yes I said addicts

I know a lot of people say on here 'if you use c.ai unfollow me' and 'AI doesn't belong in fandom' which I agree with, but I think the anger is directed to the wrong place

As a recovered c.ai addict/over user and as someone who has many friends who are deep in their own, c.ai is like a rabbithole.

It targets teenagers/young people, and most users I find are dealing with some kind of loneliness.

Now some of you are probably thinking this is ridiculous. How could someone get addicted to an AI chat bot? But I want you to put yourself in these kids shoes.

You know how hard being a teenager is, especially if you're dealing with a mental illness of some kind. Maybe you experienced it yourself, maybe not, but imagine dealing with all that, having a deep sense of loneliness and finding this place where you're promised an escape where you can talk to characters and people that bring you so much comfort, where you can get the social interaction you crave without having to worry about being judged or messing up.

Sounds enticing, right?

To them, it's harmless fun. it's like a interactive fanfic, where they get to play a role in the story and dictate the outcome, but for them it's taking a place in their lives where friends and human interaction should. I know multiple people who have told me that if they're not doing school or using c.ai, they're dead.

Again, these are kids. They don't see it as an addiction. They see it as an iconic, silly thing they do. It's not drugs or alcohol, so it can't be an addiction, right?

There's hundred's of thousands, if not millions, of kids with that mentality using c.ai, and c.ai isn't stupid. They're a business. There's ads on the app, they sell these kids chats to google to train gemini, and there's a goddamn subscription you can buy. $15aud a month. To get more c.ai features.

when you avoid kids because of your pedo OCD you are treating them as objects

and ironically that is materially worse for them than interacting with them even if you're someone who is usually engaged in NSFW spaces.

i recently came to this realization because i was talking to people about fandom spaces and proship and antiship and how regardless of the stance of those involved, children are more likely to be groomed in general because these spaces strongly discourage adults from interacting with kids at all. this ties a lot into adults' moral OCD over being considered pedophiles and to be so fucking honest

YOU TREATING KIDS LIKE A POTENTIAL OBJECT OF ATTRACTION DEHUMANIZES THEM AND HURTS THEM WORSE THAN ANY FRIENDLY INTERACTION YOU COULD HAVE WITH THEM

IF YOU BAR KIDS FROM SOCIAL SPACES AND PREVENT THEM FROM HAVING HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS WITH ADULTS THEY WILL BE PUSHED INTO SEEKING RELATIONSHIPS WITH ADULTS WHO WILL TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THEM

This happened to me and this happened to tons of fucking people where we were kids because adults either wouldn't talk to us out of fear of being called predators or would condescend to us because they saw us as dumb annoying children so we either turned to lying about our ages or talking to any adult who would listen to us which was often people who would take advantage of us!!!!!!!! When you refuse to treat kids like people and push them out of places where they could learn to develop healthy boundaries, connect with people and learn about themselves and their place in the world you HURT THEM worse than interacting with them would. Do NOT pretend like you're protecting kids with your avoidance, you're literally just like everyone else. You are doing what the system already does. Deal with your OCD the way you would if it made you scared of any other group of people INTERNALLY AND THROUGH EXPOSURE THERAPY

An unconfirmed character is not automatically allorose, monorose, straight, monogamous, with 0 prioritized nonrose (platonic/queerplatonic, alterous, sensual, etc) attraction.

An unconfirmed character is not automatically unaltered perisex, cisgender, binary, gender conforming, and pronoun conforming.

Unless the creator or character explicitly states that they are all of those things, then you literally cannot tell people "[insert character here] isn't queer!"