This Is The Age Of Sin!

someone on reddit explained 😭

According to traditional Armenian belief, Grox (the writer) is a spirit who records a person's deeds during their lifetime, determining the purity of their soul. This concept may be linked to Tir, the god of writing and literature in Armenian mythology. In some interpretations, it was believed that anyone whose name Tir wrote in his notebook would die. This is where the curse "may the writer take you" originates.

During the Christian era, Grox was mistakenly represented as a Christian spirit who no longer recorded human deeds but instead determined each person's fate, inscribing it on their foreheads. Over time, Grox came to be depicted as an evil spirit, sometimes identified with Satan. Thus, the curse "get lost in Grox’s embrace," which originally signified death, took on a more negative connotation. However, this was not originally characteristic of Grox in Armenian traditional beliefs.

"Երանի գրողին, որ տարավ քեզ:"

The straights aren't okay

It's likely that none of the young, straight people talking about this are having good sex.

Okay @syntheros-artemidos, this is the rundown in as neutral a way I can write it:

A man and a woman went on a date. The man says on the first date that sexual compatibility is a priority for him, and that he's interested in having sex early on. The woman says she doesn't know if that's what she wants.

Apparently things went well enough though for the two to plan a second date, which is apparently to happen at her home.

Since the woman said she wasn't sure if she wanted to be physically intimate, he feels like he's getting mixed signals being invited over, so he sends her a voice memo. In the voice memo, he reiterates that he wants to have sex, and that if she's not interested in that he doesn't see the point of continuing. He says it's okay if that's not what she wants, and if that's the case they shouldn't keep seeing each other.

Then, the woman shared the voice memo with a friend, and the friend uploaded that voice memo to the internet.

Because nothing is allowed to be private in the modern panopticon.

There are two prevailing interpretations of this situation.

One, which is the one I tend to agree with, is that he got mixed messages, made his wants clear, and sent them to her when there was physical distance so she wouldn't feel pressure to not turn him down. It was literally just a potential second date and they started as strangers, so he was pretty much saying "hey, we shouldn't waste each other's time if we don't want the same thing." She clearly didn't, and beyond the weird need to violate his privacy, it was the optimal outcome for these two people to just part ways.

Like was he the smoothest when he said what he said? No. But it was a pretty straight forward. I should note that this is the interpretation that most queer creators seem to be going with too.

Because, uh, the second interpretation is kind of wild.

You see, the other group of people think he was being entitled asking for sex. That somehow, him leaving the voice mail is an act of coercion (even though he has no power over her and there is no implied threat of violence -- since he was making sure he talked about it while he was literally nowhere near her). Also, people are wildly claiming that if he got her to say yes to sex in a text that somehow it would be considered consent in a legal case in case he raped her. Which is, y'know, not how consent works.

(I honestly think a lot of people were projecting their own trauma onto things)

There are also a bunch of people effectively shaming him for wanting to have a casual sexual relationship at all, and that somehow there was something wrong with him for not wanting the same thing that she wanted. People saying that folks looking for hookups shouldn't be using dating apps (as if someone looking for a romantic relationship might not be prioritizing sex too). Mostly just a bunch of puritan culture weirdness, and some people wanting to date for the performance of dating over the desire to find a compatible partner, etc.

And it's been going on for a couple of days.

don’t you think it’s a problem that this second interpretation is mostly coming from queer people who often don’t date men in the first place? ask any straight woman who has dated before and she will tell you how often this has happened to her. i’ve had multiple friends in this situation because this is a common trick men use to guarantee sex before the date even starts. what do you think will happen if they say yes the date? the man will not put any effort in cuz he knows he will get sex anyways and the woman will feel pressured to have sex even if she changes her mind halfway through.

So far so normal, right? But then:

Like what. And then:

None of the signup methods require a password. It only takes email and birthday. Minimizing time on the signin or signup screen makes it harder for people quitting to avoid relapse.

"Characters" on the website will send messages "on their own" (prompted by the site) to try to invite inactive users back after as soon as 1 day of inactivity. This is likely to force FOMO, or make users feel more like they owe the bots a response. Unhealthy attachment stuff.

Account deletion is an essential part of every service that should go smoothly, right? Right? Wrong. It takes 1-2 weeks for a Character AI account deletion to be finalized, and account deletion requests have a high chance to not go through if you're not using the app.

Rephrasing: People leaving Character.AI are pushed to download the app in order to delete their accounts, if they haven't already. This makes it harder for people to quit and stay gone. Failing to quit an addiction makes it harder to quit successfully in the future, so this feels like a feature, not a bug. On top of that, the delete account menu reads like this: