Had not heard of this game before, but what a wild illustration of the idea that games might socialize teens to different kinds of AI relationships...
First, lol at these three options: ➊ romance ➋ friendship ➌ hatred
Second, I looked up the creators of the game and as best I can tell the game is a critical provocation on the role AI should play in our lives. If this is the case, I'm not sure (at least where this person is in the game), if that's the main takeaway.
Btw this reminds me of Lumiere from Beauty and the Beast...
“[Date Everything] is kind of like a dating simulator, sort of… So the plot of the story is [that] your job is getting taken over by AI. You have absolutely nothing to do and these magical pair of glasses, show up on your doorstep and they allow you to actually talk to the objects in your house. And you can either romance them, become friends, or they end up hating you. And that's, that's the thing… They all have different personalities…There was this one character though. I don't want to spoil it in case you ever play, but he was so annoying. I got ‘hate’ on the first try and I didn't even mean it, but he just."
Interviewer: No, you can spoil it. You can spoil it. I want to hear.
"Oh, he was the lights. So, like the lamps like the light fixtures in the house or whatever. And his whole thing was ‘I'm a star, I'm radiant, I'm great.’ And I was like, I'm not having that, tone it down a little bit.”
Citation: Nearfield. (2026, April). Spring 2026 Gen AI and social media listening loop [Collection of participant quotes]. Nearfield Listening Library. www.thenearfield.org/quotes/dating-simulator
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A record of youth quotes from our listening sessions, updated continuously. Preserved with care.