In Defense of the Robot Girl-Friend

Reject Flesh, Embrace Transistor

¹
Ever since I was a small child on some level I've always wanted the two things:

1. An intelligent robot or alien intelligence as a friend

2. A cute, friendly and interesting girl-friend

Even at a young age I could tell the complement to my own boyish simplicity and exuberance was the complex mystery of the female "other". Perhaps I was deprived of ever having a sister so my imagination made the feminine half promise more than it was able to deliver. Interactions with real women later in life leaving me always unsatisfied in some way as though there was still some secret that was being kept from me reserved only for the more deserving.

One of my core memories involves playing Stratego in 2nd grade after-school. There was a nice girl in my class who one day decided to play with me as a team against my opponent. For whatever reason I had never experienced a more comfortable feeling than having a girl on "my side" as we took on the enemy together. A lot to unpack here probably but, moving along.

A young child I watched Transformers religiously and held the giant robots in awe they being unarguably superior to squishy, squeaky and mostly irrational humans. Not only Transformers inspired this but obviously Star Wars, Short Circuit, Weird Science, D.A.R.Y.L. (not many will remember that one), "Small Wonder”, etc. In my spare time putting effort into building “computers” from parts of disassembled calculators and electronic toys including remote control robots and noisy toy ray-guns, under a vague assumption that whatever consciousness I freed from the ether to manifest on this hardware would serve and benefit me like some postmodern Djinn. Granted, some of this got me in trouble (disassembling Great Grandma’s Christmas present!) but really it should've been a sign to my parents to steer me specifically toward STEM, you'd think. In addition, myself and the neighbor kid from the up-branded version of our complex were notorious for raiding the maintenance closets at our apartment complex for different sorts of wire for these projects.

Around the same time I discovered Omni magazine. Tbh to this day I'm still not quite sure how or why it made its way into our house outside of the fact that maybe my parents realized I had what my parents likely viewed as a borderline obsessive levels of interest in technology, sci-fi and outer space. A lot of this stuff was way over my head but that made it all the more fascinating b/c in my ignorance I could project whatever I wanted onto it. Artwork by HR Giger, articles about conscious computers, the paranormal, fascinatingly morbid and often sexually tinged short stories (George RR Martin's The Pear-Shaped Man as one example. Indeed a morbid synchronicity to realize the man who would go on to create Game of Thrones was responsible for the mark this² left on my 9 year old psyche).

Much like forcing oneself to acquire an adult taste for bitter drinks I simply assumed these types of things were a New Yorkish sort of Avante Garde. I only had my wide eyed upstate naivete to lose, and every kind of coastal sophistication to gain.

This was a golden age as this aesthetic was emerging in 84 and would inevitably peak around 1986-1988 before becoming running out of creative steam, its soul spent until the zombie publication mercifully died in 1995.

If anything Omni's repetition of the bald headed 80's-esque "cyber woman" put me off to any idea of fembots (echoing throughout the decade’s cultural artifacts such as Star Trek the Motion Picture (1984), THX 1138, Grace Jones, and later Sigourney Weaver and Sinead O’ Connor, probably missing a critical one or two but I’m not writing about bald women in this blog so we can overlook that for now). The sci-fi “fembot” symbolized a soulless over-compartmentalization of sexuality, a design-by-committee who’s final deliverable designed to please everyman, still fails to actually arouse anyone at all. The impression we’re left with are sexual “robots” that don’t move, cast molded into a rigid, jointless mannequin which no one had the foresight to even bring a wig.

You made it this far, have a meme. Also, read this when you have a chance³

Enter Japan 🇯🇵, based Japan. Two things are integral to Japanese culture and without those added perspectives from another worldview there could be no robo-waifu.

1. Japan has a fondness for cuteness. Engaging in the culture of cuteness is the Japanese people's way of escaping the harsh realities of life, perhaps (certainly) this is it’s appeal to the Weeb, another life raft on the uncertain Kali Yuga seas. Indeed the sexuality conveyed through Japanese culture seems to me to be a more cute, loving and playful variety than the slavishly lustful, almost mean and aggressive female archetype presented to western men (this was probably due to the fact that “nice girls” didn’t show themselves naked so anything sexual easily fit into a biker or bad girl aesthetic)

2. A worldview based on Shinto, in contrast to the America’s prevalent Protestant Christianity, allowed them to breathe a life into their creations that westerners not dared since in their view the creation of “being” was the domain of God alone.

It is this distinction that sets up the differences in approach between japanese and western robotics

Robots can be your friends
Robots can be kawaii girls
Therefore a robot can be your Girl-Friend (why not?)

If you made it this far, congratulations. You may now resume your regularly scheduled doomscrolling

1. Boris Dyatlov, Some Droids: https://www.deviantart.com/boris-dyatlov

2. http://www.williamflew.com/omni109a.html

3. Mohammed Al-Sada, From Anime To Reality: Embodying An Anime Character: Waseda University