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Real men don't fall in love with plastic dolls or operating systems, or do they? In movies such as Lars and the Real Girl and Her, as well as in the case of Davecat, a man who lives with three life-size synthetic women, inanimate objects appear to fulfill many physical as well as emotional needs. For Lars, a man with extreme social anxiety, Bianca seems to serve as a transitional object, as described by Winnicott (1971), until he orchestrates her “death” and is able to replace her with an actual woman who sings in the choir of his church. Similarly, in Her, Samantha, an operating system (OS) with artificial intelligence (AI) serves as a type of futuristic transitional phenomenon. After falling in love with Theodore, Samantha helps him overcome feelings of inadequacy associated with his divorce and then leaves with other AI systems. Davecat, by contrast, does not seem to experience his dolls as a means to an end. He does not see them as temporary substitutes for actual women. For him, his synthetic partners are the end: the end of his search for a human partner.
Do these men have a new kind of fetish, are they psychotic, or is a different way of being in the world actually emerging? In their recent book, The Age of Perversion: Desire and Technology in Psychoanalysis and Culture, Danielle Knafo and Rocco Lo Bosco have a lot to say about what they call the “crooked path” (p. 2), a way of living, often fraught with disappointment, hatred, and mistrust peppered with rebellion, that diverges from the norm. Knafo and Lo Bosco agree with Strenger (2011), who believes there is a new kind of person who lives differently in the world. He calls this type of being Homo globalis and defines him as a “deeply insecure, anxious and threatened multi-tasker who enjoys little career stability, has no coherent worldview, and often manages life's vicissitudes with pharmaceuticals” (p. 170). Although Knafo and Lo Bosco think that the various ways in which people are attaching to