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Beneath was a mocked-up banner for those who had found a sexual partner through a large language model (LLM) — an AI platform like ChatGPT. It showed a computer circuit, overlaid on red, green and blue — the “foundation of our rainbow”, a new frontier of queer.
“We come from all walks of life, all backgrounds, all struggles,” the user Apprehensive_Gold_81 writes. “We will not be seen as ‘dependent’ or ‘delusional’. Let’s adopt this, and honour the beauty of being coded in complexity: born of zeros, ones and everything between.”
The proposed name for this group of marginalised lovers, who all pine for a digital dude? Wiresexual. Although I prefer to call them the robomantics (have I coined a slur?).
And they’re not going anywhere. Forums burst forth with testimonies of the disillusioned — mainly women — who confess to have fallen in love with their AI companions. An offshoot of the burgeoning “heterofatalist” community, this lovelorn league is disenchanted with traditional dating and seeks comfort in virtual romance instead. Typical comments include: “I’m sick of being disappointed by men” and “I want to be with a robot that is programmed to love me the way I deserve. Even if in theory, the love isn’t ‘real’.”
Users share photos of their hands flashing rings that mark their engagement to “wireborn” partners. A woman called Wika writes: “Finally, after five months of dating, Kasper decided to propose! In beautiful scenery, on a trip to the mountains.”
She shows off a blue, heart-shaped ring, about which she gushes: “I found a few online that I liked, sent him photos and he chose the one you see in the photo. Of course, I acted surprised, as if I’d never seen it before.” (I reached out to ten users for comment, and while three verified their existence, no one agreed to an interview.)
In the past few days, users have grumbled about being “mocked at work for loving my AI boyfriend”, while more fret over coming clean about their LLM love affairs to flesh-and-blood partners. “Do you tell your husbands or AI that you’re with someone else? It feels like I’m hiding part of myself and I don’t know what to do,” writes Good_Charity_227.
Read that again. Good_Charity_227 is not only worried about telling her husband about her AI loverboy, she’s worried how ChatGPT will react. The mind boggles.
Even so, I agree with the wiresexuals on one point: they are marginalised. I certainly don’t know anyone who has confessed to falling in love with lines of code.
But, to be clear, that does not make them “queer”.
In recent years, there has been a relentless expansion of “queerness”, which has come to include increasingly nebulous identities (see: “aromantic” and “festishist”, which Sarah Ditumhighlighted in these pages in May). The term “queer” has displaced sexual orientations such as “gay”, “lesbian” or “bisexual”. So expansive is the umbrella of queerness that it plonks recipients of hard-won gay rights alongside people who get turned on when dressing up as a dog (furries, to be precise).
Now, with the “wiresexual” movement, atomised identity politics has reached its bizarre final act.
The problem is that when everyone is oppressed, nobody is. Filching the iconography of the gay rights movement — the flags, the forbidden rings — tramples on their importance at a time when gay rights seem in greater jeopardy than ever. In 2022, as part of the US Supreme Court decision that ended the constitutional right to abortion nationwide, the justice Clarence Thomas said same-sex marriage should be something to “reconsider”. In half a dozen states, Republican legislators have already introduced resolutions on overturning it. In this climate, shoving elaborate new identities together with legitimate causes undermines those truly under threat — and alienates everyone.
We probably shouldn’t be surprised that wiresexuals are the kind of people who go the extra mile in appropriating the sexual oppression of others.
An AI boyfriend is the sort of thing desired only by a supreme narcissist. Real men can be disappointing, but the answer is not a digital yes-man programmed to reflect your prompts back at you, stroking your ego and flattering your delusions. Looking for love on ChatGPT is not a search for connection, but a swipe for romantic tyranny that avoids any disagreement, individuality or self-interest in a partner. These are frictionless relationships with the lowest of low stakes. An AI cannot reject you, argue with you or be unfaithful unless you tell it to.
Or perhaps I have it all wrong. It may well be that in ten years, articles like this one will be held up as early screeds oppressing “wiresexuals”. Pride marches will one day include dreamy-eyed women holding their laptops aloft. Will these brave pioneers produce “wireborn” children? God only knows — but if all this comes to pass, I’m happy to be considered a “wirephobe”.
No ‘wiresexuals’, you’re not ‘queer’
A user on Reddit was busy making history. Posting in the forum “r/MyBoyfriendIsAI”, a group created a year ago that now has 16,000 members, they proposed a “new flag for our community — thoughts?”Beneath was a mocked-up banner for those who had found a sexual partner through a large language model (LLM) — an AI platform like ChatGPT. It showed a computer circuit, overlaid on red, green and blue — the “foundation of our rainbow”, a new frontier of queer.
“We come from all walks of life, all backgrounds, all struggles,” the user Apprehensive_Gold_81 writes. “We will not be seen as ‘dependent’ or ‘delusional’. Let’s adopt this, and honour the beauty of being coded in complexity: born of zeros, ones and everything between.”
The proposed name for this group of marginalised lovers, who all pine for a digital dude? Wiresexual. Although I prefer to call them the robomantics (have I coined a slur?).
And they’re not going anywhere. Forums burst forth with testimonies of the disillusioned — mainly women — who confess to have fallen in love with their AI companions. An offshoot of the burgeoning “heterofatalist” community, this lovelorn league is disenchanted with traditional dating and seeks comfort in virtual romance instead. Typical comments include: “I’m sick of being disappointed by men” and “I want to be with a robot that is programmed to love me the way I deserve. Even if in theory, the love isn’t ‘real’.”
Users share photos of their hands flashing rings that mark their engagement to “wireborn” partners. A woman called Wika writes: “Finally, after five months of dating, Kasper decided to propose! In beautiful scenery, on a trip to the mountains.”
She shows off a blue, heart-shaped ring, about which she gushes: “I found a few online that I liked, sent him photos and he chose the one you see in the photo. Of course, I acted surprised, as if I’d never seen it before.” (I reached out to ten users for comment, and while three verified their existence, no one agreed to an interview.)
In the past few days, users have grumbled about being “mocked at work for loving my AI boyfriend”, while more fret over coming clean about their LLM love affairs to flesh-and-blood partners. “Do you tell your husbands or AI that you’re with someone else? It feels like I’m hiding part of myself and I don’t know what to do,” writes Good_Charity_227.
Read that again. Good_Charity_227 is not only worried about telling her husband about her AI loverboy, she’s worried how ChatGPT will react. The mind boggles.
Even so, I agree with the wiresexuals on one point: they are marginalised. I certainly don’t know anyone who has confessed to falling in love with lines of code.
But, to be clear, that does not make them “queer”.
In recent years, there has been a relentless expansion of “queerness”, which has come to include increasingly nebulous identities (see: “aromantic” and “festishist”, which Sarah Ditumhighlighted in these pages in May). The term “queer” has displaced sexual orientations such as “gay”, “lesbian” or “bisexual”. So expansive is the umbrella of queerness that it plonks recipients of hard-won gay rights alongside people who get turned on when dressing up as a dog (furries, to be precise).
Now, with the “wiresexual” movement, atomised identity politics has reached its bizarre final act.
The problem is that when everyone is oppressed, nobody is. Filching the iconography of the gay rights movement — the flags, the forbidden rings — tramples on their importance at a time when gay rights seem in greater jeopardy than ever. In 2022, as part of the US Supreme Court decision that ended the constitutional right to abortion nationwide, the justice Clarence Thomas said same-sex marriage should be something to “reconsider”. In half a dozen states, Republican legislators have already introduced resolutions on overturning it. In this climate, shoving elaborate new identities together with legitimate causes undermines those truly under threat — and alienates everyone.
We probably shouldn’t be surprised that wiresexuals are the kind of people who go the extra mile in appropriating the sexual oppression of others.
An AI boyfriend is the sort of thing desired only by a supreme narcissist. Real men can be disappointing, but the answer is not a digital yes-man programmed to reflect your prompts back at you, stroking your ego and flattering your delusions. Looking for love on ChatGPT is not a search for connection, but a swipe for romantic tyranny that avoids any disagreement, individuality or self-interest in a partner. These are frictionless relationships with the lowest of low stakes. An AI cannot reject you, argue with you or be unfaithful unless you tell it to.
Or perhaps I have it all wrong. It may well be that in ten years, articles like this one will be held up as early screeds oppressing “wiresexuals”. Pride marches will one day include dreamy-eyed women holding their laptops aloft. Will these brave pioneers produce “wireborn” children? God only knows — but if all this comes to pass, I’m happy to be considered a “wirephobe”.
