Text: Consumerism is loneliness; it figures other people as a form of inconvenience and individualized consumption as the height of self-realization. But tech companies promise to solve loneliness with a more responsive kind of product and a more perfect form of solipsism. Chatbots are often marketed as though other people represent the main impediment to solving loneliness, and if you remove the threat of judgment and exclusion and rejection that other people represent, then no one will ever feel lonely again.
Text: Consumerism is loneliness; it figures other people as a form of inconvenience and individualized consumption as the height of self-realization. But tech companies promise to solve loneliness with a more responsive kind of product and a more perfect form of solipsism. Chatbots are often marketed as though other people represent the main impediment to solving loneliness, and if you remove the threat of judgment and exclusion and rejection that other people represent, then no one will ever feel lonely again.