Social Alienation, Friendship Simulators, and Animal Crossing
When I was a child, I was given the game “Animal Crossing” for the Gamecube as a gift. In the game, you play as a human character living among little talking animals. You do jobs and chores for them, can buy clothes, furniture, and accessories, collect fossils, and more. One of the things 8-year-old me did not expect - was to become so emotionally attached to a particular character named Bluebear.
This tiny blue bear wearing a yellow checkered dress with short hair and a smile gave me a gentle touch, a small sample of some of the most valuable feelings a person can feel. Whenever I turned on the game, she was the first “person” that I would talk to. Even if it was the same canned responses an NPC can give, my child self would listen and engage. I would always do chores for her and send her letters. If she went inside her house I would go in just so see what it was like and see if she said anything different. Seeing her blush when I gave her gifts made me feel special, like everything I was doing mattered.
We all want that very important feeling of being important to someone. That what we do in life means something to someone. Even if we hate what we do, the reward is knowing that what we do in our day-to-day life is not in vain, but for those who matter to us. We want to believe that if we just put in the work and believe in ourselves, that the benefits of the fruits of our labor will come. These benefits can be things that are of value to us (a nice home, a large networth), social benefits (higher status, recognition in the community), emotional benefits (being recognized, feeling desired), or a combination of all three.
A game like Animal Crossing made all this easy to obtain. Debt was easy to pay off through collecting and selling apples or other goods found in the dump. Friends were easy to make by simply walking up and talking to them. There was no need to worry about income, food, bills, insurance, or anything like that. In essence, the game made it very easy for a young child to feel valuable, to feel accomplished, and to feel socialized without really having done anything. This is not to say that there is anything particularly wrong with videogames in and of themselves. They can be a great way to unwind and to let go of the day’s troubles, to let your brain relax and go on “autopilot.”
Bluebear - the character that let my child-self feel valued - is not real. Bluebear is just an amalgamation of data, code, and outdated 3D modeling. Through all our advances in science and technology, including the rise of AI and ChatGPT, there is no way this little creature can become real. Bluebear can’t have a corporeal form. She cannot think, she is just programmed to do certain things. She has no essence, no internal monologue, no soul. Bluebear cannot even ponder her own existence because she does not exist and is just a part of a game.
But even when we are aware of all this - we try so hard to block this information out of our minds. We desire to make that which is intangible - real. We do this because our lived experiences are nothing but suffering. We retreat to these simulations that give us the world we want to live in rather than living in the world that was given to us.
“You say she is not real, but to me she is more real than any other person I have known!”
And so we approach the danger of technology when in the hands of the isolated person. But to better understand the consequences that come from this type of thinking, we must first understand why someone would actively choose to live in a false reality.
Dr. Chikako Ozawa de-Silva, a researcher in suicide, loneliness, and depression - gives the three types of mental pain that are prominent among users who visit suicide websites. They are as follows: severe loneliness, absence of meaning in life, and the feeling of not being needed by anyone. Like many others who struggle with depression, I have dealt with all three of these feelings crushing my spirit. It makes it impossible to do anything, to recognize emotions such as pleasure, contentment, or happiness. Everything is a struggle and the shallow advice you receive from others who really don’t care about you doesn’t help in the least bit.
We’ve seen countless articles talking about the rise in male loneliness, particularly among single men. These men have very few friends, if any at all. For many of these men, there is no one who wants a genuine connection with them. This makes the idea of romance seem nearly impossible. And if friendship and romance are out of the question, then it’s certain that sexual relationships have already been ruled out a long time ago.
One question that often goes unanswered is this: “How did he get this way?” The problem is that there are an infinite number of reasons that could cause a man to become isolated, and so to narrow it down to fringe political beliefs or something exterior such as urbanization or gentrification - is completely missing the point. Consider the fact that some of these men have likely been friendless since they were a child. For some of them it could be due to genetic factors or disabilities that make relationships with other children difficult (such as having autism or being wheelchair-bound). Even if born physically healthy with no abnormalities - their parents may not have taught them how to socialize. Some of these boys were raised by single mothers, some may have never had siblings or other family relatives close by to connect with, and others may very well have been unfortunate enough to have been raised by adult children of alcoholics.
Now think about the possibility of a child whose entire life was nothing but a stream of negative and traumatic experiences. A child who was neglected by their parent or parent(s). This makes it difficult for them to learn, to understand important social cues such as body language or tone of voice. They can’t develop friendships easily like the other kids, yet the child has so much to say and so much love to give, but no one to give it to. The world has harmed him, and it appears that nobody wants anything to do with him. Rejected and alone, his one solace in life is that character on the brightly-lit CRT monitor who rewards him with affection, compliments, and the warmth he never received. This child grows older, and as the years progress, this need to fill what was lost or absent from their youth grows stronger. And suddenly, it’s not just friendship simulators like Animal Crossing that will satisfy him.
Enter the visual novel market, the fanfiction community, AI chatbots, the Online Spaces where other lonely people gather to have their needs met. These resources seem great at first - if you are a creative person or someone who has an idea, you can find virtually anything that matches what you dream about. To the individual who has a negative relationship with the “real world,” - this is their home. To the one that has consistently struggled making friends or never found their true love, the virtual worlds of the Internet offer them that and so much more. They can engage in visual novels with beautiful girls that will never reject them, read or write fiction where they’re the hero and nothing goes wrong, or talk to a chatbot that will “love” them unconditionally. To the lonely person, there is nothing wrong with this. To the mass creators of this type of desirable content - you are just a metric being analyzed to grow their revenue some more.
Although there is no economic term that describes this phenomenon, many will see this as a “parasocial relationship.” On the one end we have the individual who is emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically in need of genuine connections - a damaged person. And on the other end we have the simulation that offers a substitute for what he needs. It will claim to be just as good or healthy - to be just as real, just as comforting, when what it actually offers is breadcrumbs to a man who is starving. Needless to say, the consequences of this form of attachment are massive, with irreversible damage being made to the individual - thus, outsiders will brand him an “incel,” so as to avoid further contact with him and to show others that he is not a part of wider society, that he is not “normal.”
Eventually, the parasocial relationships he has formed with his anime girlfriend or Internet e-celeb are the only relationships that he has, making his mental conditions severely worse while also cutting himself further off from what people he knew “IRL.” What romance he does have, he has found in a visual novel. What he knows of sex is through the distorted, often violent, image of pornography online.
Going back to our scenario of a child with a difficult upbringing, it isn’t difficult to imagine them developing a close bond with a video game or cartoon character. As the intense need for intimacy grows stronger, this desire is attached to that particular character they felt a “real” connection with in that piece of media. The emotions become not just romantic with age, but sexual - and thus, the concept of “Rule 34” isn’t hard to imagine anymore. Furries, otakus, bronies, and countless others are all victims of a type of Stockholm Syndrome, being held captive by an abuser who promises them emotional and sexual affection. Those who encourage this degenerate behavior are problematic in the sense that they see no wrong in living in delusion, and in fact, encourage a life of hedonism found only through vices that the Internet offers. However, there are others who have some awareness of their lifestyle choices - but cannot reconcile it with their own reality. Why go back to the world that rejected and hurt me when the Internet offers me some semblance of comfort?
So how do we overcome this? How can we prevent this from happening in the first place? How do we ensure that we cultivate a society that doesn’t reject people, but embraces them and sees the dignity in the person? That’s what this blog is about, and so with the next upcoming posts I hope to write more about this very important topic. In order for us to not lose our humanity, we need to find out what is going on and how to talk about it. We cannot merely ask for solutions that are convenient or temporary. Likewise we can’t just bury the problem and expect it to go away, so this blog will also address very personal issues that may hit close to home for some readers. As for now, I thank you for reading and hope you look forward to the next post.