I’m getting the sense here that you’re placing most - if not all - of the blame on LLMs, but that’s probably not what you actually think. I’m sure you’d agree there are other factors at play too, right? One theory that comes to mind is that the people you’re describing probably spend a lot of time debating online and are constantly exposed to bad-faith arguments, personal attacks, people talking past each other, and dunking - basically everything we established is wrong with social media discourse. As a result, they’ve developed a really low tolerance for it, and the moment someone starts making noises sounding even remotely like those negative encounters, they automatically label them as “one of them” and switch into lawyer mode - defending their worldview against claims that aren’t even being made.
That said, since we’re talking about your friends and not just some random person online, I think an even more likely explanation is that you’ve simply grown apart. When people close to you start talking to you in the way you described, it often means they just don’t care the way they used to. Of course, it’s also possible that you’re coming across as kind of a prick and they’re reacting to that - but I’m not sensing any of that here, so I doubt that’s the case.
I don’t know what else you’ve been up to over the past few years, but I’m wondering if you’ve been on some kind of personal development journey - because I definitely have, and I’m not the same person I was when I met my friends either. A lot of the things they may have liked about me back then have since changed, and maybe they like me less now because of it. But guess what? I like me more. If the choice is to either keep moving forward and risk losing some friends, or regress just to keep them around, then I’ll take being alone. Chris Williamson calls this the “Lonely Chapter” - you’re different enough that you no longer fit in with your old group, but not yet far enough along to have found the new one.
I think it has a unique influence that will continue to develop, but I don’t think LLM’s are the only influence to blame. There’s a lot that can influence this behavior, like the theory you’ve described. Off the top of my head, limerence is something that could be an influence. I know that it is common for people to experience limerence for things like video game characters, and sometimes they project expectations onto others to behave like said characters. Other things could be childhood trauma, glass child syndrome, isolation from peers in adolescence, asocial tendencies, the list is long I’d imagine.
For me, self journey started young and never ends. It’s something that’s just apart of the human experience, relationships come and go, then sometimes they come back, etc. I will say though, with what I’m seeing with the people I’m talking about, this is a novel experience to me. It’s something that’s hard to navigate, and as a result I’m finding that it’s actually isolating to experience. Like I mentioned before, I can have one-one chats, and when I see them in person, we do activities and have fun! But if any level of discomfort is detected and the expectation is brought on. By the time I realize what’s happening they’re offering literal formatted templates on how to respond in conversations. Luckily it’s not everyone in our little herd that has this behavior, but the people that do this the most I know for sure utilize ChatGPT heavily for these types of dicussions only because they recommended me to start doing the same not too long ago. Nonetheless, I did like this discussion, it offers a lot of prospect in looking at how different factors influence our behavior with each other.
I’m getting the sense here that you’re placing most - if not all - of the blame on LLMs, but that’s probably not what you actually think. I’m sure you’d agree there are other factors at play too, right? One theory that comes to mind is that the people you’re describing probably spend a lot of time debating online and are constantly exposed to bad-faith arguments, personal attacks, people talking past each other, and dunking - basically everything we established is wrong with social media discourse. As a result, they’ve developed a really low tolerance for it, and the moment someone starts making noises sounding even remotely like those negative encounters, they automatically label them as “one of them” and switch into lawyer mode - defending their worldview against claims that aren’t even being made.
That said, since we’re talking about your friends and not just some random person online, I think an even more likely explanation is that you’ve simply grown apart. When people close to you start talking to you in the way you described, it often means they just don’t care the way they used to. Of course, it’s also possible that you’re coming across as kind of a prick and they’re reacting to that - but I’m not sensing any of that here, so I doubt that’s the case.
I don’t know what else you’ve been up to over the past few years, but I’m wondering if you’ve been on some kind of personal development journey - because I definitely have, and I’m not the same person I was when I met my friends either. A lot of the things they may have liked about me back then have since changed, and maybe they like me less now because of it. But guess what? I like me more. If the choice is to either keep moving forward and risk losing some friends, or regress just to keep them around, then I’ll take being alone. Chris Williamson calls this the “Lonely Chapter” - you’re different enough that you no longer fit in with your old group, but not yet far enough along to have found the new one.
I think it has a unique influence that will continue to develop, but I don’t think LLM’s are the only influence to blame. There’s a lot that can influence this behavior, like the theory you’ve described. Off the top of my head, limerence is something that could be an influence. I know that it is common for people to experience limerence for things like video game characters, and sometimes they project expectations onto others to behave like said characters. Other things could be childhood trauma, glass child syndrome, isolation from peers in adolescence, asocial tendencies, the list is long I’d imagine.
For me, self journey started young and never ends. It’s something that’s just apart of the human experience, relationships come and go, then sometimes they come back, etc. I will say though, with what I’m seeing with the people I’m talking about, this is a novel experience to me. It’s something that’s hard to navigate, and as a result I’m finding that it’s actually isolating to experience. Like I mentioned before, I can have one-one chats, and when I see them in person, we do activities and have fun! But if any level of discomfort is detected and the expectation is brought on. By the time I realize what’s happening they’re offering literal formatted templates on how to respond in conversations. Luckily it’s not everyone in our little herd that has this behavior, but the people that do this the most I know for sure utilize ChatGPT heavily for these types of dicussions only because they recommended me to start doing the same not too long ago. Nonetheless, I did like this discussion, it offers a lot of prospect in looking at how different factors influence our behavior with each other.