Weird Stuff:

So I heard about this thing called a virtual girlfriend (vgirl for short) that was designed with lonely people in mind...
To the best of my knowledge computer AI isn't sophisticated enough yet in any known instance to hold full blown conversations where a program has its own insights (even vgirls) but you can get it to behave in such a way that it will pretend to be listening...

They cost money, and I think some are fairly sophisticated. I'd imagine you can tinker with their voice and appearance.
If you'd asked me awhile ago what I thought about the idea I'd say I thought it would only appeal to desperate losers.
However, I've had such poor luck dating that if I could afford one, I might () consider it someday. Yes, I did see the movie Her.
And yes, I think Krieger's holographic comedy relief anime/hentai "waifu" in Archer was probably a reference to vgirls.

I also heard some guy in Japan tried to marry his vgirl... and am not sure how that would work. Would the priest say something to the effect of: With this memory card, I thee wed?


My dad is on my case that he thinks it is bad I have friends and go out sometimes on dates. 
I explained to him that it isn't that often I do things with my friends and that I only ever go out every once in a blue moon (which, stung... and immediately afterwards I realized I'd walked into a conversational trap. Self-sabotage is go! ).  He tries to pathologize everything I do.

I'm a nerdy guy, I don't need those kind of constant blows against my self esteem from him but his dumb ego is so big that he perceives anybody else doing or getting to have anything (instead of it all always only going to him) as a threat.

[I'm] Transferring to a dorm this fall. I hope they have high speed internet.  May have to web proxy in order to stream.  Campuses tend to be more restrictive of the kinds of sites you are allowed to look at.

The downside to a computerized companion in my opinion would be that since it is already pre-programed to like you, I feel like that's sort of a cheat and takes the challenge out of it.  Doesn't exactly count as a "true relationship" if you build it from a box and don't have to develop it from the ground up in stages...
Most of the time, girls don't even want to give me a chance though* so if one of these days in the not-too-distant future, you see some old pervert talking to his watch or taking a blinking sexbot that has simulated emotions to the movie theater, out dancing, etc. remember the humble early 21st Century nerd.
Also, to me the notion of having a bot that is designed to like you still smacks of egotism to a certain extent.


_{*Many is the time my attempts at dating, both online and the traditional offline type, have resulted in an urge to want to crawl into a hole and die.
I also feel like that trite aphorism about how There is somebody for everyone has an unsaid part in parenthesis which goes (except you).
Revisiting the vgirl concept, a few of the advantages to having one would be dad can't scare her away and "she" probably isn't going to care if I'm broke or not, have my own car or an apartment or not, etc.}