Hacker Cinema
Lars and the Real Girl
2007 · Film · 107 min
Directed by Craig Gillespie
Extremely shy Lars finds it impossible to make friends or socialize. His brother and sister-in-law worry about him, so when he announces that he has a girlfriend he met on the Internet, they are overjoyed. But Lars' new lady is a life-size plastic woman. On the advice of a doctor, his family and the rest of the community go along with his delusion.
5 positive1 neutralfrom 6 commenters
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6 comments on Hacker News
we're not better off without algorithms either, they've vastly improved the quality of lives for many. My point is that it is us humans who are corrupt and evil, that is the problem that needs fixing, not our tools and instruments.
The first thing we did with nuclear power is mass-killing and weapons. But if only we used it for power generation a lot more, we could have even avoided the climate crisis happening now.
Lots of harm caused by fire, but it is a pillar of human cvilization.
Nevertheless, you can't unspill milk as they say. It is even more pointless than the "war on drugs". you can regulate the models though. and stop telling people to seek mental health, it isn't something you seek and magically you go "poof" and you're cured. If you can be a friend to someone instead of some AI, do that! be the solution. else, get out of their way. If they can google chatgpt, they can google "mental health". people have been making friends with inanimate objects since forever. lonely people talk to dolls and puppets. There is a huge market for human like doll wives that costs >$5k. There are even mainstream movies with a-list actors in them about this like "lars and the real girl" and "her".
Life is hard and then you die. people grasp at straws to last as long as they can, because everything that lives wants to continue to live. and I hope they fight their best fight instead of giving up early after being dismissed by society to "seek mental help" lol.
P.S.: "mental help" is like lawyers, they're there for the corporations and the ultra-wealthy. everything accessible by normal people, to the most part that is, is not useful unless your goal is to get pilled-up, in which case I doubt that is better than just talking to some inanimate computer.
I was thinking of that scene in Lars and the Real Girl as I was reading the first part of your comment. Such a phenomenal movie.
This is something the Lutherans seem to have figured out, and shows up in the culture of Lutheran heavy areas like northern midwestern towns: you don’t even have to talk, and you definitely don’t have to talk about the death, or invite the believed to do so.
Just show up. Help out if you can (bring food).
If they want to talk they’ll talk. If they don’t they still had the option.
I watched Lars and the Real Girl with some people who grew up on the west coast. There’s a scene after a funeral where these two little old ladies come over, bring food, and just knit and occupy space, so he’s not alone. I said that’s the most midwestern thing I’ve ever seen in a Hollywood movie. And it still pretty much is.
"Her" was indeed one, but I think you might be talking about "Lars and the Real Girl."
A very funny movie. Lars refrains from being intimate with her until they're married.
I'm not sure how I define "good", but consider this: not all prostitution results in somebody getting hurt -- if it does, that's definitely a serious thing to be addressed -- and when it's consensual, it's about two people connecting (money involved, of course). I know a cliché is to consider every customer/prostitute relationship as predatory in nature, but I'm not convinced this is always the case.
People sating their urges with some VR simulation doesn't seem like an improvement to me. It feels alienating, out of a work of dystopian scifi: people no longer even need to touch other people, they engage with simulations. I don't know, it feels terrifying to me.
Someone else mentioned Real Dolls. It made me think of the pretty good and touching movie "Lars and the Real Girl". We like and pity Lars in his delusion that his Real Doll is a real woman, but the character definitely has issues.
Another fictional story with similar love interests is Lars and the Real Girl [1].
To me this seem like people who have been hurt in some ways, and are doing what they can to survive.
[1] http://imdb.com/title/tt0805564/