am i supposed to meet no one?
I love using the self-checkout at the grocery store. There are just interactions I don’t necessarily need to have and I prefer to bag my items in my own time without the cashier flinging everything at me in record speed as I struggle to stow it and not feel like I hold up the entire line. I also love the flexibility of not having to just rely on opening times of my gym or the set time of classes, so I have some gym equipment at home and an AF+ subscription to just do that at home when I want to, plus hobbies that can be done alone at home. Furthermore, I would try a Waymo if they had them where I live. And sure, some of the robot stuff is cute and gimmicky to watch, like videos of people getting their drinks made by robot arms, little delivery robots and the like. It evokes the feeling of living in the future, of cool SciFi stuff.
But I also look at the broader trend and what lies ahead and wonder: Am I just not supposed to meet anyone at some point? Is everything supposed to come to my house via robots and automation, or I arrive somewhere and no one else is there because there’s neither an employee nor other customers because they doordashed it?
Will I one day get into a Waymo to drive to a hotel where I do a self-checkin (already have that here!) and a little robot will guide me to my room and at the restaurant/bar I’ll have robot arms make me a matcha latte? Am I just gonna be at home or in some hotel room as every decision, friction and inconvenience is removed?
What’s advertised to me is that all needless hassle in this or that will be removed and I’ll have more time for other things. But since this is happening in almost every area of our lives, what are those other things exactly? Sure, do my job and take over laundry and dishes and meal prepping so I can do fun things instead, but what is that worth if I’ll have no income anymore and you’re also trying to take away social contact and hobbies?
Who am I supposed to hang out with, AI? And I know we will be going through a collective crisis on “why do anything” when AI can do everything - like why read a book in full when AI can summarize it for you? Why learn to draw or make music when AI can generate it faster and better than you in the style(s) you want? Why sit there writing fanfiction or poetry when AI can do that, why journal when AI summarizes your day for you on your phone? Why sew or do pottery or xyz if you can buy the product for extremely cheap on Temu?
The ones who did all that before AI know the process is the fun part and will probably keep doing it and only ask themselves once every now and then what’s the point (especially when other people harass them about doing it the hard way when they could be “more efficient”), but what about the people who wanna try, who wanna learn, the newbies? You can’t fill hours of free time a day just pushing a button to generate, generate, generate within seconds. Or maybe you can, but is that really fulfilling? Where is your agency in this?
So what exactly is this timesaving and hassle-free living for? What will be our freetime if it’s not with people or many creative hobbies? Watching more ads and consuming more online content? Online shopping? 15 step skincare routine the takes 2 hours twice a day?
I’m not the biggest fan of interacting with strangers, especially employees, but even I feel bad about the fact that even just very normal transactional interactions are presented as a hassle. Like “Ugh, remember the STUPID EXCHANGE you had with the bakery cashier where you smiled briefly at each other and exchanged goods and wished each other a good day? How about we remove this ANNOYANCE!” It might be one of these things where we don’t know what we had until we lost it. During the lockdowns, I only talked to cashiers and it was sort of a lifeline. And hello, that robot isn’t gonna ask your kid how old they are and praise them and give them an extra slice of deli meat. It’s fucking cool when the barista remembers your favorite order and prepares it when you come in, and it’s meaningless and boring if a bot does, because of course it knows. It just removes whimsy and unexpected small moments of humanity and kindness.
I hate antisocial tech bros going “I fucking hate interacting with anyone” and working to make it our collective default and then also selling the supposed solution: AI chatbots, podcasts to feel like you’re not alone and hanging out in a friend group, the metaverse, and giving people a bot crowd of yes-men in their comments and DMs. How are you creating all that tech robbing us of every day low-effort small interactions and ways to meet people or hang out, and then go “Oh, we’re all in a loneliness epidemic, we should create more tech to combat this.” You’re starving us all purposefully to sell the food and you should go fuck yourself.
The issue isn’t not wanting to see anyone or not wanting (or being unable to) go out as much, or wanting to take advantage of some conveniences. I feel that and as said at the start, I do that too. Many of the things above are accessibility wins for the sick, old and disabled. Less humans also means less transmission of viruses and bacteria, less liabilities, less abuse or whatever. The problem I see is partially forcing it onto people, or removing jobs, or making it so convenient so that even people who don’t wanna give up on this aspect of social life feel compelled to use it, essentially training them to engage in something that leads to a lifestyle they don’t even want.
It’s fine to have avoidant and isolated phases, but it’s also hard to claw your way back out and rebuild your social battery and social skills; I’ve had to do it countless times and it sucks every time, so I don’t want it to become the default because I don’t know if society can come back from that. It just makes aspects of living a problem that actually aren’t one and it makes the whole thing feel so inhuman to me. I don’t want what these ghouls have dreamt up for us.
Reply via email
Published 12 May, 2025