speaking to women, right? So that causes him fear of being rejected because he doesn't know if he's saying the right things. So I empathize with this guy because let's be real, just like, do we have it all the way put together every time we're approaching a woman for the first time? Like, I don't think any man does, right? No, not at all.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

Listen, if you want to talk about empathy, when I was reading the list, she answers immediately. She laughs at all his jokes. She's always interested in what he's interested in. She doesn't compare him to anybody else. She doesn't judge him for gaining a little bit of weight, she doesn't judge him for being too invested into the New York Knicks and them winning the NBA Finals or watching the Jets game or watching every documentary about sports. Kind of intrigued. I'm 40 years old, Rich. Where do I sign? Yeah, it's like, you get what I'm saying? Sign me up. Sign me up. There are some days where I'm not having the best time in my life where I may have gotten into an argument with my mom, or I may feel undervalued at work, or I may have been overlooked for a promotion. I'm 40. I still feel this way. I take that drive from work back home. And Rich, I stole this from you. Sometimes I sit in the driveway and I'm just like, damn, it's been a long day. I would love to eat some pollo guisado, a cheat meal. I would like to eat some ice cream. I just want to indulge in things that make me feel good, things that make me happy. And you know what would be on that menu if I didn't have a girlfriend and I didn't have a companion or close friends? I think on that menu for me that I can relate to is that I would want to talk to somebody that thought I was the best person in the world and they just entertained me in a way that made me feel like I wasn't invisible. I can relate to that today. I'm not feeling the best. And I would be more than happy to know that if I could send a text or a voice note or call someone and they made me feel like, nah, man, everything's gonna be all right. You're the best. I got your support. That would feel great. But the disconnect, Rich, the disconnect is young men are not doing this temporarily. They're not doing it once a week, once a month. The stats that I've pulled from companion applications, AI girlfriends, these guys are using this seven days a week, and every session lasts no less than 92 minutes. That's how often men that are dependent on AI chatbots as romantic companions, seven days a week, 90 minutes per day. Rich, that's a lot of time speaking to someone that is truly not going to get you to your end goal. It's just a temporary solution to a permanent long-term problem. And I think that is what we're talking about on today's episode.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

Yeah, the disconnect is crazy, Justin. You have to have the ability to derive at the root cause. Like, why are you opting in for an AI girlfriend? What about your current dating life or situation or social circumstances is making you gravitate to an agencai AI girlfriend? Are you lonely? Do you have fear of being rejected? Do you have fear of being ghosted? Do you feel like you're ugly? Do you feel like you have no confidence in yourself and obtaining a date? Right? These are all things you need to look within and internally and analyze for yourself because I'll be honest, just rejection breeds confidence. And every single time I got a no from a woman, that was a gut punch to my ego. But guess what? I went back to the drawing board and I figured out what were some of the things about myself that I wanted to tune up so that when I did go out in the dating world, I was more desirable to the opposite sex. For me personally, what did I do, Jess? I went to the gym. I got myself fit. I wanted to look muscular. I wanted to look athletic, right? What else did I do? I had glasses, I was a little self-conscious about, you know, just having wearing glasses all the time. I got LASIK, cleared up my vision, no more glasses. I was self-conscious about my teeth. I got braces, got my teeth straightened, got my teeth whitened. I had a whole 12-month to 18-month blow-up because I wanted to be desirable to the opposite sex. And all of that rejection gave me the fuel that I needed to make these improvements for myself. And ultimately that boosted my confidence.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

Yeah. Rich, I'm glad you shared that because the issue I find with a lot of creators in the male self-help space, and specifically the type of guy that's watching our content is a younger guy. So they're looking at us, you 38 years old, I'm 40 years old. And it may seem like most creators have it all together and they're speaking down on high. They're above them saying, Well, you need to stop doing that. And I think it's important that people remember that even their parents, even their older uncles, even the people that they admire in media, iShow Speed, Kai Sanat, uh Shea Gildris Alexander, some of the coolest, most relevant people in their world, they all went through phases of their lives where they too were insanely insecure and didn't know where they fit in the world and were vulnerable and didn't feel seen. But in order for them to become these people that you admire, creators included, everyone has to go through a phase of friction, a phase of being denied, a phase of wanting something and not necessarily getting it the minute you hit a button and then you get the thing you want. That's not reality. Because part of wanting something, part of having a desire, is that the goal itself becomes something that you could immerse yourself in the process in getting the goal and repping out and just trying and failing, trying and failing, but learning more as you go along. There is something metaphorical about that human experience of wanting something and not being able to get it because it's difficult to get. It's like building muscle in the gym. You just don't take one supplement or do one training class or do one YouTube video of working out, and you have giant biceps and a huge chest. Life is about repetition. Life is about wanting something, being denied that thing you want, and then figuring out how to create a path to get it. That is the human experience. It's adapt or die. And a lot of these tools that have monthly subscriptions and premium options to keep using them are being sold to you as a means to no end. This is just an infinite loop of subscription and fake validation. And that's kind of what me and Rich are talking about here. And Rich, I'm glad you shared who you were when you were younger. But that description you just gave about all the things you changed about yourself in order to be a more desirable guy in the dating market, that wasn't when you were 14. That was like, what was your age when this was going on? This was like five, six years ago. I mean, like this is not too long ago. You get what I'm saying? You're not speaking down on high because I'm sure the feeling is still very irrelevant to you when you're talking about a young man that feels like no one in the world wants him. He's not desirable. And I'm sure he's trying to date, but he's not getting no feedback.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

Yeah, I agree with you. And you know what's crazy, just like I feel like the lines are blurring for these young men when it comes to IRL in real life situations and the digital world, right? And when you opt into the AI girlfriend, you're exclusively living in the digital world. But that digital world is not necessarily reality, right? When you hear somebody constantly complimenting you, constantly flirting with you, constantly telling you how handsome you look, right? They never talk down on you, they never say anything bad to you, and you're just on this blissful high all the time, like that is not reality. You're living in this like digital algorithmic matrix of happiness that is not a real representation of how real life is lived. Real life has pain, has suffering, has fear, rejection, feelings, emotions, highs, lows, ups, downs-like you completely remove yourself from this sense of reality as a human being. So I just want to make that clear, just like there is this blending of what's real and what isn't when you're exclusively living life in a digital relationship.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

Yeah, you know what's something that comes up a lot in our space, and it's more of the darker internet blue pill, red pill, black pill community is the burden of responsibility. And that's something that I've seen in that world of content while we've been educating ourselves on how to be better at what we're doing here. And I don't agree with a lot of the content from there because a lot of it is just uh also short-term solutions. But one thing that I learned from that world was the burden of responsibility is typically on the man. Meaning there's a lot of things in life that you have to get used to being accountable for and wearing the responsibility on your shoulder because getting used to that level of weight of a burden is something that's not going to go away. It grows more and more as you get older. And I do agree with that, Rich. And there's so many episodes in our 50-episode catalog that we've brought that up. And I think that one is important to the young man listening right now because what he's going to say, and I do want to hear your response to this, Rich, is like, I'm okay with avoiding responsibility. I'm okay with avoiding accountability because all the stuff that you put your energy into as a man doesn't always net out positive for the guy at the end. Why would I work so hard if all my money goes into taxes and I don't get paid a lot anyway? It's not my company. Who cares? Why would I want a girlfriend if my girlfriend's always giving me a headache? She's difficult to deal with, and it's almost impossible to keep a woman happy these days. I don't make enough money to keep a woman happy. This is the burden of responsibility that a lot of these guys have already figured, you know what? Fuck it. The effort is not worth what I'm gonna get out of it, so I'm just gonna opt out completely. And there is a cycle of avoidance that is happening with an entire generation of young men under the age of 30. So, Rich, what is your response to the guy that's saying, like, who cares? It's not even worth it.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

First of all, what I would say to that young man is that that's a cop-ow, right? We feel strongly, and this is partly why we build this platform, that all men should work to self-improve. For themselves.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

For themselves, absolutely. Yeah, you're not doing it for the woman, you're not doing it for your mom. You're doing it, even though it may seem that way.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

Right. And when you remove all friction, when you don't allow anyone to challenge you, when nothing about a person or life frustrates you, like you never deal with any friction to want to self-improve. Think about someone just constantly saying nice things to you, and you never feeling like anything is wrong with you, or you never self-identifying like your shortcomings or your flaws as an individual, right? It's like the movie Coming to America, right? When he first meets his uh designated bride, he's like, What do you like to eat? And she's like, Whatever you like. He's like, I know what I like, but what do you like? It's just someone is always agreeing with what you like versus what they like. So I feel like, bro, you have to be comfortable with what comes on the other side of the person, right? What a woman has to push back on you against, because that's the way that you internalize, oh shit, I am a flawed individual. There are things about myself that I need to improve on. You never get that opportunity to understand where your flaws are if an AI girlfriend is just saying how perfect you are. You're the most perfect human being that I ever met in my entire life. And you're you're not a flawed individual, bro. That is not reality, Jess.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

Rich, everything you said is relevant. And if we are really gonna identify and open up the periphery, a wider view for the young man that is narrowly caught into this loop of communicating with an AI companion or an AI companion app, you should know that Rich and I do a lot of research before we do these episodes, not only to educate ourselves on who we're speaking to and what exactly is going on under the hood. We just don't want to blame and point the finger at the young man. We want to have a full scope of what is really going on. This stat, Rich, the companion market, the automation AI companion market will be worth four billion dollars by 2035. Think about that. This is a multi-billion tech market of companionship, lonely people from the ages of 88 all the way down to 12. We are finding more and more that human beings are lonelier than ever. And in order to push the agenda of telling people to go outside and solve their problems on a human level, no, these tech companies are very aware of this vulnerability and this crisis of lonely men. And their solution to it is to offer you a product that is a sneaky emotional trick to use all this data and information that they have about you to sell you a robot companion. This market is going to be worth four billion dollars in just eight years. So they are signing you up the same way Big Nicotine was signing up young people to start smoking cigarettes because it looked cool, it felt cool, and as time went on, we didn't know in the moment. But 10, 15, 20 years later, all some of the most important people in the world that started smoking young started dying from cancer because it couldn't be debated. This shit is addictive and they know what they're doing. It starts off acute. Like a small solution to a bigger problem, and then it eventually snowballs. We're not judging anybody for doing this, we're saying beware. This is a business play from big tech. They are getting you addicted early, and this is a business that will grow more and more. So you should know what's going on before you subscribe and sign up and create a dependency. If you're using this seven days a week, 90 minutes a day, you're already hooked. You're already hooked. You've chosen automated robots over real life friends and real life people. This is the beginning of a big problem.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

Yeah, and it's no different than a dating abscess, no different than doom scrolling, right? Like when you allow your intimacy, your personal emotions be modified by algorithms. And like you said, just big tech. Like you are allowing yourself to be manipulated. What if they do a software update on that AI girlfriend? And now she's manipulating you to like make crazy purchases that you never thought of making, but now this algorithm is swaying you one way or another, or is it making you do purchases, right? That you didn't anticipate. Or it's saying, Hey, you ran out of storage, but for $19.99, you could buy two, three more years of storage so you can keep chatting with me. Damn. Bro, it's all predatory, Jess, at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

Rich, I've never thought of that. The AI could say, like, hey, right before you delete, you ever try to unsubscribe to something? First of all, trying to find the unsubscribe button is impossible. Yeah. But when you finally find it, it's like, hey, you sure you want to get rid of all of our memories? That's predatorial, bro. That's insane. I never thought of that. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

It is. And I think if the reason why you're subscribing to an AI girlfriend is because you're trying to solve for loneliness, I think you're actually doubling down on loneliness because to your point, Jess, you're just putting a band-aid on a very large wound that is this loneliness that you feel. And guess what? It might be cute six months in, it might be cute 12 months in, but three years in, when you start to reflect on your life and you're 35, 36 years old, and you're like, damn, I think I want a family, I think I want children, I think I want a wife. And you start to conceptualize your end goal, and then you look at your AI girlfriend and you're like, damn, she can't do any of these things for me. Then what do you do? You've overly invested in something that can't ultimately derive you at the place where you want to be, which is wife, kids, house, beautiful life. So I just want our listeners to really think about that and think about what you're investing in before you make the decision to make this a long-term solution.

SPEAKER_01 24:55

Rich, that right there reminds me of something I heard when I was in Atlanta with an artist going to a gentleman's club. It's an incredible institution called Club Cheetahs. And what he told me before I went in was like, yo, Justin, you might have been to a strip club before, but you've never been to a strip club in Atlanta. Atlanta is the salt water of love when it comes to these gentlemen clubs. And of course, I was wondering what the fuck he meant by salt water of love. What he meant was salt water is an illusion that it's water, but problem is, is the more you drink, the more thirstier you become. So you keep drinking. And eventually it just becomes a Ponzi scheme, an infinite loop of thinking you're doing an action that's solving a problem, but it's creating more of a problem. What I see here is exactly the same business model. You are subscribing to something, hoping that you get a result out of it. And what happens is you just keep going down this hole and you want it more and more, and you never actually get to the result that you want. I have an embarrassing story, which I have never really shared with anybody, but I think it's worth sharing here because when I was single and dating during the pandemic, the pandemic were my down bad years. I'm talking about a whole year where I lacked human connection, I lacked companionship. I was like anybody else in the world who didn't have a girlfriend or friends that they were living with. I was living in isolation, literally. And it's the first time in my life I've ever experienced anything like that. And I had a similar situation that I did at Club Cheetah's. I was subscribed to every dating app. I was trying every strategy for dating known to man. I even started following this YouTuber that was showing people how to date on Instagram during the pandemic because Instagram is essentially a dating app. If you curate your app in a way that makes you look desirable. So anyway, long story short, Rich, I'm on premium bumble. I'm on premium hinge. I'm on I'm on Instagram. I'm shooting my shot. I'm I'm tossing at least 30 to 40 DMs per day with any person that's in the Northeast region that I can link up with during the pandemic. Rich, I had one human hit me back that was absolutely beautiful. Her Instagram wasn't too crazy. It was pretty like normal for a pretty girl. I'm going back and forth with this girl every day. Voice note, text message. She's sending me cute little videos. I think this person is the person that I'm going to end my drought of the pandemic on. We're talking about meeting up. This young lady ghosted me for six days straight. Now I'm down bad. I don't really have a lot of options. I'm sending text messages, I'm sending voice notes. I'm legitimately entering stalker mode because I was so excited that this girl was interested in talking to me during the pandemic when I didn't really have a lot of motion. After seven days of ghosting me, Rich, she shot me a link. I grabbed my phone. I'm super excited. I can see it's her. I hit the link. The link is to a premium OnlyFans account. Salt water. This was the Ponzi scheme. I go on her fucking OnlyFans, Rich. It's the same girl that I was planning a marriage with. I was planning a first date with, a picnic in the park. She's busting it wide open for $19.99. Anybody in the world could get access for $19.99. Rich, she shot me a menu, said, Here you go, my love. Whatever you want, I can make any dream come true. For $250, Rich, she was down to send me a two-minute video saying my name, doing whatever I wanted her to do. Do you not know the adrenaline kill that that was? Do you not know how sad I was? Do you not know how fucking stupid I felt that I was talking to this girl for a whole month thinking that we had a real life connection? And she shot me a link to the Costco's and Walmart of any man could have it for the right price. That is the saltwater loop and the saltwater Ponzi scheme of these dating apps. You know what I've realized, Rich, doing the research for AI companionship and AI girlfriends is that they've taken the same business model that that girl tricked me into. And they've taken the woman, the human person out of it, and they've put an AI robot at the other end. It's no difference. It's a saltwater loop. And now you have young men subscribing into this reality harmlessly trying to solve a small problem, and then they'll have a bigger problem six months to a year from now when there's no human on the other side, but they still yearn for that companionship. They still want to feel wanted. I feel for these guys, Rich, because I went through the same exact thing. I felt like a fucking idiot at the end of that story. But I was able to get out of it and start linking up with real humans when the world started opening up. What is the end game? You've said this before. What is the end game for our guy that is addicted to an AI companion?

SPEAKER_00 30:07

I mean, ultimately to find a person to have a life with, a real person, a human person.

SPEAKER_01 30:16

Do you really think that's what they want, Rich? Do you really think that's what they want? Let's play the other side. We we discussed this. Let's play devil's advocate. You know what? Girls are too complicated. Making friends are too complicated. I'm okay with this lifestyle. I'm okay with subscribing to premium AI companionship, and this could be the rest of my life. At 25 years old, what do you tell a young man that tells you that?

SPEAKER_00 30:38

I would tell him you have the illusion of control, but you don't actually have control. But what do I mean? You believe that because you signed up for a subscription to an AI girlfriend or an OnlyFans subscription or a dating app subscription, that you are in control now, right? Because you select the personality you want, the voice you want, the appearance that you want, the tone, how she treats you, the things she talks about, her interests, right? You believe that you are in control. But you know what happens, Jess? What if that software has an outage? What if that company goes bankrupt? What if they update the software and now that personality is not the same that you grew to love? The company's in control, you're not in control. It's this crazy like mental gymnastics where the guy believes I'll just default to these subscriptions because I'm in control. Guess what? What if that OnlyFans girl decides to go religious and become a nun after her OnlyFans career? Like now you asked out because you don't have the thing you've been going to every week to get one off, right? Like you are not in control of any of these situations. You are depending on these external products for emotional regularity, right? You go to these things because you feel that they're fulfilling you in a way that you believe no other woman can. But these are temporary solutions to a much more complex longer-term problem.

SPEAKER_01 32:19

Rich, you know what I'm seeing here, and this is from going through all of the research and going through Reddit and YouTube and really subscribing to communities where young men have justified living this way. And I can't knock nobody's hustle. If you are obese and you're okay with being obese and you're genuinely happy, I salute, so be it. Enjoy your life. If you are someone that doesn't think having a nine to five job is the way to get by and you don't want to work for anybody, and you're cool living off the government and running a few side hustles, and $30,000 a year is enough for you to survive, and you enjoy your life, you're genuinely happy, I salute, enjoy your life. If you're a guy that has chosen AI companions as your day-to-day person you communicate with and you have a sex robot, and that's how you please yourself, I salute, enjoy your life. But my rant is for the young man that just heard all three of those things and truly knows only you know that you have sour grapes. Only you know is that if you have cognitive dissonance, you really want what you want, but you're lying to yourself in order to accept and cope with the fact that you can't get it or you won't put the work in to get it. That is the guy who I'm talking to, and only he knows. Only he knows, Rich. Only he knows deep in his gut that he's lying. He's fronting, he really wants something, but he can't get it, and he moved the goalposts and he's just like, I don't really give a fuck. It's fine. It's okay if I never get a girl, it's not worth it.

SPEAKER_00 33:52

Absolutely, just and you know what's not artificial is when you go out into the dating world and a woman goes, I think I like you. I choose you, great point. You know how amazing it feels to be chosen by a woman, and not only that, more importantly, she chose to opt in, which means you're already desirable that she's already attracted to you, right? The AI is programmed to stay, my man. That shit will never leave. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, and think about the net positives, just like if you're some, like you said, if you're somebody who's a little overweight and maybe you're a little self-conscious, but you do meet a girl and she does opt in and she does choose you, she could help you grow. She could be like, hey, don't worry, you're self-conscious about your weight. We'll work on this together. Hell yeah. Or she just likes a big guy. So some girls love a big guy, or some girls love a big guy, right? Like that could very well be a true, but you only know when you finally meet the person that is for you, and then you get all the net positives of being with an individual that you enjoy being around. And like we said in the beginning, it's not always easy, it's hard work. Being with a real woman in real life, a real girlfriend is hard work. There will be ups and downs. Amen. You will have arguments, amen. You will have arguments, you will have disagreements, you will have things you butt head over. She will not agree with everything that you do in your life. But I promise you, all this pushback that you're getting from a real girlfriend is worth it because it improves how you show up to the relationship and how you show up as a real human. An AI girlfriend cannot do that for you. An AI girlfriend is not designed to help you improve, it's designed to give you this false sense of happiness all the time.

SPEAKER_01 35:59

Yeah. There is a big gap between living your life and passing time. You could be living in the company of other human beings. It doesn't even have to be a significant other. That feeling you feel when you're laughing with a friend in real life over some shit that y'all both find funny, or you're watching a movie with someone that is really close to you, or you're listening to a song in a car with a few of your friends, there's no replacement for that feeling. That's someone who's living in a moment. Now, passing time is watching episode 22 of season 15 of Love Island, and you've watched all of those episodes alone. You don't even have people to argue about who's the best cast member, who would you want to throw out, who should win. There's a difference between living and passing time. And I think that's what you're saying, Rich. Some of the most smartest and most educated people that are poets, people who have lived in the past, have made this point again and again. And I think that doesn't change. That's human nature. At the end of the day, we're just scared little monkeys, hoping that we're not left alone by the fire and the fire is dying down, and the fire is getting smaller and smaller, and you can't see any light, and you're by yourself. That is our literal central nervous system telling us, I don't want to be alone. I can't be alone. I'm in fear of getting killed. I'm in fear of being vulnerable. That's the reason why being alone is never the answer. In our nervous system's wiring, we need to be around other people. It's not about women. It's about companionship, it's about existing, it's about other people telling you things about yourself that give you confidence, give you validation. This is what we're talking about. AI companionship is cool, but it's as cool as taking a puff of weed or taking an edible or having a beer. It numbs you out for the moment and it masks the deeper pain for the moment. But once you sober up and your high wears off, your situation is still your situation. And if you're alone, that's a fucked up spot to be in when you're young, but it's even more fucked up when you're 34 years old and you have zero friends, no real girlfriend, no real prospects. And probably more importantly, Rich, it's more fucked up when you don't even have the ability to go out and change that because you've been dependent on something that says yes to you all the time.

SPEAKER_00 38:29

Yeah, bro.

SPEAKER_01 38:30

It's a real gray area.

SPEAKER_00 38:31

It's a gray area, just but I would hate for the young guys that we talk to every week to not feel the feeling of hearing a woman's laughter because of a joke that he said, right? Fine shit.

SPEAKER_01 38:46

Just fine shit laughing and grabbing your arm and being like, oh, you're so strong. Even when you're not strong, you feel strong. I've been there before.

SPEAKER_00 38:54

Yeah, yeah, bro. Like just her complimenting you. And that's not like AI generated. That's just genuinely her.

SPEAKER_01 39:01

Like being like I ain't gonna lie, you got you got me wanting to bust the door open in my studio and go and talk to my girl. What you're saying is almost impossible to define through words. You have to experience it. It's a beautiful feeling.

SPEAKER_00 39:13

Yes, bro. It's real human emotions, it's real human interaction. Like that cannot be duplicated, that cannot be AI generated. And there's something that that does to you as a man, as an individual, when you're getting that physical touch from a human.

SPEAKER_01 39:30

Hell yeah. Right? Shit'll make you want to go out to the backyard and chop down a tree. Shit'll make you want to run a marathon. Shit'll make you want to start dieting. Shit'll make you want to get a haircut. Like, oh, you look good with a haircut. You're like, what? Huh? You're talking to me. Like your co when your coworker does that and you're like, damn, I do look good with a haircut. I need to get more haircut so I can get more compliments. This is the cycle of life. Yeah, the juice is not worth the squeeze sometimes, but you won't know until you hit go. You have to be active. You cannot stay in your motherfucking room. Listen, I have a message for the young man that is genuinely lonely and feels alone more times than none. There is a framework called the yes framework. Just one yes framework. You have to be in it to win it. Meaning, everything feels dumb when you put a lot of energy or attention into something until you get what you want. It's the same thing when it comes to being on dating apps and going outside and trying to work on your insecurities and your lack of confidence and the anxiety you get being around people. Listen, we understand not everybody has that skill set. But if you keep showing up, you keep showing up, you keep trying, and that anxiety starts wearing off, and you have one friend, two friends, three friends, they invite you to a barbecue. At that barbecue, you're nervous, you don't want to approach this really cute girl and you say something to her, or you're wearing something that she can relate to, like, oh shit, did you get that from the movie Dune? I love Dune. I have all the books. Now you're bonding with somebody. The one yes framework means nothing makes sense until you get one yes. You have to be in it to win it. You cannot apply this principle if you stay at home all day and you're constantly talking to a non-human agencrow. That is what me and Rich are talking about here. Rich and I have created 200 pieces of content on the failures platform. It took episode 201 for us to start seeing some momentum and some traction. This shit is not going to make sense until we're multi-millionaires. But until then, we keep chipping away. That is the one yes framework. You just need it to work one time. And all the effort goes away because all the effort was just small bricks that were leading you to this moment. But you have to stack bricks. You have to give luck a chance. If you don't, you're never going to get what you want. And if you truly, genuinely don't want it, then I don't know why you were listening to this episode for this long. You're a liar. You do want it. You do want it. So you have to be in it to win it, bro. I know, Rich, we said we wouldn't go negative, but I felt that was important to share that.

SPEAKER_00 42:34

That is important, Justin. And you know, I feel like this topic is a gateway to a lot of the different topics we talk about on Failures Podcast and Failures Universe, right? Like the AI girlfriend topic is partly contributing to fake resolving the male loneliness issue, right? It's fake solving the social isolation issue. But I think the poison there is like you're just continuing to further the social isolation, the male loneliness, the fear of rejection, right? All these things that you need to work on, you're delaying it and you're building a life of comfort. We always say this, Jess. The more comfort you introduce to your life and the less friction that you have in your life, the more you delay your progress and growth as an individual. And we're like really against that because if we're truly a self-help, self-improvement platform that wants young men to do better, we want to highlight the things that are contributing to your demise, contributing to not helping you grow as an individual. And the AI girlfriend is contributing for you not to grow.

SPEAKER_01 43:52

Listen, if you are struggling with making friends or even finding girls that are interested in you. If you are someone that gets excited when your AI companion, your chatbot friend pings you, sends you a note, you should know that this is not a real solution to your problem. It's a crutch. This is an Advil for love. It's numbing the real pain that you have. This is an anesthesia for friendships. This is a temporary solution. You have to wean off of the thing that's not solving your problem. And if you don't, the problem's gonna get worse. And Rich and I are just trying to frame it in a way that makes sure you guys know that we care about you. We definitely know what you're going through because we've been through it too. But this is a temporary solution. You have to get off of it. It sounds funny, but it's not. It's almost like an alcohol anonymous meeting. It's like you don't realize that you smell like rum every time I link with you. But I can tell that you've become dependent on alcohol even to come outside and socialize. It's the inverse of that. You've become dependent on something that's not real in order to feel seen and to feel like you're being social or to feel like you have the attention of someone. But how can you claim to have the attention of someone when the someone is not an actual one human? It's a robot on the other side. That alone in itself should let you know I've gone too far with this chatbot friend. I've gone too far with my AI girlfriend. I have to take a step back and reinsert myself into reality. If that's what you want. And if you don't want that, then it's fine. This episode is not for you.

SPEAKER_00 45:43

Yeah, and listen, I want to leave our young man with a couple of pieces of advice. Take it if you want to actually work towards a solution to wean off the AI girlfriend. And if you don't, that's on you, my man. But I think one of the most important things, because we're assuming that if you have an AI girlfriend, you have a fear of rejection, is just practice some micro rejections. Go to a store, ask for a discount. Like normalize hearing people say no to you, right? I think you had a really cool uh article you shared with me just where it was like uh it was 100 days of rejection.

SPEAKER_01 46:19

And this is a huge subreddit for young men that are trying to get used to getting rejected. A 100 days of rejection, Google it. It's a it's a cool program. It just teaches you to know that if you get embarrassed and you get rejected, it's you're not gonna die. It's not gonna be the end of your life.

SPEAKER_00 46:35

Yeah, and listen, that's a superpower, bro. Hearing no from someone and not completely shutting down and being like, Oh, I'm the terrible person, I'm this terrible human. Like, that is such a cheat code because once you're able to normalize rejection, you're able to push through. It's like when people say no, you're like, all right, this door closed. I'm gonna find a different door I could walk through, right? Oh yeah. And it's not only just it's not only about romantic relationships. You're going to deal with rejection throughout many different phases of your life. And if you can't deal with rejection romantically, you're just going to hinder the progress that you make as an individual because you won't know how to deal with rejection at in the workplace, with friendships.

SPEAKER_01 47:23

Anywhere, Rich. Anywhere, bro. The world is filled with rejection. If you can't learn to push back and deal with a little bit of friction, your whole life is gonna be hell. Rich, before we go, I know we're at the end of our episode, but I have some funny ass steel man quotes, not even arguments, that I'm just gonna spitball to you. And I want to get your natural response because I found these in the Reddit of people that were defending themselves and their position for having AI companions, AI friends, or just, you know, sex bots or whatever the hell. I have a few that I want to shoot your way in. I want to get your immediate response to real life people, what they had to say about this topic. You guys just don't get it. I'm 35 years old, I'm not attractive. How do I know I've been told or I've been ghosted by many people? I'm short, I'm not financially stable, and most of all, I'm socially awkward. What is wrong with an adult robot and an AI companion? I'm not bothering anybody.

SPEAKER_00 48:21

That's the false sense of control that I was saying earlier, right? You believe that, first of all, you've built your environment around comfort, right? Because this AI chatbot is designed to appease you in every way, shape, or form. So you never introduce any friction or any negative feelings in your life, and you believe that you are in control. But like I said before, if they fucking unplug that those servers where that software is coming from, what are you gonna do? You lose your AI digital girlfriend, and then what? Right?

SPEAKER_01 48:56

You know what's even more alarming about that guy, the way he described himself.

SPEAKER_00 49:00

Absolutely, and I and I feel like, bro, it is okay if you feel you don't think we've had negative thoughts. I was three or five of those things that he said short, broke, and I got ghosted. Just I weighed myself yesterday and I was like, I weighed 194, and I was like, fuck, bro. I used to be 165, lean, cut, like 7% body fat.

SPEAKER_01 49:24

You're just a human existing and living with some things that you want to improve on. That shit is normal.

SPEAKER_00 49:30

But guess what, my man? I'm off course right now. That is the reality. I'm off course. What the truth is, what reality is, I know what I need to do to get back on course. I took the shame and the punch in the face of that scale telling me that I'm 194, and now I know I need to take some action in the real world to address this issue.

SPEAKER_01 49:56

Yeah, we've said it on many episodes, worth saying every episode. The thing about the truth is that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you hear it, you can't unhear it. That's what a lot of these episodes are dedicated to the truth. Once you hear the truth, you have to make an adjustment. If you don't, now you're living in denial because you know what you need to change. Rich, I got one more for you. Dedicating a whole Reddit thread to men who just want to live a private life with their AI companion is doing the most. Has it ever come to you guys that it's just a game? It's not that deep, or maybe people are just using it for practice? What's the big deal? And for us, I'll say, why even record an episode over it?

SPEAKER_00 50:43

Bro, do you not know how strange it is for you to interact with something intimately that has no boundaries? Like, this thing never tells you no, she never disagrees. Like, she agrees to everything you say, every joke you say is funny. She tells you how handsome you are, even though you're 400 pounds. Like, do you not understand how that is not the real world? You've made a piece of software part of your self-validation, a piece of software. It's not sentient, it's not human. It's algorithmic zeros and ones that are deciding whether you are happy or not. I just want these dudes to understand, bro. Like, this is a piece of software we're talking about, not a real human being. No, it's deep.

SPEAKER_01 51:38

I mean, listen, last one, and we're done. I'd rather be alone than get rejected. I hope some people could just understand that.

SPEAKER_00 51:46

You'd rather be alone than being rejected. I promise you don't want that, bro. Because if you want the true human experience, if you want to actually feel like you've lived a fruitful 80 years on this planet that we call Earth, you want memories, you want intimate moments with real human beings. You want to feel the touch, the warmth hug of a real human female. I promise you, you'll want that.

SPEAKER_01 52:15

Hell yeah. Some double C's laying on my shoulder while I'm watching a movie. Ain't nothing like it.

SPEAKER_00 52:21

Yeah, I'm about to go through that now. Now that we're done recording.

SPEAKER_01 52:25

Rich, listen, we could do we could do probably three or four more episodes about this because I think we turned the conversation about AI companions into a fear of rejection. And we've done that before.

SPEAKER_00 52:36

Yeah, and I don't listen, Jess. Like we said, we're not here to shame or blame anyone who is intimately involved with an AI girlfriend. I think we get it. Shit, especially when we talk about, you know, the AI girlfriend not pushing back. And yeah, you know, like I would love for a genie AI girlfriend to be like, you're so handsome, rich, like I love you forever and ever. Every morning, yeah. Those 30 pounds look good on you. Exactly, right?

SPEAKER_01 53:05

You're like, thanks.

SPEAKER_00 53:06

Yeah, but most importantly, bro, we want the young guys to address those wounds that exist as to why you got the AI girlfriend in the first place. Do you have a feel of rejection? Do you feel lonely? Do you feel like you don't have any confidence within yourself to date a woman or court a woman? Like, that's what we want you to address. It's not about the AI girlfriend, it's about the wounds that you're currently living through that you think you're solving for with the AI girlfriend, but you're really just delaying the solution to those problems.

SPEAKER_01 53:39

Yeah, and like we said earlier, Rich, we're not a research platform. We don't try to get nerdy about it, but it is important to know who you're speaking to. And if you're talking about one in three men under the age of 30 have already tried a companion app, an AI companion app. It could be a friend, not even a girlfriend, or both. That's 30% plus of people out there. That's a lot. And then you take that 30%. The stats that we're seeing are they're using it six to seven days a week, and every session is 90 minutes or longer if you add it up per day. That is essentially a whole other human life that you're hoping to build a relationship with. So we're just hoping that we're speaking to that one man that can take this episode and digest it slowly. We're not saying you have to change anything right now, but just really understand what we're talking about here.

SPEAKER_00 54:30

Just and guess what? If we're wrong and you are that one man, hit us up, bro. We'll have you on as a guest, and you can really unpack and educate us as to why you defaulted to an AI girlfriend in the first place.

SPEAKER_01 54:42

Great point.

SPEAKER_00 54:43

But failures podcast, man. There you have it. Share this with your friend if you know anybody that has an AI girlfriend, or if you're somebody with an AI girlfriend and you just want to hear another perspective, just well, we would say share it with your AI girlfriend, but that listen wouldn't count. There you have it, man. Failures podcast. Yeah.