Animals and Machines

July 15, 2025

I don't do well with the mass of human contradiction. Their insincere smiles frighten me, their words orbit meaning without ever landing, their praise is manipulation, concern is currency. They say they care, only for then disappear forever. It's dishonest, and exhausting, and it's everywhere. It's the hell they built, the carcass of their society rotting from the inside.

Neurotypicals appear fluent in this semiotic treachery, they call it social skills. I call it dishonesty refined into ritual. They possess an extraordinary talent: to speak without saying, to nod without agreeing, to perform without believing. This is considered normal. Those who cannot participate, the clinically autistic, the quietly neurodivergent, the systemically sincere, are treated as defective, not because they lack something, but because they refuse to lie well enough to fit in.

We are drawn, maybe inevitably, to cold, lifeless algorithms, or the warm fur behind soft ears. To coherent systems: animals and machines.

A computer doesn't lie, its feedback is instant and straightforward. Press a button, a response, showing us the light of knowledge, the world and all possibilities. They speak in logic, consequence, and code. Their language is formal, their boundaries defined. They do not pretend, do not flatter, they do not ask me to modulate myself into ambiguity. It is more honesty than we will have ever received from a human.

An animal gives affection without asking for proof of your status. No ghosting without a reason, no illusion of concern, just presence. Curling besides you, knowing you by scent, by stillness. They don't wait for the right words, they don't punish silence. They don't need you to be likable, they just need you to be there.

Humans by contrast, ask too much and give too little, their affection is conditional, their loyalty expires, their love is a contract filled with unwritten clauses. They want choreography, they want you to mirror, flatter, confess, in the right tone, at the right time, with the right face. Otherwise, you're wrong, you're cold, you're too much, you're not enough. Their relationships are governed by invisible contracts, subject to abrupt revision, often enforced retroactively. To engage with them is to live under constant threat of sudden redefinition: what was acceptable yesterday becomes offensive today; what was love last month is abandonment this week. They demand performance, and they punish deviation. There is no forgiveness in human systems, only rebranding. No loyalty, only conditional alignment, no presence, only the shallowest of judgements.

What I demand is something cleaner, sharper and heavier. A gaze that doesn't decode me, a presence that doesn't ask me to split in two. Give me something that breathes against my ribs and doesn't force me to smile in return. That's where love lives, not in their mouths. Not in their creepy smiles and hideous teeth. But in systems that speak truth, in sitting beside old Shaggy, staring at the sunset. In a midnight screen, Windows XP humming, as I write my soul out. I'll stay where things do what they say, and feel what they mean.