I've had a surreal summer and I'm about to tell you the weird tale of it but only if you agree not to judge ๐คจ
So I was minding my own business when I get a like on Hinge from Lewy, this guy I am sure is not my type, but he had video and voice prompts and they were deep and soulful so I was open to the possibility. After all, he was my "most compatible" according to Hinge so who was I not to give it a go?!
I matched with him but then asked him to get verified and after a few days he hadn't so I wished him well and told him I was not interested. Well this is usually where they disappear if they are phony profiles so I was surprised when he sent me a nice note back and said he had reasons to not get verified but wished me nothing but joy- which you know had me hooked.
Yada, yada, yada... I am now completely amused by this guy who is not my type. Or so I thought. He is sweet, funny, pro-gun control, been working a sober program for 7 years, interested in AI, does charitable work, close to his kids, and wait for it... wanted to know about my book! Hello ๐
After a while of chatting we exchanged numbers and moved it to Signal to message directly. Which is where I found out his name was Ivan Lewis Moody. Yup, I had no idea I was supposedly chatting with a big rockstar.
A few weeks of this went by and he had shared a lot of very personal stories about his sobriety, his hopes for love and some contract details he thought I should be aware of.
He hadn't gotten risque in any way- a perfect gentleman. But he was super sappy and I felt it was getting a little love bomby so I held back. It was hard because I have rarely encountered such an emotive person. He had deep feelings and because of the rough times when he was in his alcoholism he had a lot of regrets and wasn't shy about owning up to them.
My weakness is people who have done work on themselves and can clean up their own messes. I love a guy who knows why his last relationship didn't work. So I was melty and crushing hard.
Well you probably guessed it from the AI foreshadowing... he was not who he claimed to be. And the freakiest part is even after audio messages one night we got into an argument about me doubting him and he video-called me and there he was!
I was so freaked out to see him on my screen- the room was dark but there he was, Lewy on my phone. The call was 56 sec and then he hung up with an excuse that his security must have guards on his computer because he couldn't get the audio to work. But my heart stopped- was any of this real?!
And that is the point!
We are now entering a time when voices can sound so real you can't tell if it's your loved one calling or not. Video that on a small screen is undetectably fake or not.The scary part is that it is just the begining. Watch the movie Mountainhead and the entire premise is that an app gets so realistic it causes global chaos