Hacker News Reader

Comment by gumballindie | Hacker News Reader

I see your point, but instead of giving up, i would rather we work on a proper long term solution. I am not against people using tools whichever way they see fit, but i am against the emerging trend of turning this stop gap solution into a permanent arrangement by exploiting these people’s emotional state. It is everyone’s sacred right to live life as they see fit but taking advantage of others is not.

Therefore i think we should keep working on an actual solution.

View on HN

> I see your point, but instead of giving up, i would rather we work on a proper long term solution.

This is extremely hand-wavey. What long term solutions should we be working towards exactly?

Today, there are many people who statistically will never be able to have a romantic relationship. And regardless of whatever vague potential societal changes you're alluding to, there will always be a subset of the population that will be unable to find a partner.

> I am not against people using tools whichever way they see fit, but i am against the emerging trend of turning this stop gap solution into a permanent arrangement by exploiting these people’s emotional state.

As these services inevitably emerge, perhaps the focus should be on ensuring that companies do not exploit their users. The concept of regulating an industry is not novel. This should be possible unless you're asserting that a simulated relationship is fundamentally exploitative.

I dont think commercially exploiting people’s mental health issues is the path forward. We should instead focus on addressing root causes. It’s quite sad though that some are of the opinion that instead we should push them toward fake “relationships” and further exacerbate the underlying issues.

If the root cause is "too ugly, uninteresting and poor for anybody to want them romantically", what is the solution to that?

You keep expressing your displeasure, but have yet to propose an actual solution.

The solution is that folks have to put effort into themselves instead of being given a no-effort solution that helps trap them in a depressed state by making that depressed state slightly more comfortable. I say this as an ugly, uninteresting (not poor though to be fair) person with depression.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com