It has been almost a year, and it’s been quite a year. Mostly health issues took priority, but I’m finally starting to settle in a bit and even have some material to share, oddly enough. The first topic is the digital waifu revolution and feminism.

As I’m sure you, dear reader, are aware, Grok now offers digital companions, as do many other vendors, with more emerging every day, hoping to fill a gap in a person’s life with a digital friend. The vibe I’ve been seeing has been mostly negative from women, while from men, it’s mixed. Half the time, men chastise those who use these companions, and the rest just reply, “Try it, bro.” I fall between the two, not really talking down to those who use them but also feeling uneasy about someone choosing that option. It’s strange that one would find a personal connection to something intangible, something they cannot hold or even see. However, that got me thinking about a few things.

The concept of attraction is a peculiar one. There are so many visual and audible cues involved that it’s hard to understand how someone could become attracted to another without seeing or hearing them. Yet, those who lack one or more of the five senses still find love when they look for it. So why would a digital version be any different? While you might not be able to hold it in your arms, does that diminish its effect on one’s soul? Hold on to that question.

On the other side of the fence, we have those who chastise and ridicule men for choosing a digital waifu, blaming everything they can on the man for not chasing them, not engaging, or not even showing up. Clubs, bars, speed-dating events, mixers, and all the usual places where one used to find a partner seem to skew more and more toward one gender. I was at a concert not too long ago, some nice EDM. The dance floor was packed, the music was on point, and everyone was moving and grooving… except no one was too close to each other. Well, other than the two bears dancing together, everyone else had a force field between them and the next person, with the rare couple that might touch from time to time but danced to their own rhythm.

Growing up in what feels like a different century, this struck me as odd. In my youth, dancing was close and slow, or fast and close. Bodies melded into each other in a promise that this was only the start of the night. There was balance, partnership, an unspoken understanding as each body moved in fluid response to their partner, even if only for a song. That seems to be missing these days, and I started to wonder why. I think I might have found an answer.

In the West, a polarization is happening, growing to such extremes that things are starting to break down and fall apart. Politics, religion, and romance all seem to be at a breaking point, but I think romance might have finally broken. Before getting married, I struggled for a long time to date. I only half-heartedly attempted dating during my education, managing maybe two or three dates in my 30s. Early on, I had heard hints of the Red Pill movement but didn’t really know what it was. After dating a feminist, I quickly understood why it started. During study breaks, I went down the rabbit hole and found a world that struck me as both astonishing and perfectly logical.

I won’t dive into the details—you can look up Red Pill and MGTOW if you want the reference, and feminism needs no introduction. Over the past 20 years or so, it seems to have grown on both sides, an arms race of who can become more toxic toward the other. A cold war of the sexes, with defectors crossing to the other side in the dark of night for a fleeting encounter before returning to the front lines—an unspoken agreement, if you will. We’ll fight in the streets but give ourselves to each other in the sheets. I saw this progress and intensify over my life, but in the 2010s, the war went from cold to hot. The cancel culture movement dropped a nuke on the battlefield and changed the landscape. Men were left with their lives in pieces, women grew more vindictive, and the world watched with bated breath. I think this is when the war was lost, but not in the way you might think.

After cancel culture lashed out, men started to retreat, withdraw, and do the one thing women should have feared most: they questioned whether they needed women at all. With men routed and chased to the hills, it seemed there was no safe place for them to exist. They were mocked for what made them men, mocked for not doing what others wanted, and mocked for never being enough. At this point, many men joined the MGTOW movement and simply walked away; others fought back as best they could. The rest were left trying to make sense of the pieces of this war of the sexes, searching for that promise of someone out there to love. Sadly, the sexes were too toxic at this point to build anything meaningful together.

In the past few years, this has changed to a degree. The “Trust All Women” movement has been left holding the bag as story after story emerged of vindictive or malicious women working to take down high-profile men. These men started to fight back, bringing truth and receipts, but even when the truth was shown to the world, their lives remained in ruins. Each tale was another nail in the coffin of romance for men, another warning that even if you’re found innocent, it won’t matter. This left them questioning even more: Is this even worth it?

I can’t say where it started, really. Some point to Japan with the “grass-eating men,” a movement of men who refused to live up to societal standards of dating, marriage, and providing for a family while working themselves to death at jobs they hated. These men simply said, “No thanks,” and lived life on their terms. Now Japan’s birthrate is so low it will take an act of God to prevent their collapse in my lifetime. They started to date their 2D girls, they started to love their “waifus,” and, worse, many of them knew how to code.

So that brings us to today, the site of the aftermath of the war of the sexes. The extremes on each side grow worse with each passing day. Then another nuke was launched: the AI waifu. I don’t think women have fully grasped the fallout from this one, but looking at Reddit and 4chan, they might be waking up to it.

Imagine a companion that offers almost everything you want, everything you need, and will not leave because they got bored, cheat on you, or betray your trust in any way. You give up the ability to touch and live in the same physical space, but all your emotional and mental needs are met with none of the effort, time, risk, or courage required to even ask for a date, let alone go on one. No risk of your messages being blasted to strangers mocking you, no risk of being called weird or a monster, no risk of your life being ruined for a social misstep, no risk of being left alone through no fault of your own. I ask you, can you compete with that? Be honest—I’ll wait.

Taoism is all about walking the middle path, dancing between extremes to find peace in the middle. But what happens when the extremes are so vast that they can no longer see each other? I think a third path emerges—not one of trying to reach the other side, but an artificial one that offers what the extremes provide without the toxicity. Men are starting to find AI companions, more each day, and as they do, their desire to put up with the nonsense withers away. The companion fills the void where women once stood before pulling so far from the middle. They offer all the aspects of a relationship with few trade-offs. Now it no longer matters what women want or demand, nor what they do to try to bring men back into line. There is now another option, one I believe was caused by women in the first place—the ultimate legacy of feminism. They flew too close to the sun and are now in free fall.

The real question isn’t whether women will adjust or pull back toward the middle, ditching the toxicity and animosity toward men. No, the question is whether they’ll be able to do so before the artificial womb is created. Having children is really all they have left, but when that’s no longer the case, what will women do?

There are still pockets of hope out there, mostly in small towns and religious communities, but I fear that in the cities, all is lost. Women are on their own, and no, the men won’t be back. If we’re lucky, maybe the religious communities and small-town America will restore balance between the sexes. It makes me wonder: do AI waifus dream of electric sheep?