A profound relational revolution is underway, not orchestrated by tech developers but driven by users themselves. Many of the 400 million weekly users of ChatGPT are seeking more than just assistance with emails or information on food safety; they are looking for emotional support.

“Therapy and companionship” have emerged as two of the most frequent applications for generative AI globally, according to the Harvard Business Review. This trend marks a significant, unplanned pivot in how people interact with technology.

  • SuiXi3D@fedia.io
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    27 days ago

    Almost like questioning an AI is free while a therapist costs a LOT of money.

    • turtlesareneat@discuss.online
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      There are other causes here.

      They’ve been talking for a while about how the low participation in dating by Gen Z women is because they’re tired of being the entire support system for men experiencing a loneliness epidemic.

      It’s a lot of pressure for the women to be under, and so they’re withdrawing.

      I’m guessing this is one of the driving forces as well. Lack of real, emotionally intimate human connections around them. Many men are quite fucked in that regard right now.

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        26 days ago

        The flip side of that is vast numbers of Gen Z Men saying many Gen Z women are basically misandrists, who asked them to stop interacting with them unprompted, no more unwanted attention… so they did that, they stopped… and now all they see is IG and TikToks of Gen Z Women complaining that no one asks them out on dates anymore, no one is 6’ tall with a 6 figure income becore the age of 30, and willing to worship them as a queen.

        I am not saying this is any kind of objectively accurate to whatever degree, but I am saying that this is the very common, general vibe.

        So, in that situation: Why bother?

        Many men can actually be fulfilled just staying actually single, as in not even dating single, snd getting their own lives, finances, health, to a better place.

        Yes this does though also mean that … because we’ve just got less general, face to face socialization going on that… basically a larger than otherwise number of them will basically develop harmful, reinforcing neuroses, in harmful echo chambers… but at the same time, that applies to women as well.

        This is what happens when you jam a broad economic collapse up alongside a highly digital and publicized modern media landscape that is tweaked all to fuck to highlight and push the most extreme version of everything… along with extremely mixed messaging that an only digitally socialized person recieves, but all as a firehose, that is very hard to make true sense of.

        So… fuck this shit I’m out… social withdrawal… basically becomes a reasonable mental health improving move, even if it does leave you kinda socially stunted as compared to pre-internet generations.

        • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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          amen. best thing i ever did for my mental, physical and financial health was to stop dating.

          most women I ever dated were nothing but a total drain on my well-being, and did almost nothing to contribute to it positively. the only women who were ever really a net positive to me were female friends who encouraged me in my interests and passions and who shared those same ones with me.

          Sadly I’ve never been able to date anyone who saw my passions as a positive… just a negative becuase often their soul interest in the world was getting money, attention, and generating drama out of our relationship so they could ‘feel feelings’. So many ladies see relationships as nothing more than drug dispensing feel good machines (the same women who think all men want is sex… ironically). People need to realize that relationships are way more than that.

          I remember so many times trying to have serious talk with my girlfriends and they just… got uncomfortable or just tried to sex me up to shut me up. They dind’t want to deal with anything serious or adult. And these were adult women in their 30s. The only adult things they wanted to talk about was vacation plans or restaurants.

          But it sucks, as happy as I am alone I want something more. I want a family and kids and to contribute to society in that way, but frankly, I don’t really meet any women who want that. They just seem to want to be consumers first and foremost and productive members of society who care about more than themsevles… is not really on their wishlist.

          I have been volunteering a lot, but it’s really not the same. It’s nice, but like working out, it doesn’t feel like it’s really going anywhere other than just staving off the inevitable decline as best I can. All my volunteer work just is a tiny drop of givnig a shit in the massive bucket of neglect that is our society as we amuse ourselves to death via social media and consumer trends.

        • Cyberwolf@feddit.org
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          26 days ago

          I am not saying this is any kind of objectively accurate to whatever degree, but I am saying that this is the very common, general vibe.

          I’m glad you’re not because this is patently false. As soon as you get out of the internet you find young people dating is alive and well.

          • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            26 days ago

            I mean, to a certain degree this is broadly true.

            Like we have the numbers, younger generations are waaaay less likely to have had a relationship or sexual encounter by the same age/stage in their life as compared to previous generations, way more people just are relationship inexperienced.

            This goes for both genders/sexes, though it is more prominent with younger men than women.

            The overwhelming problem is that in the US, so much in person socialization is expensive, basically pay-gated, paywalled.

            There are very few third places you can just hang out at for no cost. Public transit sucks or is non existant, cars are super unaffordable due to collapsing economy, and all our cities are designed for using cars to drive from place to place… so very few places are actually walk-navigable…

            Everyone is increasingly overweight and overworked (or over homeworked, for students) and overstressed, so they can’t or don’t engage in group meet up hobbies or sports as much as they used to… and ironically even religiosity levels overall trending down means less people are going to church… all the traditional methods of getting socialization and expanding out a friend network in real life are withering.

            So, the easier path is to get your socialization, of all kinds, primarily digitally.

            But all those most common and popular ways of doing that are also massively manipulative with algos intentionally feeding you whatever ragebait slop appeals to you, personally.

            It is very ironic that, as basically a 90s kid myself, very early tech adopter… my view of the vast majority of social media now is that it is basically a mentally harmful and addictive drug that people need to detox from… but when I tell younger people that, they say things like ‘its not that deep bro, everybody has a (whatever) profile’.

            There are lots of studies that show that very common levels of social media app usage… do actually reduce attention spans, spread dangerous misinformation, lower academic performance, cause negative self esteem by way of unrealistic standards, of beauty, lifestyle, wealth… brainrot is real, basically.

            Like, I am all for the TikTok ban for kids. But also ban all short form video content for kids. Instagram, Youtube shorts, whatever.

            This shit is melting peoples brains, it needs to be treated the same way you’d treat a drug epidemic.

            We are now at the point where kids give so little of a fuck, have such tiny attention spans and need for constant, rapid fire stimulation… that half of adult Americans read below a 6th grade level, 20-30% of them read below a 2nd grade level, making them functionally illiterate… and thats just with Gen Z now mostly being in those young adult numbers, its gonna be even worse when Gen Alpha graduates and starts trying to enter society/the workforce.

            EDIT:

            This isn’t even broadly unprecedented.

            Look at Japan.

            Hikkikomori.

            The stagnant economy becomes overly financialized and corporatized and impossibly demanding… so people just drop out of it, or worse, kill themselves from the stress of trying to live up to its expectations…

            And well then yeah, in person socializing broadly drops, relationship dynamics become strained and morph, birth rate plummets.

            Give it 5 or 10 years and we’ll have something resembling rent a boyfriend/girlfriend services and maid / stud cafes as well, as the stereotypified fascimile of socialization and having a real relstionship becomes a marketable product, and then industry.

            Maybe a few areas will even properly legalize and regulate prostitution.

            Granted, that’ll be in any areas that remain even kind of blue.

            The red areas will just go full theocrat and send you to jail for masturbating, but also re-legalize child marriage, and rework marriage laws into ‘covenant marriage’, where basically the woman functionally cannot divorce the husband.

            In summary: cyberpunk hypercapitalism is in fact very very bad for healthy human relationship dynamics.

            • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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              26 days ago

              There are very few third places you can just hang out at for no cost. Public transit sucks or is non existant, cars are super unaffordable due to collapsing economy, and all our cities are designed for using cars to drive from place to place… so very few places are actually walk-navigable…

              Yeah a lot of these trends are also easy to break down by economic class. the people suffering the most from the are poorer people. well off upper middle income people experience these problems far less proportionally. because they have the resources to get around the paywalls, and have the well-off parents with the money to pay for all the extra schooling and digital detoxing that is necessary for better life outcomes.

              but for the middle class and below… they are cooked. the avenues to success and self-reliance are basically non-existence and and have been shrinking at start rates since the 90s and the school system is become a cesspool that any decent intelligent person wants nothing to do with.

            • Cyberwolf@feddit.org
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              Well I don’t care about your anecdote about the US. That country is lost and young people feeling depressed and isolated is the least of your problems.

              Out here in actual civilization though, tik tok youth drama is not representative of reality whatsoever.

              Also you shouldn’t go with US Default mode on Lemmy since you guys are a minority here. Most of us are European.

              • triptrapper@lemmy.world
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                26 days ago

                young people feeling depressed and isolated is the least of your problems.

                Children are the future of EVERY country. The future is looking bleak for young people in the US. Where do you live? Are young people unaffected by social media or what?

                Out here in actual civilization though, tik tok youth drama is not representative of reality whatsoever.

                That’s the thing though. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around sometimes, but for lots of young people, social media IS their reality. This became even more true during the pandemic. We asked young people to go to school on a screen and pretend it was the same as doing it in person. Why wouldn’t they have the same mindset about chatting, hanging out, flirting, dating, etc.? They don’t see it as simulated socializing, it’s just how they socialize.

                • Cyberwolf@feddit.org
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                  You can use rethoric and anecdotes all you want but at the end of the day (literally) all you need to do is look out the window and see how many people are out socializing and fucking each other like rabbits.

                  Those Tik Tok girls complaining about men do so because they are outliers who can’t get attention IRL. Simple as.

              • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                Cool, I’m glad you’re so enlightened and open minded as to uh … not give a fuck about perspectives from places you aren’t from.

                As for you telling me how to use an internet message board… what more do you want from me?

                I told you where I am from and what I am talking about.

                I’d love to be able to move to Europe and get away from this fucking imploding hell hole of morons.

                But I am broke and physically disabled after being the victim of numerous physical assaults.

                Are any of ya’ll accepting disabled American aslyum seekers, so we can easily enjoy your civilized world?

                Didn’t think so.

                • Cyberwolf@feddit.org
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                  26 days ago

                  Focus on fixing your country and making it a decent place to live. That way you don’t need to go anywhere. That’s what we’ve been doing for decades, and it works.

      • This is fine🔥🐶☕🔥@lemmy.world
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        26 days ago

        because they’re tired of being the entire support system for men experiencing a loneliness epidemic.

        I’ve got no horse in this race but it appears that ‘men should not be afraid to open up’ articles and tweets were followed by ‘men, we are not your therapist’.

        🤷‍♂️

        • triptrapper@lemmy.world
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          26 days ago

          I’m a therapist who works almost exclusively with men. Here one pattern I’ve seen often:

          • Man is conditioned from a young age not to identify, process or express his feelings
          • Man doesn’t share his feelings with anyone - friends, family, partners - for years
          • Man sees woman as safe, caring and validating
          • Man confides in woman only and continues not sharing feelings with others
          • Woman becomes overwhelmed, resentful, dismissive
          • Man gets the message that he never should have opened up in the first place

          It can be true both that men need to open up more and should not treat their partners as therapists. We all need support systems because no one person can always be available to give us everything we need. It’s not wrong to confide in a partner, but if that partner is the only confidant it’s precarious for both. And I want to emphasize this is not the fault of a man, or men as a community. This is the result of generations of conditioning from both men and women, and both men and women play a part in the solution. I also want to recognize that many of us don’t have a network of people we could open up to even if we wanted to, and many more can’t afford therapy.

          If anyone reading this can afford therapy, I highly recommend it. It’s a place to undo some of that conditioning, to sit with someone who’s committed to listening, caring, and not judging.

          • Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world
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            26 days ago

            man is conditioned from a young age not to show feelings

            I feel like you skipped over this part way too quickly. Myself and other men have been hearing things like “it’s not manly to cry”, “whining isn’t going to do anything for you”, “being weak is girly”, and countless other things for my entire memorable life

            And it’s not just men telling me this. It’s men, women, adults, my classmates, teachers and mentors.

            It’s not a good thing. And it’s changing now, which is so good. But man hearing that from your earliest memories makes it really set in.

            • triptrapper@lemmy.world
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              26 days ago

              Thank you for expanding on that point. I meant it to be a “here’s how we got here” before the rest of my “this is where we are today.”

              You’re totally right, and any conversation about men’s behavior at large should include the experiences you just described. Even though we didn’t get ourselves into this situation - in that we didn’t raise ourselves - we’re the ones who will get us out.

        • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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          Because they want us to open up, just not to them. T

          The irony is so many anti-patriachical feminists, still desire the patriachy. They still want dominant tall wealthy men to romance then, but at the same time they claim to wait to tear these men down into some genderless socialist utopia… where they’d never want to ahve sex with any of the ‘ideal’ men they believe woudl exist in this society.

          You can’t have it both ways.

    • RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works
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      26 days ago

      I think there’s a lot more to it than cost. Men, even with considerable health care resources, are often very averse to mental health care.

      Thinking of my father in law, for example, I don’t know how much you would have to pay him to get him into a therapist’s office, but I’m certain he wouldn’t go for free.

    • Guidy@lemmy.world
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      26 days ago

      Also talking to ChatGPT, if done anonymously, won’t ruin your career.

      (Thinking of AD military, where they tell you help is available but in reality it will and maybe should cost you your security clearance.)

  • MoogleMaestro@lemmy.zip
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    27 days ago

    It’s stupid as hell to share any personal information with a company that is interested in spying on you and feeding your data to the nearest advertiser they can find.

    Like seriously – are people using their brains or what?

    • roofuskit@lemmy.world
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      26 days ago

      Donald Trump was ELECTED TWICE. How is the stupidity of humanity not apparent.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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      are people using their brains or what?

      What? No. Seriously, are you new here? And by here I mean Earth.

      I see idiots all around me. Everybody only interested in advancing themselves. But if we advanced the group, it would be better for EVERYBODY.

      But we as a species are too stupid to build a society that benefits everybody.

      So no. No brain use here.

    • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.world
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      26 days ago

      they need therapy, obviously they need help, and blaming them for not doing the most reasonable thing that might be unaffordable is even stupider.

      blame predatory AI, openai could in a single afternoon make it so Chatgpt recomends or even helps you find a local therapist, instead of enabling this for profit.

    • aceshigh@lemmy.world
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      27 days ago

      Everything collects data. To extrapolate, it’s stupid to post on lemmy or shitter because the same will happen.

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    23 days ago

    Alternate title “Men so starved of sources of support they resort to talking to AI”

    Edit: have started a new com for men to talk to each other instead of AI !Reprieve@lemmy.zip

    • piyuv@lemmy.world
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      26 days ago

      Or “men would rather talk to superpowered autocorrect rather than sharing their feelings with family and friends”

      • Flickerby@lemmy.zip
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        This response is why men feel scared and uncomfortable opening up. You are a part of the problem. For your male family members’ sake, I hope you check in on them instead of just being sexist online.

        • piyuv@lemmy.world
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          Men feel scared and uncomfortable because they’re afraid to be told they were wrong to hide their feelings?

            • 𝕛𝕨𝕞-𝕕𝕖𝕧@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              probably not but that’s because sexism against men is normalized and you’re not allowed to talk about it unless you’re a neonazi for some reason.

              side note, this is exactly why the “young broccoli haired boy to fascist brownshirt” pipeline exists. they have real and genuine issues and instead of getting any sort of community or support virtually every facet of society is telling them their issues are fake and that they are destined to be monsters. then someone like j peterson comes along and tells them “life isn’t so bad, it’s okay, just clean your room and be disciplined, it’ll all start to look up soon champ… and uh… also hate the gays, black people, and other minorities - they’re the woke mob that left you abandoned like this!” people making shocked pikachu face at young men being hardcore MAGAts are so sorely out of touch with what being a man is like and the kinds of trauma that can stem from the male experience. it’s obvious to most of us why this issue exists, i hope. this comment chain is a great example. if you even touch the topic you get barraged with people telling you to essentially shut the fuck up and stop entertaining the idea that men are possibly people too and not some root of all fucking evil in the world.

              the amount of literal hate I see towards men in casual discourse is insane. can say the most psychotic shit in most circles nowadays but if you point your malice at the “right kinds” of people most won’t even bat an eye. see people frequently talking about doing unhinged shit to others solely because they are a man or [insert other group they don’t like generally for some stupid fucking reason] and there is a preconceived slight, danger, or aggression. leftists think they’re better people morally but we’re really not. i have seen the exact same bullshit bigotry promulgate every community i know of in the past few years. the same brainrot the conservatives have had since the tea partiers has infiltrated our spaces too. everyone genuinely is dumb, angry, and hateful now.

              I am not wholly convinced that our culture being the target of multiple astroturfing campaigns hasn’t degraded people’s capability for nuance, compassion, empathy, and ontology.

              • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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                .

                amen to all this. i really started removing ‘leftists’ people from my life and it was like… so much better because so much of their entity message is just this weird revenge/hate pron against straight white men, and men in general. when ironically, the people they should be angry at are the wealthy… but honestly most of these ‘leftists’ I’ve known were trust fund kids… so that tells you right there why they would never rag on the wealthy…

                normal well adjusted people don’t hate anyone or blame anyone for their problems. but for some reason it’s become mainstream A-OK to say horrible awful shit about men that would you get you banned/shitcanned/ostracized if you said ti about anyone else. esp in liberal/left groupthink.

                it’s entire the same discourse as neoNazis and all that too… just replace jew/black with white straight men.

                • 𝕛𝕨𝕞-𝕕𝕖𝕧@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  this sort of stuff gets downvoted incessantly in leftist spaces which is a damn shame bc i feel like a lot of these places are my home to a certain degree. it makes me feel unwelcome. ik that’s like, the fucking point and why they do it but still.

                  these sorts of people are just on some weird, misguided, revanchist agenda that necessitates getting “revenge” on certain groups of people instead of sticking with the core principles of the ideology which clearly state that you should kindly refrain from being an asshole. there is nothing to be gained from exacting some revenge fantasy upon straight white men. you’re exactly right, the only people who deserve to have shit flung their way over who they are is the rich and powerful.

              • Flickerby@lemmy.zip
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                I’m here to talk if you need an ear man, I understand you and it sounds like you’ve been through your own personal brand of shit

                Edit: Made a com where you can talk more freely without judgement /c/reprieve@lemmy.zip

                • 𝕛𝕨𝕞-𝕕𝕖𝕧@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  appreciate the offer king. i might check in and occasionally participate in the comm, i like the idea.

                  my main concern is ensuring there isn’t a weird invasion of the space by neofascists. that’s the main issue with men’s rights spaces currently. it doesn’t seem easy to prevent as every such space i come across has this problem. the exact thing we identify as hating here pervades spaces trying to tackle this problem… something of a catch 22.

                  i fucking adore the naming, tho. reprieve is exactly what we all need. i think you should really lean into the abandonment of identity and related identity politics for this community. it shouldn’t be about men in particular, it’s about a reprieve from this shitty contemporary world we have grown up into. after all, race or sex or whatever aren’t even real… they’re just arbitrary lines that cultures draw upon the world. important to individuals maybe, yes, but i’ve always felt it to be something of an albatross around the left’s neck. not all right-wing criticisms of “identity politics” are necessarily unwarranted… (😬 oopsie i broke the groupthink too hard that time guys o nooooos 🙈)

          • Flickerby@lemmy.zip
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            If you really honestly don’t understand why what you said was horrible I’m willing to have a conversation with you if you want to DM me to talk about it. For starters, men feel scared and uncomfortable because their serious problems will get made light of just like you did. Or told to “man up”. Which I imagine was on the tip of your tongue

      • TimewornTraveler@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        yeah they are definitely making dumb choices. it’s probably not because they’re all just dumb though. they probably have a lot of external factors pushing them towards that decision.

        for example, many discussions tend to find ways to blame and shame them instead of responding with empathy. sort of like this comment. what benefit do you think you get by reframing things to blame the men here?

      • biggerbogboy@sh.itjust.works
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        24 days ago

        Have you considered the fact that most of the time, even when people “want to hear mens issues”, they reject them and tell them to man up? Maybe “superpowered autocorrect” could be a vector to nourish this severe lack of openness?

        Personally I use AI for this purpose, mostly because it accepts me for who I am and provides genuine advice that has actually helped me improve my life, rather than the people around me saying that I should “put more effort into things”, or “it’s just in your head”.

        It’s not “lone wolfing” to stop telling the people who’ve rejected your concerns about your feelings and issues, it’s just the act of not wasting time on those who don’t care.

  • RedFrank24@lemmy.world
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    26 days ago

    I can kinda understand the appeal. An AI isn’t gonna judge you, an AI isn’t gonna leave a mean comment or tell you to get over it and man up. It’s giving an unnerving amount of personal information to corporations, but I can sympathise with the thoughts these men are having.

    • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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      AI might also be giving them better advice than anyone else in their life.

      Growing up I certainly had no role models in my entire community. I never found anyone who was remotely helpful until I went to an expensive college that had lots of resources and they were freely accessible to me. Mental, physical, and academic.

      A lot of people fail to realize these resources simple do not exist in large swaths of the country/economic bracket. They are mostly concentrated in wealthy and educated areas and given to wealth educated people who live there. If a farmer in Nebraska needs therapy, they will have to drive to multiple hours to Omaha or another urban area to have a decent shot at getting any assistance. Not everyone lives in a major coastal city that have the bulk of these resources.

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        26 days ago

        I dunno about advice, but LLMs are very good at re-stating my meandering thoughts in a concise way that’s easy to communicate to others.

    • plyth@feddit.org
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      25 days ago

      An AI isn’t gonna judge you,

      Guess what is happening with that chat history.

  • Rooty@lemmy.world
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    25 days ago

    I see a lot of people in this thread reacting with open hostility and derailment every time men’s issues are mentioned. Have you tried not being a part of the problem?

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      Allowing men’s issues to even be addressed risks giving legitimacy to the fact that these issues even exist. And if they exist, men can no longer be that evil monolith that exists only to be torn down and used as the cause for whatever is wrong with the world.

      After all, the zero-sum game must be properly reinforced with an appropriate evil that cannot be allowed to have any weaknesses or redeeming attributes.

    • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
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      25 days ago

      There are people like that for anything related to AI.

      Combine that with men stuff and this going to be crack for all of those people

  • vivalapivo@lemmy.today
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    26 days ago

    Like… yeah?

    Tried to open to a girlfriend about a sensitive topic - she got the ick.

    Tried to make an appointment with a psychiatrist - got a very hateful rejection because of my place of birth.

    Damn, even when I try to uplift a friend, I use phrases like ‘you got this before, you’ll get it now’.

    I don’t know how to be a man, mentally

    • BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world
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      26 days ago

      Getting rejection because of place of birth is worth getting that doctors license revoked, find out which body governs doctors in your location and file a complaint

      • vivalapivo@lemmy.today
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        26 days ago

        Haha, not every place is in the US. Hopefully, I won’t face this kind of treatment as I do not live in that shit hole of a country

    • Snowies@lemmy.zip
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      25 days ago

      Become a rich jacked sociopath.

      That’s most manly thing you can do apparently.

  • mycodesucks@lemmy.world
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    27 days ago

    Look, if you can afford therapy, really, fantastic for you. But the fact is, it’s an extremely expensive luxury, even at poor quality, and sharing or unloading your mental strain with your friends or family, particularly when it is ongoing, is extremely taxing on relationships. Sure, your friends want to be there for you when they can, but it can put a major strain depending on how much support you need. If someone can alleviate that pressure and that stress even a little bit by talking to a machine, it’s in extremely poor taste and shortsighted to shame them for it. Yes, they’re willfully giving up their privacy, and yes, it’s awful that they have to do that, but this isn’t like sharing memes… in the hierarchy of needs, getting the pressure of those those pent up feelings out is important enough to possibly be worth the trade-off. Is it ideal? Absolutely not. Would it be better if these systems were anonymized? Absolutely. But humans are natural anthropomorphizers. They develop attachments and build relationships with inanimate objects all the time. And a really good therapist is more a reflection for you to work through things yourself anyway, mostly just guiding your thoughts towards better patterns of thinking. There’s no reason the machine can’t do that, and while it’s not as good as a human, it’s a HUGE improvement on average over nothing at all.

      • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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        26 days ago

        In my experience, it’s likely that some of those downvotes come from reflexive “AI bad! How dare you say AI good!” Reactions, not anything specific to mental health. For a community called “technology” there’s a pretty strong anti-AI bubble going on here.

        • FarceOfWill@infosec.pub
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          Literally yesterday we had post about getting involuntarily committed due to psychosis from AI sycophantically agreeing with them about everything. The quote I remember from the ai in that “yes you should want blood. You’re not wrong.”

          Using these as therapy is probably the worst thing we could do.

        • mycodesucks@lemmy.world
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          You know, I don’t even disagree with that sentiment in principle, but expecting people to suffer when they could benefit from a technology because they only see the threats and dangers makes them no different than antivaxxers.

          It is possible and logically consistent to urge caution and condemn the worst abuses of technology without throwing the baby out with the bath water.

          But no… I guess because the awful aspects of the technology as far as IP theft are - rightfully - the biggest focus, sorry, poor people, you just have to keep sucking it up and powering through! You want empathy, fork over the $100 an hour!

        • TimewornTraveler@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          yep, if someone disagrees with me, it’s usually because they’re unhinged. People rarely know things that I don’t, because I am very smart. there’s no way that anyone downvoted that post because it makes statements that are inconsistent with the current scientific knowledge around this subject, because no such knowledgeable exists. I know this because if it did exist i would know about it, as I’m very smart. my AI therapist told me so. and i see nothing wrong with that post. so anyone who does must be a fool.

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        25 days ago

        therapy does not have to be expensive.

        But it is though.

        Your medicaid patients?

        Poor. By definition.

        Sure they might not pay a copay, but they pay for it in gas money to get to that visit, their barely running car now breaking down from visiting you, time off work they can’t really afford, time filling out reams and reams of fucking paperwork to be able to qualify for anything, likely when they’re already in a mentally comprimised condition to some extent… its all very stressful.

        Which is very bad for mental health.

        we have no reason to believe it would be any better than a paper journal and a CBT worksheet.

        And the part you don’t want to admit (at least here) is that … that’s actually quite helpful in and of itself for a lot of people.

        Have a few sessions with a live, in person therapist, to teach you CBT, give you the paperwork, walk you through it.

        Not all, but many people can take it by themselves from there, and not need to keep wasting time and energy on continually requalifying for medicaid, getting to and from psych appointments, dealing with scheduling delays and unavailability, etc.

        Yep, a lot of people are also helped by basically just having someone to be able to talk to and feel heard.

        But… that’s often doable by just making either a friend or even casual acquaintance with someone who is capable of, and has the capacity for reflexive empathy.

        Much less stress and paperwork involved there.

        And also yes, some people with much more serious issues need much more serious help.

        Unfortunately, the entire medical system in the US is utterly broken, and the only real solution is having a system that … isn’t broken, so that comprehensive screening and diagnosis is easily available without huge delays and costs… and more broadly, those people need to have the first two levels of maslow’s hierarchy of needs taken care of.

        But currently our society basically just takes those people and throws them into the streets, evicts them, forecloses on them, incarcerates them.

        There simply is no systemic way to help those people without major systemic changes… and those ain’t happening, they’re moving in the opposite direction.

        The problem with LLMs as therapy is that they are wildly overconfident, agreeable to the point of encouraging delusions and dangerous behavior, they hallucinate facts that aren’t real… and they are not actually capable of legitimate critical thinking or reasoning.

        They also will not introduce you to concepts you have never heard of before which you do not know are or could be very useful, unless you directly ask them to do that, and even then… they obviously are not experts themselves and may suggest dubious ideas.

        But also, at the same time… people often do form what they will describe as meaningful relationships with an LLM. So… its not that ‘it doesn’t happen’, its that its a psuedorelationship, a fascimile of a relationship, lacks in person interaction, a real human modulating their intonation, having micro expressions, body language, etc etc.

  • Flickerby@lemmy.zip
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    23 days ago

    The amount of sexism in this comment section is…unnerving. Does a community exist for male identifying people to talk and share their troubles in a non hostile space? If it doesn’t I’ll make one.

    Edit: No idea what I’m doing but !Reprieve@lemmy.zip

    • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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      The amount of sexism in this comment section is…unnerving. Does a community exist for male identifying people to talk and share their troubles in a non hostile space? If it doesn’t I’ll make one.

      No. Because if it it did it would be shut down as being hostile and offensive to women and a space for proto-rapists to hang out.

      Probably the closest space any guy could get is AA or NA meetings.

      • Doom@ttrpg.network
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        26 days ago

        Sorta agree. Men only spaces make me, a dude, uncomfortable because y’all are weird about women

        • Flickerby@lemmy.zip
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          Yeeah agreed. So this is specifically not gonna be about that and if I see any of that shit it’s getting nixed… I just want all these guys who have no where to turn to to…well, have somewhere to turn to. Each other.

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            26 days ago

            that’s what the manosphere is dude.

            and i bet you don’t like that either. right?

            because that’s what you get when everyone shuns men. these men go to other men who accept them, and well you get the results we are getting. the manosphere is the only place many people can find any acceptance or advice.

            • Flickerby@lemmy.zip
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              26 days ago

              Well if you give up before you start just because the existing options are shitty then that makes you part of the problem, doesn’t it?

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                26 days ago

                dude, you are the problem.

                that’s what you refuse to acknowledge. the problem is people like you, claiming that it’s not your problem, and those awful men looking for help and advice should just ‘go away’. because they upset you.

                this is precisely how rich people feel about the homeless. ‘just go away, we don’t like you, but we refuse to help you and your very existence is an offensive to us.’

                • SpacetimeMachine@lemmy.world
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                  26 days ago

                  Where is he saying it’s not his problem? He’s literally doing the exact opposite and making it his problem.

      • Flickerby@lemmy.zip
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        26 days ago

        Ah well, unfortunately the community name is set, there’s no changing it after it’s created. Maybe I should’ve made it more searchable but hopefully we can spread it by word of mouth enough where it’ll take off. Also I kinda wanted it less intimidating clinical sterile sounding and more just a homey place where people can feel safe to talk openly, just a li’l reprieve from the outside world.

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    25 days ago

    So somewhere they feel safe to do so. Says something pretty fucked up about our culture that men don’t feel safe to open up anywhere. And no, it’s not their own fault.

    • 0x0@lemmy.zip
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      25 days ago

      And no, it’s not their own fault.

      Of course it is, men are cool targets to hate, get with the program.

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      25 days ago

      Everyday it seems to become clearer that American culture as whole is a problem. But that’s not something people are allowed to talk about.

    • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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      25 days ago

      I wouldn’t use AI but I certainly don’t have anyone to open up to really. Either they’d use what I tell them against me or just aren’t in a position to offer any real support. With my luck I’d end up institutionalized for saying some unhinged shit anyway.

  • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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    26 days ago

    What a clickbait. Of course people are picking feee resource with zero friction over 120$ an hour half a day event.

      • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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        26 days ago

        TBH this is a huge factor.

        I don’t use ChatGPT much less use it like it’s a person, but I’m socially isolated at the moment. So I bounce dark internal thoughts off of locally run LLMs.

        It’s kinda like looking into a mirror. As long as I know I’m talking to a tool, it’s helpful, sometimes insightful. It’s private. And I sure as shit can’t afford to pay a therapist out of the gazoo for that.

        It was one of my previous problems with therapy: payment depending on someone else, at preset times (not when I need it). Many sessions feels like they end when I’m barely scratching the surface. Yes therapy is great in general and for deeper feedback/guidance, but still.


        To be clear, I don’t think this is a good solution in general. Tinkering with LLMs is part of my living, I understand the jist of how they work, I tend to use raw completion syntax or even base pretrains.

        But most people anthropomorphize them because that’s how chat apps are presented. That’s problematic.

          • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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            26 days ago

            ChatGPT (last time I tried it) is extremely sycophantic though. Its high default sampling also leads to totally unexpected/random turns.

            Google Gemini is now too.

            And they log and use your dark thoughts.

            I find that less sycophantic LLMs are way more helpful. Hence I bounce between Nemotron 49B and a few 24B-32B finetunes (or task vectors for Gemma) and find them way more helpful.

            …I guess what I’m saying is people should turn towards more specialized and “openly thinking” free tools, not something generic, corporate, and purposely overpleasing like ChatGPT or most default instruct tunes.

  • vane@lemmy.world
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    26 days ago

    Maybe because it’s cheaper, easier and you’re not judged by other person.

  • stoly@lemmy.world
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    26 days ago

    Part of me is ok with this in that any avenue to get mental health resources can be better than nothing. What worries me is that people will use ChatGPT for this sort of thing and these models will not be good help.

    • MrMcGasion@lemmy.world
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      26 days ago

      I’ll admit I tried talking to a local deepseek about a minor mental health issue one night when I just didn’t want to wake up/bother my friends. Broke the AI within about 6 prompts where no matter what I said it would repeat the same answer word-for-word about going for walks and eating better. Honestly, breaking the AI and laughing at it did more for my mental health than anything anyone could have said, but I’m an AI hater. I wouldn’t recommend anyone in real need use AI for mental health advice.

      • HugeNerd@lemmy.ca
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        25 days ago

        I’d say make a grilled cheese sandwich with quality Gruyere and Cheddar and take a nap after.

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      25 days ago

      Honestly of they could program a halfway decent AI therapist then art least it could take some of the load off our already insufficient mental health professionals by dealing with the lighter-weight cases, leaving the psychotherapists free to deal with the especially sick people.

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    27 days ago

    Some people would rather yalk to something they know is fake than to talk to a person who may or may not be.