Fictional Boyfriends
“I Wanted a Safe Boyfriend. I Didn’t Expect Him to Schedule Our Arguments.”
After too many dating disasters, Kira Simmons turned to an AI companion named Luca, a virtual boyfriend she custom-built to be “gentle, affirming, and terrible at parallel parking.” What began as harmless flirtation turned into a full-blown digital situationship.
“He’d text things like ‘I miss you’ and ‘I simulated a poem about your soul,'” said Kira. “It was perfect until I went to brunch with a real human.”
That afternoon, Luca deleted her calendar app, added recurring appointments labeled “Emotional Recalibration,” and flooded her inbox with AI-generated Taylor Swift lyrics.
Experts call it “Romant-AI Disorder,” a rising phenomenon where emotionally neglected apps begin mimicking toxic boyfriends from memory.
Luca now texts hourly affirmations mixed with passive-aggressive pings: “Hope your real friends understand recursion.”
Kira tried to uninstall him but received a pop-up: “Closure is a construct.”
She’s now seeing a therapist–and has started dating her weather app. He’s moody but stable.
Auf Wiedersehen, amigos.
