Skip to main content

Infinitely Here

Reading this story about the author's experience with Tinder's Game Game reminded me of the article on Therabot. They seem to somewhat related. Not everyone who is single is good at flirting but it is a skill they need to be successful - hence the AI coach to help them improve their game. It is awkward to enlist a friend to help hone flirting skills and for some seeing a live therapist may be both awkward and expensive. Also, there is no guarantee that the therapist will be useful even if they are skilled and have helped others - they might just not be a fit for you. Finding the right one could take time and cause a lot of frustration along the way. There is enough disincentive for a person to not even embark on this journey.

 An AI therapy bot has a lower bar - they should not cause any harm. Even if they are entirely useless they cost very little, are available on demand and you can always try another one. Somewhere along the way, the bots might communicate some nuggets of wisdom or at least get you thinking in the right direction. That is help. And such might be the case with the Tinder bot. Irrespective of whether you succeed or fail, there could be good pointers to be had on improving your communication skills which transfers to situations outside dating. Maybe the right way to think about these things is a way to talk things through with someone who has good intent but not much else. The fact that is resource is endlessly available is a big plus too. 

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more

Changing Pace

This blog has been a big part of my life for the last five years. Besides giving me the opportunity to connect with a number of interesting people and share my thoughts and ideas with them, it has been a form of daily meditation for me. No matter what the day threw my way, I made a very deliberate effort to find a little quiet time to write.The process of thinking about what to write and then the act of writing itself worked as an antidote to aggravations big and small. Five and half years ago, when I started Heartcrossings both my personal and professional lives left a lot to be desired for. The only real happiness I had was in being J's mother. While that was often enough to make me forget what I did not have, I sorely needed a third place to call my own and shape in the likeness of my dreams. This blog has been where there were no limits or constraints and that was absolutely exhilarating - it is the reason I have been able to nurture it for as long and as much as I have. A lot ...
25 comments
Read more