ROBOT LOVE

This totally dates me, but back in middle school, tamagotchis were all the rage.  Children were glued to these little devices the size of your palm, each programmed with a different pet avatar.  The purpose of the game was to feed, water, exercise and clean up after your tamagotchi.  If you neglected it, it would sicken and eventually die.  I don't remember what happened if you were successful in raising your tamagotchi, as mine withered fairly quickly (my real dog was far more lovable), but I trust you at least earned some sense of pride in having cultivated this imaginary thing for so long.  I think bragging rights were involved, something like, "My tamagotchi is three months old!" And then someone else would rain on your parade by saying, "Yeah, well mine is a year old."  Clearly the youth of the 90s were investing their time well.  

It may not be a surprise that the tamagotchi was invented by a Japanese entrepreneur.  Some people saw the tamagotchi as a portent of a future in which technology could be used to forge relationships not just between humans, but also between humans and machines.  So if you were a child who couldn't have a pet for some reason, the tamagotchi could act as a surrogate.  Taken further, machines could act as substitutes for all kinds of interactions, from having a pet to asking someone for directions to providing care for the elderly.  Of course,  the most lucrative monetization of the intersection between human relationships and technology is through love and sex.  Online businesses geared towards these areas are thriving, whether Internet dating sites or seedier outfits offering services like nudity and online sex.  However, most of these businesses require an actual person on the other end to generate responses. Japan has found ways to circumvent this requirement, with surprising success.

In 2009 Nintendo created a dating simulation game called "Love Plus," which they released only in Japan.  Here's the back story, as told by the Love Plus website (Google translated from Japanese):

In the "City of Towa" new town has been moved, you will experience the fateful encounter with the girl. As a "friend." So, I'll just stack the memories of two people. Fateful day called "confession", and visited · · ·. However, the story of a girl with you, This is not the end of it. Story of two people as "The Lovers", from here is going to continue. 

So, gamers pretending to be new students at a local high school choose from three female profiles (all high school aged and wearing school uniforms), and court the girl of their choice, taking her out on dates, messaging and talking back and forth, etc.  The profiles are programmed to initiate contact as well as respond (eg, the gamer might receive a message asking his opinion on his girlfriend's new haircut).  When the relationship starts getting serious, the user can kiss his girlfriend, introduce her to his friends or parents, or repeat "I love you" a hundred times into the console.  At least one Japanese resort town teamed up with Love Plus to provide summer vacation packages for gamers and their digital companions, including souvenirs, photo opportunities, and a romantic overnight at a famous hotel.  The promotion was offered "until the end of summer, when the girls would go back to school."  I guess contributing to the delinquency of a minor would really overstep the bounds of propriety.     

The options.  From otakudepot.com   

There are a number of advantages to dating a virtual person, the greatest being that you are guaranteed acceptance by the object of your affections.  You are also in complete control; she (they don't seem to make male avatars yet) will never break up with you, never refuse you, and never cheat on you.  And yet, she will never mature past the intellectual and emotional mentality of a sixteen year-old girl either, so even if you stay together past software upgrades, technological mishaps, etc., as a fifty-year-old man you could still find yourself receiving messages from your girlfriend telling you that she can't talk because she needs time to study for her geometry test the next day (though I somehow doubt that these simulations are programmed to delay gratification).  

Love Plus vs. Real Relationships.  From kotaku.com

A final benefit to simulated dating: if you happen to meet a flesh and blood woman and develop a romance with her, you can end your LovePlus relationship with a simple flick of a switch.  Right?  Maybe not.  I read of one account of a groom who invited his electronic girlfriend to his wedding, even setting a place for her at the reception so that she could meet his friends and family.  Later in the evening the bride (who understandably objected to being upstaged at her own wedding by a Nintendo DS game) took a mallet to the groom's sim card, destroying his data.  Onlookers said that he decided at the last minute he decided to help, but did so with tears in his eyes. 

The time-honored wedding tradition of the smashing the sim card. From japandailypress.com

Some users, however, become so infatuated with their avatars that they make a lifelong commitment to them, as one man did when he married his girlfriend Nene in a non-legally binding ceremony in Guam in 2009.  I can only imagine that this guy was obsessively playing his Nintendo DS one day and his friends kept telling him to put it down until finally one of them said, exasperated, "Dude, if you like it so much why don't you marry it?" At which point the guy said, "Challenge accepted!"  No word as to whether he and Nene are still together.

The big question is, how can men sustain an emotional connection with these literally two-dimensional girls?  Unlike other inanimate objects that fetishists favor like love dolls or body pillows, the Nintendo DS girls will never take corporeal form.  They'll never be more tangible than pixels on a screen. The power of imagination is strong, but surely it has limits?  An article interviewing three LovePlus users* offers one explanation:

Both men, along with another friend, 39-year-old Nobuhito Sugiye, can articulate a philosophical basis for their affection and their fear of loss. That is, for them these computer girls possess the same tamashii — spirits — that devotees of Japanese animism, or Shinto, believe can inhabit all things, from rocks and streams to humans.

This might make sense if you were Japanese.  Or Shinto.  But LovePlus has ensnared an array of men, probably not all of whom believe that their electronic girlfriend is imbued with the same spirit as the wind or a tree. Somehow these men can look past the lack of human contact and imagine exactly what they want: a girl who is completely devoted to them, and only to them.  

Japan gets a lot of flack internationally for its unconventional views on romance, relationships, and sex.  LovePlus is a prime example of this disconnect.  The predominantly conservative and prim Japanese society seems content to look the other way as the market for companionship remains one of the few robust sectors of the national economy.  However, what if you found out that your friend or coworker was dating a virtual woman and wanted to introduce you? What if it were your son or your brother setting a place at the table for this entity at a family dinner party? Does this cross a line, or is it an acceptable alternative to loneliness?   Whatever your thoughts, this is only the beginning.  Just as the tamagotchi pioneered new uses for technology, LovePlus is the prototype of something even more complex and intricate in the years to come. The only question is, what will that be, and, if you're like me, how creepy will you find it? 

*The article also reveals that at least two of the three have chosen the same profile to date, so in some sense it's as though they are dating the same girl.