In a sense, I can definitely see something like this being popular. We've already got things like virtual friends/assistants/romantic partners built using AI sy

In a sense, I can definitely see something like this being popular. We've already got things like virtual friends/assistants/romantic partners built using AI systems and bots, and this is kinda just the next level of that. I think games also sometimes go that route too, I know a few of them have you play against bots disguised as human players when starting out in multiplayer so you win easily and feel better about your chances. So a social network like this would probably do well, depressingly enough. And it'd probably be even more unhealthy for society than existing ones are. It'd also fall straight into the whole 'don't create the torment nexus' thing too, since I'm pretty sure quite a few works of fiction did something like this already. I mean, the villain of the latest Mario RPG literally traps people in fantasies where everyone treats them as the centre of the universe in his ploy to force isolation on people and destroy worlds. This feels a bit like that, except as a social network and a few times less lethal.