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.

    • Pup Biru@aussie.zone
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      9 hours ago

      i’d like to be very clear here… a lot of discussion about men’s spaces is thinly veiled sexism by incels… that doesn’t mean there’s not a problem, it just means that incels are attracted to “it’s not my fault”

      that said, there’s a comment up thread that captures it pretty well

      … mental health professionals all my ‘issues’ were blow way out of proportion … always 100% told me everything that happens to me is entirely my fault. they also told me it was normal/healthy to vent my feelings by doing productive things (like writing, exercising, relaxing), rather than viewing that as ‘not addressing the problem’.

      the issue with so much of this crap is that not only does nobody want to talk to men, it’s that they don’t want to listen and/or the tell us we are ‘talking wrong’. even when we do talk to people, there is only a tiny window of acceptable things we an talk about and way we can talk about them or how selfish it is of him to vent/indulge his legitimate emotions.

      … a man bursts into tears over his father dying of cancer and all the sudden everyone wants to tell him his reaction is too intense … someone in his life try to get him to ‘open up’ and then we he does he’s met with nothing but hostility, disappointment, and eventually rejection

      it’s a meme (not in a “haha” joke way: in the actual meaning of the world; a thing that is repeated often) these days that there are horrible men who tell women (re sexism) “you must have misunderstood”… and the point of that is that men don’t have the life experience as a minority to be able to understand sexism, transphobia, etc (people treat them differently, and even if they see it they often can’t identify it because they’re not accustomed to listening for it 24/7)

      that same situation exists for men too… men are certainly not a minority, but nobody is allowed to say that someone’s experience is invalid… there’s a lot of people dismissing these experiences in this thread, and if it were reversed: a woman complaining about a man making a sexist comment, a gay man (of which i’m one) complaining about homophobia, there wouldn’t be any pushback at all because we’ve come to agree that this shit happens

      we know that toxic masculinity exists, we know that societal expectations of men are sky high (the suicide rate for men in particular is HUGE)… we’re clearly doing something wrong, as a society, dealing with male mental health… when people come out and tell us their experiences, it absolutely is sexist to write off those experiences as invalid: “i don’t think that kind of thing happens because i haven’t seen it”, is absolutely (anything)-ist language

      is it on the same level as problem as sexism or racism? probably not… but denying the problem helps nobody… denying the problem, in this case, makes the problem so much worse and pushes people to lash out and become sexist, racist, homophobic, etc (which is also not to remove blame from them - all those things are wrong and a personal choice and should have personal repercussions)

      • Gladaed@feddit.org
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        8 hours ago

        I expected you to mean people exhibiting toxicity and not reporting about it. I was surprised because the comments seemed civil at large. Thank you.

        • Pup Biru@aussie.zone
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          8 hours ago

          yeah id say it’s not overt, but that’s kinda the problem… it’s almost difficult to identify, so when it comes to mental health for men a lot of the time society, therapists, etc almost gaslights us into thinking our problems aren’t problems

          if it were overt it’d be easy to identify… the fact what it’s not, the fact that men are the majority, and are the problem in a lot of cases pushes people to certain conclusions (including ourselves about our own problems)

          mental health is complex af

          • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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            7 hours ago

            incels are people. their problems are legitimate problems.

            why society can’t acknowledge this is beyond me. I guess because it’s socially unpalatable.

            incels or any extremist thing (terfs, religions extremists, etc) … is a product of the same issues. but people just want those people to ‘go away’ and not address the issues that would actaully make them go away… because that is hard.

            • Pup Biru@aussie.zone
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              7 hours ago

              their problems are legitimate problems sure, but in a lot of cases problems with a lot of those groups can be summed up with a couple of things:

              • it’s different to my world view and i don’t like it
              • i think i deserve something and am not getting it

              those are different kinds of problems to acknowledging your own feelings, or people are using me and trampling over me… both are deserving of help, but incels, terfs, extremists in general are harming others with their problems

              you’re free to swing your arms until they come into contact with my body

              these classes of people are harmful to others - i don’t think anyone thinks they aren’t deserving of help, but they are dangerous in a completely different way

              • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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                7 hours ago

                so are we going to help them, or are we going to wash our hands of them and let the problem fester and grow?

                incels need positive reinforcement to loop them out of their cognitive loop. not shame and harassment that further entrenches it.

                the easiest way to get someone who is hateful about some group or thing… is to introduce them to it in a positive manner.

                • medgremlin@midwest.social
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                  4 hours ago

                  The problem with that is you are then putting the burden on a member of that hated group to present themselves as a paragon and suffer all the vitriol and abuse that gets hurled at them until the hateful person hopefully snaps out of it.

                  Having been the sole woman in many male-dominated spaces, I gotta tell ya, it is a special kind of hell to try to be that positive example.