Picture this...
The year is 2035
You wake up in the morning, notice you have a little “morning glory” going on.
You’re kinda feeling a little frisky too.
You press a button beside your bed, similar to those found in hospital rooms when you need a nurses assistance.
Within a few seconds, a slinky, svelte silhouette appears in your doorway. It’s none other than sailor moon, a very anatomically pleasing version of sailor moon...
“Is there anything I can help you with sir?” Sailor moon chirps.
“Yeah, I seem to have a bit of an issue down here”, you respond with a smirk”, “can you take a look at it for me?”.
“Hehe, why of course sir, you just lie back and I’ll take a look at that for you”.
And so, you do as your told, and as you lie back and watch sailor moon get to work relieving your problem downstairs, you think to yourself, geez what a fantastic time to be alive...
Now, just for the record, I never had a childhood crush on sailor moon, (I was more of a Sheerah, Princess of Power kinda guy), and I certainly am not one of those black pilled, nihilistic incel guys who has just completely given up on real women.
I think women are the greatest thing since sliced bread, yes, of course, I’ve had some less than favourable experiences with women over the years, but generally speaking, it been mostly positive, mainly because I’ve learned to manage my relationships with people better.
But anyway, today, I want to talk about my very un-pc vision of the future with sex robots, and how I believe they may actually save real relationships between people.
So, in my Book Here BE Dragons, I devote an entire chapter to sex robots. I discuss the morality and the mental and emotional side effects of them being used as a substitute for a real relationship with real women, whether a relationship with an inanimate object can ever be considered a real “relationship”, and, at the risk of sounding like a complete asshole, the time I tried to turn a sugar baby into my personal living breathing sex robot.
So, today we're not going talking about the morality of using sex robots because it’s all in the book. And anyway, whether it’s right or wrong, it really doesn’t matter any more. We’re already seeing robots being used as companions in places like Japan, and the sex doll industry is experiencing serious growth as well, helped in no part by the current medical crisis we’re all going through, so I think it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that sex robots WILL be a thing in the future.
So the real question I want to explore is not IF they should be incorporated into our future, but HOW they will be…
Here’s a quick passage from my book:
In order for sex robots to catch on with the mainstream, they need to offer something different from a conventional relationship with a living, breathing human being. They need to be designed and manufactured in a way that overcomes the uncanny valley effect, a phenomenon whereby a humanoid robot bearing a near-identical resemblance to a human being aroused a sense of unease or revulsion in the person who viewed it. They also need to be perfectly lifelike, while at the same time being fully customisable and configurable to cater to the infinitely variable tastes of the consumer. That’s quite a tall order…
I’m sure you’ve seen those weird looking Japanese robots with the weird silicone skin and the dead eyes. It’s just super creepy.
The main problem with these monstrosities is what they term the “uncanny valley effect”.
The YouTube Channel VSauce did an excellent video called “Why Are Things Creepy” which explains the uncanny valley much better than I could, however, Wikipedia states that:
The uncanny valley is a hypothesized relationship between the degree of an object's resemblance to a human being and the emotional response to such an object. The concept suggests that humanoid objects which imperfectly resemble actual human beings provoke uncanny or strangely familiar feelings of eeriness and revulsion in observers.[2] "Valley" denotes a dip in the human observer's affinity for the replica, a relation that otherwise increases with the replica's human likeness.
Basically, when things start looking too much like people but actually aren’t people, we get creeped out. However if the thing shares human traits but is obviously not human, like a teddy bear or a cute dog trying to walk on its back legs, we feel endeared to it.
This will be the deciding factor of whether or not sex robots will be a thing in the future, overcoming the uncanny valley effect.
And cartoonists have had the answer to this for decades now.
There was a movie released in 2001 called Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. It was supposed to be the first photorealistic computer-animated feature film, but it was a total flop, with most reviewers stating they couldn’t get past the “weirdness” of the look of the characters.
On the flip side, people love movies like Pixar's “Inside Out”, which features anthropomorphised “feelings”, and Coco, which features dead people!
Things don’t have to look human for us to endear ourselves to them, they just have to appear to have some human-like qualities.
The difference is, the Pixar movie characters don’t break the uncanny valley, their characters, regardless of what they look like, just have to behave in a way that we relate to, and that is what sex robot manufacturers need to do in the future.
I’m sure a lot of you know what cosplay is. It’s dressing up as your favourite anime character. They have massive cosplay conventions, and they’re the main attraction at computer game expos. In fact, there are people who get paid to dress up in cosplay at these expos, mostly female models.
It’s not that much of a stretch to imagine these same computer game expo goers paying big money to have their favourite female anime character brought to life for their explicit personal enjoyment. I’m sure if you asked them if they’d pay $10-15K to have their favourite animated character as their “girlfriend”, a girlfriend who was never too tired and never had a headache and was always more than happy to make them a sandwich, I’m sure they would fucking jump at the opportunity.
And hey, if you don’t have $15K to throw at a personalised plaything, well I’m sure they’ll be plenty of leasing and hire purchase options available…
They don’t have to look human per se, they just have to act human-like. Their movements and behaviour have to mimic people
And, as I mention in the book, I think the culture around sex robots will be similar to the current modified car culture. People will be proudly showing off their customised robots at organised public meets. And they will be public meets, they won’t be sleazy underground congregations, they will be like pebble beach Concours d'elegance, or SEMA. Because men are always going to be drawn to objects of beauty, whether it’s a bike or a car or a computer rig or a “personal robot”.
So, I know this all sounds like a misogynistic nightmare for women BUT I would argue that the advent of sex robots could potentially be the saviour of the long term relationship.
How many women have been lied to and abused by dudes who told them that they loved them and all that rubbish but really wanted to just keep them around as a fuck buddy?
I see sex robots as not a substitute for a real relationship with a real woman, but more like a compliment to a real relationship.
This is how I put it in the book:
To stick with the car analogy, it would be like the guy who buys a sports car for the weekend to complement his mundane daily driver.
As I envisioned it, the sex doll would be considered the daily driver and a relationship with a real woman would be the impractical sports car that was there to keep you on your toes and remind you what it was like to truly be alive.
Because, when it all came down to it, no matter how perfectly matched a doll might be to his physical ideal, a man would quickly tire of a mindless subservient entity that didn’t offer any challenges to overcome.
If men AND women could ensure that their carnal desires were catered for, those that wanted to could take their time and focus their efforts on finding a high quality real-life partner based not solely on our most basic instinctive desires, but on the important things like shared values and real chemistry.
Yes, everyone would have to lift their game, because everyone would have to focus on becoming desirable through traits other than their appearance, like displaying emotional intelligence for example. But if that sounds like too much work for you, then just go back to fucking your sex robot…
Yes, I would say that only a small percentage of people would make the effort to be in relationships with other real-life people because being in real-life relationships is hard, and when there’s an easier option, especially if the personal robots get to a stage where their behaviour, not their appearance, but their behaviour, is indistinguishable from humans, people are going to take the easier option.
But those that do decide to continue on with traditional relationships, those that decide to take the challenging road, will ultimately have a more rewarding & fulfilling relationship.