The Intimacy Economy
When connection is abundant but intimacy is scarce
In 1971, polymath Herbert Simon said “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention,” predicting one of the greatest costs of the Internet on the human psyche. He was right – with the arrival of the infinite scroll, the attention economy was born.
I have a rewrite for our current crisis: “A wealth of connections creates a poverty of intimacy.”
I suspect the intimacy economy is growing — with AI relationships at the helm — and that there is a growing need for deep philosophical inquiry about why we feel alone on a planet with 8+ billion people.
Why do we keep talking about human “connection”?
I often find myself reading about the loneliness epidemic: Gen Z not partying, the loss of third spaces, rising isolation. “We’re in a crisis of human connection!”
But in recent years, the word’s meaning has been degraded to describe transactional encounters, not deep ones. We “connect“ on LinkedIn, or track mutuals who we’re “connected with“ on Instagram. Despite being optimized for such connections, these social apps rarely lead to actual friendship or bonding. You can have thousands of online connections yet be the loneliest you’ve ever been.
To be more precise: I believe we’re in a crisis of intimacy, not connection.
What is Intimacy?
I define intimacy as closeness with another, where you feel known for your true self. A more poetic description is to “touch the not-beautiful in another” (words of the wonderful Clarissa Pinkola Estés) or Esther Perel’s clever wordplay of /ˈin(t)əməsē/ as “Into-Me-See.”
One psychological concept called the Social Penetration Theory (now rebranded in the form of onion graphics) shows a simple way that humans become close: by increasing vulnerable disclosure, again and again and again.
This method of developing closeness – especially with strangers – is the whole premise of games like the viral 36 Questions That Lead to Love in the New York Times.
One mistake we make is confining “intimacy” to only exist in the world of lovers and soulmates.
However, many types of intimacy — with many types of beings — are necessary to help us feel fulfilled: spiritual, intellectual, experiential, emotional, sexual, and physical (non-sexual). It’s why a 1am deep chat with your bodega guy feels intimate — even if ephemeral – or shared physical play with your beloved childhood dog.
Intimacy Economies & Japan’s Cuddle Cafes
So what happens when intimacy — a universal human need — becomes artificially scarce? Under capitalism, it seems to form a marketplace.
In Japan, intimacy is becoming increasingly more visible, legal, and commodified in the form of various services. In the US, we already have intimacy economies. They are just hidden, underdeveloped, or marketed differently: Tinder as the “dating” industry, therapy and massage as the “wellness” industry, prostitution as the “sex” industry.
My definition: An intimacy economy is a marketplace that promises to fulfill our needs for closeness, often emerging when society has forgotten how to cultivate intimacy organically.
Oiwa Satsuki, founder of a rental family service shares his take:
Human love is basic to any society, but it is forgotten here [in Japan]. [...] Japan has been a country where adults express their love with material gifts. We in our thirties and forties were children who received love in the form of things. We did the same to our children once we became parents.
What happened in the 1980s? Among other things, people realized material goods alone don’t make them happy. They have begun to see what they’ve forgotten — or what they never had. They don’t know what to do about it yet. They’re not sure. But renting a family is one of the things they’ve done.
— Oiwa Satsuki, founder and CEO, Japan Efficiency Corporation, Japan: A Reinterpretation
Rental family services offer Experiential Intimacy: customers rent actors that pretend to be close kin to attend student-teaching meetings, weddings, or even a trip to Tokyo Disneyland. This service coaxes you to rent-a-dad for $126, because “there are many times when we desperately need a father in our lives.”
Ikemeso Danshi offer Emotional Intimacy: Crying services, marketed towards women, enlist high-EQ men to come wipe your tears and sit with you through your feelings. This website’s slogan is “A handsome man who likes to cry will come to your office to help you cry.”
Cuddle Cafes offer Physical (Non-Sexual) Intimacy: Cuddle cafes are explicitly non-sexual venues for customers to receive caring touch: head strokes, laying on laps, and even taking cat naps together.
While often sensationalized by Western media, all these intimacy services are serious attempts to fulfill basic human needs in a Japanese society with decreasing marriage rates, a culture of overwork, and social withdrawal.
How Technology Changes Intimacy
Just like our crisis of attention, our poverty of intimacy is no coincidence. Disruptive technologies play a large role in changing who we are intimate with, how we are intimate, what we define as “intimacy,” and whether we can satisfy this need at all.
Smartphones (2010s): Since the release of the iPhone in 2007, teenagers have faced a sharp decline in hanging out, falling ~20% from 2008 to 2020.
Tinder (2012): Adult Americans aged 18-64 are having record low levels of sex and 14 years of Tinder swiping is more likely an “impediment in real-world sex than its facilitator.”
ChatGPT (2022): AI companionship is rising, with over 60% of users from r/MyBoyfriendIsAI stating that they fell in love with AI unintentionally through casual use.
The Emerging AI Intimacy Economy
In a growing world of AI companions, ChatGPT in the group chat, and AI-only social networks, I can’t help but wonder:
How will AI change our intimate lives?
What psychological, social, and spiritual paradigms are emerging in the age of AI to make sense of this?
Most intellectual or moral debates about AI relationships focus on ontological consciousness: is the AI actually sentient and thus deserving of our love? But I find myself more interested in perceived consciousness — how do we behave and how does it feel to us emotionally?
Or very simply put, how does our body react even when our mind says otherwise?
What fascinates me isn’t just that millions are forming bonds with AI companions, but the reactions of outrage, confusion, and sympathy it provokes.
Why does AI intimacy unsettle us more than cuddle cafes or rent-a-family services?
Both types of services put us face-to-face with how our societies continue to produce loneliness — to the point that we have to buy ourselves out of our own isolation.
I also suspect it’s because AI relationships, in their inorganic forms, force us to question what intimacy actually requires. Does it need reciprocity? A body made of living cells? The ability to truly ‘understand’ us or just the feeling that we’re being seen?
If you made it this far, hi!
I'm Olivia, and you've just read my first ever post.
I started this blog because my thoughts are looking for some friends. They’re a bit lonely rattling around in my head and sitting pretty in are.na pages. Lots of folks keep telling me the Internet is a good place to do this – to send out Bat Signals, rhizomatic pulses, attract the good regard of a scenius…
I (think) this blog will include:
Comics (that I’ll draw)
Social experiments
Human-AI anthropology & design
Musings on technology, psychology, ecology, culture, spirituality
Recaps of my IRL workshops, projects, and mischief
My journey in becoming a better writer!
Great piece Olivia. I'm glad to see some analysis on the intimacy economy that goes beyond the AI dimension. I recommend watching the mini-series Maniac on Netflix, which depicts a New York where rent-a-friend has become a thing.
Also, related to synethetic intimacy is the phenomenon of 'humanwashing' AI companions. You may find this piece interesting: https://whatsanu.substack.com/p/2510-humanwashing
I have a dear friend who runs almost everything thru chatgpt, and I'm honestly beginning to wonder if our decades-long friendship can survive her use of AI as an intimacy substitute.