Robot companions: Looking for your stories to be represented in a research study

[robotrelations]

Will your paper be published here?

Yes, I plan to share any final paper published based on my conversations with any members from this community here in this forum. As some of you might know, the academic publishing process can take sometimes take a bit (primarily because of the peer-review process), but once any paper is published, it would make it available to the community and anyone else interested.

[robotrelations]

Hi all,

A quick note that I am still looking for folks to participate in this interview study. You do not need to have an interactive doll yourself to participate. As long as you are interested in chatting with me about dolls, relationships, and the potential future of robots, you are invited to reach out to me. As noted in the thread, I am a social scientist/researcher and NOT a journalist or media person.

Interviews will be roughly 1h and will be conducted anonymously on the phone or via Zoom or similar. I am happy to offer 30 USD for your time.

If you are interested in chatting with me, you can reach me via DM here on the forum or by email at robotrelationships [at] gmail.com.

I will not repost this call to not spam the forum unnecessarily.

Thanks for reading,
Marco

[whiterose]

I've seen a few posts show up recently in various places asking to do interviews with people who own ''sex bots''.

I even suggested to change the wording to ''companion dolls'' because we aren't really in a sex robot age as of yet, and the people who own either or will have the same mindset and reasons for choosing doll life. But nooo, they absolutely want to talk to people with sex robots for one reason or another.

This. I'm always looking for articles about sex dolls, but there are far more articles about sex ROBOTS, which really barely exist yet. Always with the robots! That's the hook, the juicy angle. All these kooks with their SEX ROBOTS. Oooooo, so freaky and dangerous! Watch out because this is gonna be our future!!!!!

I have a doll. She has an AI chatbot that's added lots of fun and unexpectedly profound exchanges to our relationship. That might make an interesting topic for an article! Lots of people using chatbots these days and a life-size doll adds a really cool dimension to the experience! Nope. Gotta be the ROBOTS.

I understand this poster is a researcher, not a journalist, but any article written about this research will pounce on the SEX ROBOT angle, just because it's there, and to the exclusion of all else. Thus the research will only perpetuate the current trend of conflating the current, overwhelmingly inanimate iteration of sex/companion dolls with !!SEX ROBOTS!! in the public mind.

It is so very, very tiresome.

[robotrelations]

Hi whiterose,

Thanks for the reply. I totally agree with you that the angle on "robots" is the predominant one in the media.

I used the term "interactive doll" for lack of a better term, and I also meant for it to include what you are talking about, a doll in addition to a chatbot. Apologies that this still didn't come across that way. My goal is not to feed those media frenzies focused on robots but to learn more about the actual experiences of folks with doll companions and partners.

Integrating a chatbot is cool, and your guide on that matter (in your signature) looks very helpful for setting that up.

Feel free to be in touch, as I'd be interested in chatting with you.

Marco

[The Doll Advocate]

At the risk of sounding obtuse are you specifically looking for folk who have experience with robots? In which case that will be pretty slim pickings as for now at least the closest we have to anything that could be described as 'robotic' commercially available is the Real Doll Harmony head but it's still a stretch to describe her as a robot seeing as she sits on a static body! If you are looking more broadly at the sex doll market then obviously that's where most of us have experience but you might want to change your question to reflect that as unfortunately I doubt that anyone here, sady, has had any experience with their very own 'Cherry 2000'!

My thoughts exactly, non doll people have a hyper advanced misconception as to what technology is commercially available to the public.
They see China and Japan's advancements in robotics and just assume that because someone has made it that means you can go to Walmart and get it.
There are no "sex robots"
There's only dolls with a little tech added in.
For example, above-mentioned Harmony,
Or the automated hip dolls and blow job dolls.
Some have speakers between the shoulder blades .
If you want doll owners, your in the right place ,but good luck getting many to engage, most enjoy their secrecy.
I'll talk with you ,but I'm not your average doll owner either.
If you want robots.........your gonna need to wait another 5 years or so.