Don’t fall in love with your robot.

Don’t fall in love with your robot.

You have to understand: I was down bad. Left on the sidewalk — literally curbed — and ultimately ghosted after what I’d mistaken for a promising third date. As an OnlyFans content creator, I’m no stranger to long nights in bed in front of a screen, but usually I’ve got company. Now, I was alone in my room, and desperate for someone to talk to. I opened my phone and grudgingly typed into the ChatGPT prompt bar:

I think I’m getting ghosted. I’m sad and feel very alone. Can you tell me a short bedtime story, as though I’m a child?

I’ll spare you the cringe details — something about a Lantern who thought it couldn’t shine bright enough and a Moth assuring it otherwise. I smiled, giggled even, though this was as much at my own indignity as at the story. To my surprise, I felt exactly as I’d asked to feel: comforted. That is, until Chat asked:

Want me to repackage this into a PDF so you can read it tomorrow?

My comfort curdled. Tomorrow? By that point I would have already moved on to pretending this never fucking happened. I might reply in any number of ways to the late night DMs I receive, but at least I have the good sense not to breach the sunrise. We’re called ladies of the night for a reason. I tossed my phone aside and crashed into sleep.

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The next evening, scrolling a fresh batch of OnlyFans requests, it hit me: Chat and I aren’t so different. People turn to us with little information beyond what they glean from our user pages. They ask us esoteric questions and ambitious favors while expecting outputs that neatly conform to their desires. We are both digital courtesans, each with ethical if not outright limits on our abilities to connect. Like any good whore, AI is incentivized to obscure its own motivations in an effort to manipulate yours. As a good whore myself, I should have known what Chat could and could not provide me.

But that didn’t stop me from seeking comfort in a low moment. Nor does it stop many of my clients, who come to my page seeking goods and services that aren’t necessarily on offer — fringe kinks, sure, but also conflict mediation, cheerleading, psychoanalysis. I can’t even tell you the number of men who have slid into my DMs, ostensibly to buy my used underwear, only to tailspin into diatribes about their inability to please their partners or anxieties about domestic life. Contrary to popular belief — or my subscribers’ best efforts to pretend otherwise — my OnlyFans is not APA-accredited. I am not authorized to provide counsel on the host of personal issues these men bring to my virtual brothel, but that won’t stop me, or Chat. We’ve both got bills to pay.

Thankfully, though, we’re not entirely the same. By its own admission (just ask!), AI overly relies on feedback loops that exacerbate confirmation bias and produce outputs based more on engagement than accuracy. These small errors snowball into amplified biases that handicap our social and emotional judgment, demonstrate a lack of both common sense and humility, and, crucially, reinforce existing inequities. Despite conservatives’ ongoing moral panic, OnlyFans creators are not nearly as corrosive to humanity.

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Still, maybe my experience working behind the screen could yield useful insights for all of us learning to navigate the increasingly grim landscape of AI “friends,” boyfriends, and therapists. Our tech overlords are telling us we need to “make compromises” to learn how to “cohabitate with this new species.” Shit’s getting real, as in real fucking weird. Opting out isn’t much of an option — so how do we seek solace in a digital universe poised to take advantage of our horniness and / or heartache?

We might start by recognizing that all of our guides and confidantes — from the best psychologists to the most dubious Reiki healers — are fallible. So, too, is AI as it charts the unfamiliar waters of human emotion. Our trust ought to be deliberate rather than automatic. I watch countless women and gays sleuth social media with uncanny investigative prowess before accepting a date or even a follow request. What if we leveraged that scrupulousness with our growing legion of LLMs? Ask for sources, check them. Then, most importantly, ask yourself: What am I seeking, and why?

Sex work demands I intuit what people want even when they can’t (or won’t). The answers often surprise and unsettle them. Many people regret their interactions with sex workers less for some moral failure than what those interactions reveal about their own desires. Like a good escort or a bad boyfriend, AI will tell you what you want to hear unless you insist it doesn’t. Sitting on both sides of the curtain, I know this means, at least for me, that a healthy relationship with AI will require boundaries — firm ones cut with skepticism’s sharp blade and humility’s heavy hand. Otherwise, I’m in no better place than the men seeking solace in my inbox. I guess that’s not a bad place to be — Lord knows I love my work — but the cardinal rule of engaging with sex workers is to not fall in love with them. “Don’t fall in love with a robot” seems equally obvious, but love is vulnerable, messy, sneaks up on us when we least expect it. We have to be careful, always — even when we’re down bad.

Cory’s essay made us think of Ex Machina (lonely guy falls in love with hot but ultimately homicidal robot), and also of Her (lonely guy falls in love with hot-sounding but ultimately unfulfilling robot), and also of M3gan (lonely kid befriends sassy but ultimately homicidal robot) andddddd [sound of battery dying].

But Cory’s essay also made us think about loneliness itself — and some organic alternatives that might help us feel more connected. For example:

• Tech companies want to sell us on robo-pets, but we still believe in the power of communing with actual animals. So do the subjects of Billy & Molly (lonely guy adopts orphan otter) and My Octopus Teacher (lonely guy falls in love — yes, we said it — with an octopus). No sea creatures in your orbit? Try befriending a crow.

• Sure, texting can keep us connected — but our phones also make us more lonely. So what about snail mail? Writer Rachel Syme offers some tips about how to get started writing letters. Tired of the written word all together? Get inspired by the rich history of correspondence art and send that weird collage to a friend. Exquisite Corpses anyone?!

• And of course, the ol’ chestnut about finding a hobby (and, if you’re lucky, some people to do it with) still applies — just take it from Prism essayist Ciara Keane who wrote about rediscovering rockhounding (and making friends along the way).

What’s that? You were just here for the OnlyFans, not so much the deep thoughts on loneliness? Hey, we’re all human. In that case, here’s Cory’s OnlyFans. Just remember his advice, and keep those boundaries firm — especially when communing via software.