A Kid Killed Himself to Be with an AI Chatbot. Who’s Responsible?

If you’ve followed me and read my newsletters over the past few years, then you know I’ve been going through some stuff. I just turned 51, so I’m at that age where there’s more behind me than ahead. Being what you might call a pensive guy, I’ve done a lot of thinking. I’ll be the first to say you can’t solve an emotional problem through a cognitive process, but damned if I haven’t tried. I journal a lot because writing things out is how I focus my thoughts. That’s private, of course, but sometimes I hit upon something that I bold, highlight, circle, and draw arrows to because I think it’s that important.

I want to be authentic with you guys. All I’m trying to do is distill some life lessons into something that’s fun to read even if you’ve already figured out The Thing, whatever it is in your case. If not, maybe it gets you thinking, too.

This month is about narratives.

Can “narratives” and “stories” be used interchangeably? Sure. We also call them by different names like “assumption” and “personal belief.”

What is a story, really?

Without looking at a dictionary definition, and having quite a bit of experience with stories, my own definition would be something like, “A series of related events described by an author or narrator that a) change the lives of a ‘character’ in some significant way, b) convey an idea or lesson, and/or c) create dramatic tension via a conflict which is usually resolved during the course of such events.” I put “character” in quotes because it may be multiple characters, society, or even the reader themselves.

I’m sure the real definition is much different, but this will serve my purpose.

Stories originated as a way for humans to make sense of the world. And, as has always been the case, the good ones have a way of surviving. One day, Og wondered aloud how water could come from the sky. Lak said, “Maybe moisture in the atmosphere condenses around bits of dust and falls back to Earth in a beautiful cycle.”

Bim waved his hairy hand dismissively. “No, no. An invisible man in the clouds is looking down upon us and crying. Probably because Lak’s story was so boring!”

If I’m Og, I’m probably gonna pass on the version with the guy in the clouds. If it gets a good reaction, I’ll tell it to the next caveman, but maybe I’ll embellish it with a tidbit about thunder being his angry roar. Fast-forward a few millennia, and you’ve got The Exorcist or mythology.

The point is that stories don’t really become stories unless they’re told to someone. Sometimes — and probably way more than you realize — that someone is the storyteller himself.

The stories we tell ourselves

Like our ancient ancestors, we, too need stories to help make sense of the world, including and especially the one each of us specifically inhabits. They’re often what comes after the word because. My boss hates me because I called him out in the team meeting. My wife is staying home because she doesn’t like my friends.

We all do this, all the time, to varying degrees. Telling ourselves a story is way easier than getting to the truth. It’s comfortable, and it settles the matter in our minds so we don’t have to think about it anymore.

Some people are wired to tell themselves a nice story. Carol really appreciates me because I always bring her coffee. The dishes didn’t get done because Larry’s been working so hard. I’m both jealous of, and annoyed by, people who tell themselves whatever story will make them feel good about themselves and the world.

Whether the stories you tell yourself are dark and cynical or upbeat and positive, they most likely aren’t based on what you know with certainty to be true. But a big part of you assumes it is because even acknowledging that it may not be puts you in a tough spot. If it’s not true, then you’ve made a lot of assumptions and acted accordingly. You may also have burned a lot of cycles on that story, and it would be hard to admit that any resulting emotional turmoil you experienced was completely unnecessary.

But admit it you must, because …

Stories can lead to blame and resentment

The because in our explanations about life always start with a why. Why did she snap at me? Why is he so into her? This is where the power of a story can become insidious. It basically becomes the lens through which we see related aspects of the world.

Our brains have something called the reticular activating system (RAS). Basically, it helps direct your attention based on your motivation. If your context for personal interactions, for example, is the story that people are untrustworthy, then your RAS will be hyper-aware of signs of untrustworthiness. It’s a bit like confirmation bias. You find what you expect to find, and what you expect to find is based on a story rather than being fully open to the present moment.

I’ve told myself a lot of stories about my partner over the years, and rarely did those stories give her the benefit of the doubt. Over time, they morphed into resentments. I held on to them for an embarrassingly long time, and when the time came, I had to own them. I’d imagine the same is true of someone who convinced themselves of a happy story when the truth was much harder to take.

The secret to overcoming narratives in your life is to ask yourself two questions, over and over.

What else could be true?

About 10 years ago, I had some significant health anxiety that you might call cyberchondria (it’s a thing). I had so much work-related and relationship stress that I started Googling “symptoms” like shaking hands and clumsiness. Before long, I was convinced I had MS.

That’s around the time I ran into this question: What else could be true? Well, it turned out a lot of things could. Things that were far more likely.

The more upsetting the narrative, the more useful this question becomes. I still slip into those bad stories, but at least I have a potential way out of the endless loop of story plus “evidence.”

What purpose does this story serve?

This can be a tough exercise. You basically keep asking why until you either a) remember how it started, or b) realize you no longer even know.

Here’s how I see it: A story you tell yourself in order to make sense of your world, especially a painful emotional experience, often just repackages the pain so you can’t see the experience objectively anymore. Let’s say you went to a restaurant that everybody recommended, and you have a terrible experience. Bad service, bad food, bad everything.

If you walk away from this experience believing it’s a bad restaurant, then you’ve told yourself a story. Same as something like, “I have bad luck with restaurants.”

You can only guess what was going on that night. Maybe the owner got rushed to the hospital, and everyone’s freaking out. Maybe their A team had the night off. Or maybe it was just a bad night. So, what else could be true? All sorts of stuff. What actually happened was that you had a bad experience at a restaurant. Full stop.

What purpose does it serve to think it’s a bad restaurant? So you can tell the people who recommended it? Prove them wrong? Tell them they’re crazy? Or is it so you won’t go down as the damned fool who gave a restaurant two chances?

In my case, most of my stories mainly served to cast myself or the people I care about in an unfavorable light. These days, I aim to keep stories on the page and make room for a little more truth, even when it hurts.

People can become addicted to all sorts of things. The reasons vary widely. Trauma, genetic predispositions, and social influences are just a few. But hopefully, it’s not too reductive to posit that all addictions are some form of pain management, be it physical, emotional, or existential. In that sense, they’re an escape from reality.

Thankfully, I’ve avoided the big addictions. I know, and you probably know, people who haven’t. They deserve empathy. There’s plenty of pain to go around and ample reasons to want to escape reality. All it takes sometimes is one loose choice to become addicted.

I’ve had a lifelong addiction to thinking. What does that mean? Well, I’ve always had a bent for problem solving. That’s what I love about writing — you solve problem after problem, hopefully in a way that satisfies both you and the reader. It brings me great pleasure to help my character think his way out of a jam or to figure out what plot complication will spin the story off in an intriguing direction. The dopamine hit I get from figuring shit out is why I keep doing it and always will.

The problem is, relatively few real-world problems can be solved by thinking. Emotional or relationship problems, for example. An emotional problem can’t be solved through a cognitive process. I wish to hell it could. What it can do is help convince yourself of this fact. Last year, I’ll bet I wrote a novel’s worth of analyses of my relationship issues only to reach the conclusion that they were at least half my fault. At the time, that was easier than vulnerability and honest introspection. Asking, “How do I contribute to the problem?” would’ve saved me an awful lot of time, and Dark Dodgers would’ve come out much sooner.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, I used to spend inordinate amounts of time chewing on problems that I can never, and will never have any role in solving. I didn’t know it then, but my brain was often so preoccupied with thoughts and worries that I frequently wasn’t fully engaged with the present. Thinking when no thinking is required is like paddling frantically downriver instead of letting the current do the work. The desire to fix anything outside your immediate control — of which you have precious little — is just an effort to control your environment. It’s a waste of energy.

It’s fine and healthy to wonder why people are the way they are, and sometimes, you can even get them to tell you. But thinking about what someone could or should do is useless. Figuring someone out isn’t your job. Being curious about them is.

Which brings us finally to thinking about oneself. For me, that was the deepest wormhole of them all, and it’s ongoing. Why did I react that way? Why do I walk with hunched shoulders? I really should do more cardio. Don’t get me wrong — it’s good to ask some of these questions some of the time. But the premise is flawed. You aren’t a problem to be solved. You’re a human being carrying around a big, smelly bag of shit. Some of it came from your parents, and their parents, and so on. Some came from the world — your boss, your neighbor, the morning news, etc. But a lot of it came from you. You can and should endeavor to lighten it, but you’ll never wash your hands of it, so to speak, or set it down.

The most insidious part of overthinking is getting stuck in loops. When I encounter an especially puzzling question, like, “What fresh hell is this?”, I tend to ask it over and over and over and over. This is called rumination, and it’s unhelpful mental activity.

So how did I start to break my addiction to thinking? I did, and continue to do three things:

1. I gave myself a break. 99.9% of all problems either shouldn’t be framed as problems or aren’t mine to solve. Therefore, they aren’t worth the energy it takes to think about them.
2. I monitor myself. If I get fixated on a thought or problem, which still happens sometimes, I say, “STOP!” in my head and shift my attention to the present, such as it is. The more I meditate, the easier this becomes.
3. I accept and embrace my reality as it is. This statement is taped to my wall along with many other affirmations. Accepting what you cannot change feels like sticking your head in the sand sometimes, and maybe it is, but it’s essential. I don’t like the reality we’re living in, and I wish it were different, but I can’t make it so.

If you’re an overthinker, maybe this will give you some useful insights. If not, then good for you. Either way, I welcome your thoughts at [email protected].

I don’t have any tattoos, but I’m thinking of getting one that says, “Today could be the last good day.”

I’ve referred to the experience of writing a dystopian series (the Cytocorp Saga) during the height of the pandemic. It wasn’t difficult to imagine all the ways that society could fall apart during that time because I perceived that it was beginning to do just that.

I wish I could tell you that my perspective has shifted.

If one were to plot the long arc of human civilization on a graph, with time on the X axis and something impossibly reductive like “condition” on the Y, you would see a general upward trend but not a straight line. As technology, medicine, and intelligence have progressed, so has our civilization. For example, the advent of antibiotics made it so a gash in your leg didn’t mean losing it. That would be a sharp little spike in the graph. War, famine, the Black Plague and such would be troughs.

There’s ample evidence to suggest we have already entered another trough. And, like other troughs in our illustrious history, it may last decades or even centuries.

Science, for example, evolved out of the ostensibly obvious need to establish unassailable truths when possible and well-supported theories when not. The freedom to take something as factual allows for the exploration of unknowns, which is how knowledge advances. It’s the base of the pyramid. Perhaps you’ve noticed that science isn’t exactly ascendant at the moment, especially among the ruling class. In fact, outside of the sciences and the lives of ordinary people, I would argue that objective truth no longer matters in our society. And when truth no longer matters, nothing does.

In his 2009 book Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free, Charles Pierce established what he called the Three Great Premises:

The First Great Premise: Any theory is valid if it moves units.

The Second Great Premise: Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough.

The Third Great Premise: Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is measured by how fervently they believe it.

You don’t have to look very far to see how accurate these statements have become. Truth is out, and attention is in. Rather than solve actual problems, our most brilliant minds have built highly efficient and profitable confirmation bias machines. Disinformation and fakery has never been easier to sell. In his book, Pierce refers to “cracks,” an old-timey word for those tinfoil hat types who used to stand on the street corner and fulminate about radio waves or microchips while nobody paid them any mind. Now, those same people have podcasts or offices in the Capitol.

Climate scientists, by contrast, have been screaming for decades that we are cruising toward an environmental catastrophe that will render vast swathes of our planet unlivable. Now, they’re the cracks nobody listens to, and they might as well stop screaming because it’s almost certainly too late. Does anyone see unprecedented global cooperation in our future?

As we speak, history is being rewritten. Before long, the messy parts of our history, like slavery or the Holocaust, won’t serve as examples of what not to do anymore. At best, they’ll be stories that only old people know like Hansel and Gretel or World War 2. For example, how many of the politicians and pundits who refer to so-and-so as a fascist have been made to publicly articulate what that word even means?

Empires fall. Systems collapse. Foundations crumble. So it has always been, so it always will be. When it gets bad, it will stay bad for a very long time. But even if the whole thing doesn’t go to shit in the near future, something will. It could be our health or that of a loved one. All the “virtual” money we have could vanish in a blink. The power could go out and never come back on.

The point is, cherish today. Notice it. Appreciate the people in your life, past and present. The many conveniences you currently enjoy. Grass. Rivers. The sound of birds. Live it up. Because any day could be the last good day, and that day will arrive before any of us are ready to meet it.