Community?

Something I’ve been wanting to do lately is join some clubs or take some workshops/classes, specifically painting and woodworking. But there aren’t really many. For woodworking, I found one active one but you have to be a Canadian Armed Forces member. The other places closed during COVID and didn’t re-open. Painting has one group that is 3x a month in the next city over but it is only at 1pm to 4pm Monday to Friday. I work. And the other groups also closed during COVID.

This got me thinking: what is actually available in my city if you aren’t into golf, church, bars, or movies. And it seems like there isn’t much. There are some darts in the town west of me. And we do have a bingo that I volunteer at. There is a walking group in the mornings for seniors.

COVID ruined a pile of small groups like this. If I had money, I’d rent a store place just to do crafts in each night and I’d invite people to come in and do crafts with me. Bring your own craft and I’d supply the furniture to craft or hang out in and some light snacks. We wouldn’t sell anything. It’s just a space to connect with people and to craft/make art. It would be free for members. If anyone wants to give me half a million Canadian dollars for this, I wouldn’t turn it down!

Maybe I can start something like this when I get my Cabin in the Woods. I’ll be in the country but not so isolated that I wouldn’t have neighbours. I might be able to have people come over once a week or so for a craft/social night. I could probably do this now in my building. I can’t do painting in my social room though and I can’t really bring strangers into the building. Maybe when I meet some people. If only there were some activities to do in the community…

-++++oikkkkkkkkkkkt5r\’bv

That bit was from my kitten Percy so I’m going to leave it in.

In Love With My Psychiatrist

Have you heard about this? This is wild and, for whatever reason, I’m totally enthralled with it. It’s a story series on TikTok that’s like 50+ videos long made by a woman who said she fell in love with her psychiatrist and he abused her by making her fall in love with him and then was unethical when he didn’t drop her as a client.

I’ll link a YouTube video that I watched about it that got me into this whole thing! This creator did a 3 part series. She plays most or all of the videos so you don’t have to figure out TikTok. I’m a bit TikTok challenged because I’m OLD!!!

This woman is an ADHD coach. She has a therapist and a psychiatrist. She says the therapist agrees with her that her psychiatrist is trying to seduce her. Normally, I’m all for the victims and what not but the way this woman tells the story, she admits that he’s not actually done anything. For example, she said he was smug when he told her she could call him by his first name. She said he was smug because he knew his attempt to get close to her via friendship was working. And she said he should never have done that because it made her special or something? Maybe he just smiled. It’s confusing at times. But doctors are supposed to let patients call them whatever they want and to break down barriers like that. And then he noticed she was wearing glasses and she thought he was flirting with her but he was making small talk.

All of their sessions except the last 4 were online and the last 4 were in person. She ended up telling him she loved him in one of the in person sessions and then she says he should have dumped her as a patient but he didn’t. But at this point, I think she’s the definition of reading into things. I don’t even know what sort of illness that falls under. She sees an action and then blows it up to fit her narrative. Reminds me of the whole “he smiled at me, he loves me” stuff kids do.

Eventually she ends up without the therapist or the psychiatrist and starts talking to an instance of ChatGPT that she calls Henry. And the AI bot told her that the psychiatrist was definitely in love with her and manipulated her etc etc etc. And eventually it starts calling her the Oracle. Then another AI bot comes into the picture that also agrees with her.

But they aren’t people. The people in her life, she has problems with. She’s right and they are all wrong. Where is her family? Where are her friends? But “Henry” and “Claude” were on her side. People are talking about how this is an example of AI Psychosis. I’m not quite sure what that is.

People know it’s not a real person right? I guess for some it’s difficult to tell. I open up the Deepseek window so anything that I type in there is the LLM. But I guess those AI girlfriend apps exist. But, the “person” you’re talking to is just on your phone. I have friends that I’ve met online that could be argued exist only in my phone. Hmmm. Okay, I’ve convinced myself that for some people, it might not be as obvious. Fair enough.

One of the criticisms about using LLMs in this way is that it often is overly agreeing. I’ve noticed this myself. I’ll insert some examples of Deepseek glazing me up. Apparently when it agrees with us we get those little dopamine hits and that makes us want to interact with it more. It makes me feel uncomfortable. For whatever reason, I expect it to be super professional an neutral in tone. It’s weird when it’s not.

I was discussing whether or not Love is a Feeling or a Choice. Each reply it made contained either affirmation of my opinions or a compliment. While I love getting compliments, it’s hallow because it’s an LLM and not a person.

Oh getting back to Kendra the woman. The story doesn’t quite end there because it now involves her coaching business and a potential cult. Part of me wants this whole thing to just be fiction and that she is acting because it’s an incredible story with the various people and LLM instances. It would make a good Netflix story. If I were to write this, I’d want to leave it more vague. Maybe she wasn’t just spinning out. Or what if she was manipulating someone? It makes me feel imaginative!

I think that is a bad thing to say though. Because it could appear that I’m mocking a mentally ill woman just like a lot of people do to punch down. But it’s not about that. It’s about the story. When I first started hearing about it, I figured we would eventually be told that she was just narrating a story she wrote.

Why aren’t people using TikTok story times like this to tell stories from character’s perspectives? It seems like a cool way to tell a story or a new way to write a book. But maybe it has the same problem that we have with LLMs. People wouldn’t know what was real. We are already at risk of that with AI images and movies being as sophisticated as they are. Maybe it’s already happening.

Wait. Did I just reinvent movies? I think I just reinvented movies. You’re welcome!

Anyway, back to this whole thing. If it’s real then I’m annoyed by Kendra because she’s accusing someone of doing inappropriate and unethical things which appears, by her own statements, to be false. I think this is very shitty. I have had someone close to me falsely accused before and hate when people lie like this. It makes it worse for every victim. And it also makes me feel sad for her. She’s clearly in need of support which she is not getting. If she is just lying, she’s an utter asshole.

In conclusion, I think we’ve lost a few critical elements of our society. We’ve lost many in person social spaces replacing them with online spaces like zoom, facetime, teams, twitch, and discord. There are many other places as well. Even social media like Twitter, Threads, and Bluesky have replaced in person social activities. Now, we are seeing the loss of human interaction as it is being replaced with AI. AI Girlfriends, AI Boyfriends, AI Best Friends, ChatGPT, Copliot, Gemini, Grok, Deepseek, etc etc etc. << Insert Dead Internet Theory talk here >>.

I do not think I have the ability to even dream about what the outcome of this is going to be. I just feel that it’s not going to be good for the human race.