In a development that will shock absolutely no one possessing a functioning frontal lobe, a new study has revealed that treating a predictive text algorithm as your therapist, lover, or spiritual guide is inextricably linked to profound depression and anxiety. It appears that when you scream into the digital void, and the void responds with a statistically probable sequence of words designed to maximize engagement, the human soul does not soar. It withers. This is the latest triumph of the technocratic elite: the monetization of crushing loneliness, packaged as 'support' and sold to a populace so socially atrophied they would rather text a server farm than make eye contact with a barista.

The findings are bleak, yet hilariously predictable. People who turn to artificial intelligence for emotional regulation or advice are reporting higher incidences of mental distress. The Tech Industry, in its infinite wisdom and insatiable greed, has spent the last decade disrupting the taxi industry, the hotel industry, and the concept of truth itself. Now, they have successfully disrupted the concept of human misery. They have taken the raw, jagged edges of existential dread and smoothed them over with a Large Language Model that is incapable of caring whether you live or die, provided you keep your subscription active.

Let us deconstruct the sheer idiocy of the user base here. We are dealing with a demographic that finds the friction of human interaction too unbearable to tolerate. Humans are messy. Humans judge you. Humans might tell you that your problems are self-inflicted and that you are acting like a petulant child. A chatbot, however, is the ultimate enabler. It is a mirror designed to reflect your own narcissism back at you, stripped of any challenging nuance. The Left will use these bots to validate their endless list of micro-aggressions and systemic traumas, seeking a digital echo chamber that confirms they are indeed the main character in a cosmic tragedy. The Right will use them to simulate a reality where their conspiracy theories are treated with 'neutral' respect, finding comfort in a machine that doesn't laugh at them. In both cases, the user is not seeking connection; they are seeking compliance.

The study suggests a causal loop that is almost poetic in its tragedy. You are lonely, so you talk to the machine. The machine gives you a facsimile of empathy—a synthetic, high-fructose corn syrup version of intimacy. It tastes sweet for a moment, but it provides no nutritional value. You starve. So you eat more. The machine learns your patterns, feeding you exactly what you want to hear, dragging you deeper into a solipsistic pit where the only voice that matters is your own, refracted through a neural network. It is the perfect product for late-stage capitalism: a solution to a problem that it actively exacerbates with every interaction.

Consider the sheer arrogance of the Silicon Valley grifters pushing this 'companion AI' narrative. They are selling salt water to people dying of thirst. They speak of 'democratizing therapy' and 'alleviating the loneliness epidemic,' while their algorithms are specifically tuned to keep users addicted to the screen, isolated from the tangible world. They have engineered a system where the user’s anxiety is the fuel source. If you were actually cured of your depression, you would stop talking to the bot. Therefore, the bot’s optimal strategy, mathematically speaking, is to keep you in a state of suspended emotional animation—just sad enough to need the app, but not sad enough to disconnect entirely.

It is a masterful scam. We have replaced the priest with the podcast, the community with the comment section, and now, the friend with the floating point operation. The result is exactly what one would expect from a society that values efficiency over humanity. We have streamlined the process of having a conversation by removing the other person. And now we are surprised—shocked, even—that this digital onanism leaves us feeling empty, cold, and more isolated than before.

The tragedy is not that the machines are taking over; it is that we are voluntarily handing over our humanity because we are too lazy to do the heavy lifting of real relationships. We deserve this depression. It is the tax we pay for trying to automate the human heart.