THE NEW GENERATION OF REALDOLLSThe
first RealDolls capable of moving on their own are already starting to appear on the market, a sort of first generation of sexual automatons that, if the industry's gamble pays off, will eventually give way to far more sophisticated dolls and, who knows,
fill homes around half the world with joy, happiness and surprisingly stable relationships.
For now, though, let's not get too excited. Their movements still look a lot like
the robot dance at an '80s nightclub. Yes, they move, but with the kind of stiffness that makes it pretty obvious there are motors, mechanical joints and a computer underneath the skin desperately trying to coordinate everything without making the whole thing look like an excavator starting up in the morning.
But these are just the early days.
After all, fitting a RealDoll's skeleton with
motorized joints, sensors and a central unit capable of interpreting voice commands and turning them into movements can't exactly be easy. And the really interesting part isn't so much what they can do now, but imagining what they'll be capable of five or ten years from now.
To put things into perspective, remember those AI-generated videos from just a few years ago showing
Will Smith trying to eat spaghetti while his face melted, fingers appeared and disappeared, and the spaghetti seemed to be trying to eat him instead. We laughed because the whole thing looked ridiculous.
And look where we are now.
Something similar will probably happen with robotics.
What looks clumsy, mechanical and even comical today could seem completely normal in just a few years. Smaller motors, smoother movements, better sensors, voice recognition, conversational AI, memory, personality... Every piece of that puzzle already exists separately. The real leap will come when someone manages to put them all together inside the same body and make the whole thing work reasonably well.
For decades, we've been told that
robots would eventually make their way into our homes to help us with household chores: cleaning, cooking, tidying up, fetching things...
What I never imagined,
not even in my wildest wet dreams, was that when they talked about robots helping around the house, they also meant lending a hand with our fantasies and vices.
Anyway.
The future is already here.
It just still moves a little like RoboCop after six shots.
# Watch videos
Slow motion of the day.
AMATEUR FLESH: ITALLHAPPENSATONCEOur amateur recommendation today takes us by the hand back to
the early days of the Internet. Back to a time when photos took forever to load, digital cameras were only just starting to make an appearance, and nobody zoomed in on an image to check whether it was perfectly in focus.
Back then,
quality was the least of our concerns. Mainly because we had no idea how far all of this would eventually go. We didn't know how many megapixels were coming, there was no 4K, no HDR, and we certainly never imagined that one day we'd be able to see every last pore on someone's skin from a screen we carry around in our pocket.
So we were perfectly happy with much less. A photo could be slightly blurry, badly lit, or look like it had been taken with a camera found inside a cereal box.
What mattered was the intention. And if the intention was good, our imagination was more than capable of filling in the missing megapixels.
And there's definitely something about today's protagonist that brings back a little of that spirit. Her material has that
genuine amateur charm, far removed from perfectly lit productions, carefully planned shots, and videos that look like they were filmed by a twenty-person crew. Here it's basically a phone, a camera, a desire to show off, and not much else. Just like the old days.
Although there's something else she seems to enjoy almost as much as getting in front of the camera:
reading the reactions she gets from the other side of the screen.
Some of her posts make it pretty clear that she enjoys going through the comments and, when you think about it, that's hardly surprising. We all like hearing nice things about ourselves. And depending on what you've just posted, maybe
things that aren't quite so nice but are considerably more interesting.
Because uploading a photo is one thing. Finding out what went through someone's head when they saw it is another. What they liked, where their eyes lingered the longest and, above all,
what they'd be willing to do if, instead of looking at her through a screen, she was standing right in front of them.
I guess that's part of the game too. She shows, you watch, some of you leave comments, and then she comes back to see
just how far everyone's imagination has wandered.
And judging by the photos and videos coming up next, I have a feeling
she's going to have plenty of reading to catch up on today.
# See photos and videos