I'm not in Australian and I know Australia has a fairly unique ecosystem and this necessitates different laws than other countries. Similarly weird laws exist in every country. For example in my area it's specifically illegal not to provide heating of a specific quality to tenants, because we have a season called "winter" where temperatures drop enough to be deadly.
I for one am interested why it's specifically AI girlfriend ads and not AI boyfriend ads. Heterosexual women are huge consumers of e.g. dating simulators, romance books, et al. that envision perfect men, bad boys with sweet hearts, wealthy powerful high-earning men who somehow always make time for the beloved. You'd think there'd be just as many AI boyfriend ads-- what teenaged girl wouldn't pay huge money to date $popular_male_singer?
[Example comparison: I know for a fact that popular romance publishing houses have straight up algorithmic-level demands of books published with them. Kiss must happen by page X. First sex must happen by chapter Y. Happily Ever After is mandatory, etc. These publishing houses make huge money, maybe the most well-earning genre in all of books.]
Well, my own bias is because it's seen as depraved/pathetic if a man has an AI fantasy girlfriend which gives him a proxy of what he wants, but it's not if a woman reads her bodyweight in romance novels per year. In my experience it's seen as pathetic for a man to use a proxy for his desires (see also the sex toy industry).
Another angle is go down the rabbit hole of online dating app disparity, women (under a certain age and bodyweight) can have a short term boyfriend and attention essentially immediately and in an unlimited manner. Partly driven by coolidge effect in men's sexual desires (men as a group have near unlimited desire for novelty and therefore consume any/all available supply except that which is not generally/widely desirable).
Women already have a near proxy too. OnlyFans or an IG + cashapp account can mean she gets more from men than she could one man, and gives less that a wife would have had to in the past. An AI Boyfriend would have to give the things that women (on average) desire from men, which tends to be more like protection, resources/money, and status/social dominance.
AI Girlfriends work because men tend to be driven towards visual things, and novelty.
Your argument seems to be somewhat contradictory. You claim simultaneously that women can easily get the similar level of escapism attention from real men, but also Romance (an escapist fantasy that doesn't involve any real men, protection, resources/money, or status/social dominance) is a huge industry. How are both of these things true?
So like... only a portion of women. How is this any different from men? Again, this doesn't at all explain why this is so heavily heterosexual male skewed. It's not like a significant portion of women are hot 20somethings-- if anything, the proportion is skewed older compared to men simply because women live longer. I bet grandma would spend hella social security to be doted on by a hot shirtless lawyer.
Young people jump on new trends. Young men have problems finding a date, young women generally doesn't. Old women have problems finding a date, but old women like other old people don't jump on new tech things like AI boyfriends at the same rate as young people do.
Hrmph. An engineering program might be composed of 95% males. That doesn't mean that most men are engineers or engineers in training. That's not the case at all.
Things don't have to apply to all men/women in order for things to be very lopsided.
I'm not asking why most engineers are men. I'm asking why your engineering program is 95% men. And if your argument is that, well, all hot women aren't engineers so almost no women are engineers, I'm going to raise eyebrows.
No. Your whole argument hinges on pointing out that a lot of women don't fit the mold of being Peak Attractive. I pointed out how that is irrelevant since it's not like we're talking about 90% of women to begin with.
Women can more readily get the kind of attention they want, with minimal effort.
Getting emotionally invested in an AI seems to me like it would go hand in hand with giving up on human relationships. I'm pretty sure men are more likely to do that than women.
I...uh, have you asked a woman whether this is true? Like, ask the nearest woman to confirm this and report back.
Most women I have spoken to about this can get attention generally, but very little of it is desirable attention.
There's also a bias I've noticed where people don't consider women that they don't personally find attractive when talking about these things - they're basically invisible.
You find this "Women don't have this problem! They can have a relationship whenever they want" sentiment in so many conversations on Hacker News, and it's so unempathetic.
The premise is not true for many women. And even if it were, it's not necessarily any easier to get attention from someone you are interested in yourself. And women have to deal with social anxiety, fears of making themselves vulnerable, self-confidence, body image, etc. around pursuing or initiating relationships just as anyone.
I think this is based in people misreading dating app metrics or something, and completely neglects trying to imagine what life is like for the person.
So how do you explain the discrepancy in these ads? Or the fact that men are more likely to pay on dates, dating apps, or join apps generally?
No one is suggesting that young women don’t struggle whatsoever. What they are suggesting, is that they don’t struggle to the extent that most would consider buying a paid AI companion.
I'm empathetic to the struggles faced by women. That said, I also realize that those struggles are different than the ones faced by men.
Yes, I believe that women experience this particular problem less than men do, but that doesn't mean that women don't have just as many problems on balance.
The patriarchy is alive and well, and I'm pretty sure it's still harder to be a woman than it is to be a man.
But, if you want to examine why men are expected to be more likely to pay for intimate relationships with AI, I think this area is relevant to the discussion.
> Like, ask the nearest woman to confirm this and report back.
You can test this yourself trivially on any dating app pretending to be a woman. In fact this is the purest form of the test, because there's 0 chance of anyone else misreporting their experiences.
> Most women I have spoken to about this can get attention generally, but very little of it is desirable attention.
I think in the dating market, most attention for both sexes is undesirable. However, since women receive comparatively more attention, they are much more likely to receive at least some attention that is desirable.
> There's also a bias I've noticed where people don't consider women that they don't personally find attractive when talking about these things - they're basically invisible.
Wait till you find out how big that bias is in the other direction.
that doesn't contradict what he said - just that the "undesirable" attention is still more desirable than an AI boyfriend could offer. Whereas an AI girlfriend can tautologically offer more desirable attention than the zero attention a significant percentage of men are able to achieve.
I think a lot of people (be they men or women) might feel more comfortable with being vulnerable and less afraid of being judged, or their secrets and thoughts being exposed or somehow used against them, with AIs than with real people, whether those real people are accessible/attainable for them or not. Perhaps, knowing deep down that it's not real and doesn't have a motive is a feature.
Whether they should be more comfortable (given the privacy problems with these services) is a different matter.
Sufficiently compromised privacy in conjunction with sufficiently sophisticated data markets starts to look a lot like "having a motive", eventually...
How long before your AI girlfriend is sussing out your feelings and desires in the interest of figuring out how you can most effectively be advertised to?
> Are said she believes that reflects a gender-based slant — social media platforms freely allow sex-related ads only if the intended audience is men.
So when you've got a huge hungry audience, willing to pay money, the platforms are incentivized to enforce their rules about ads unequally. Content and apps geared towards women, or gay men, are such a small piece of the pie by comparison that there's less incentive to look the other way.
The companies being accused of this unequal enforcement, of course, have a long history of doing things for no other reason than they can make a little extra money on it by not respecting their users. It's entirely believable.
> Content and apps geared towards women, or gay men, are such a small piece of the pie by comparison that there's less incentive to look the other way.
Sorry, we're talking about Instagram, an app we know puts huge targets on women, especially young women! I have no idea what you're talking about here about nicheness. Fashion products alone are worth way more than the entire porn industry. Not including beauty, skincare, cosmetic surgery, wellness/cleansing, etc...
I'm asking why the demand is not as high for male AI partners, when other media which also simulates male romantic partnership has HUGE demand. Just look at how much erotica makes. How many weird fetish stories are posted on fanfiction sites where the reader is a character. How much money stupid things like Boyfriend Dungeon (a real thing! a dungeon crawler where you date your exclusively-male weapons!) makes! You'd think AI boyfriends fit way closer to this existing market.
But the whole relationship scenario exactly what you'd want an AI partner for, is my bafflement. If I want porn I have plenty of free stuff on PornHub et al. There's no reason to get an intelligent anything, artificial or not, if I actually just want generated fap material. It's obviously selling companionship as well as porn, which is definitely more what I see in erotica, which I already know is fairly formuliac as it is-- basically like porn. So I'm asking: why is it so skewed, because there's clearly a mix of both appeals here. If it was a40/60 or a 70/30 skew, okay because ads are primarily visual attractors. But this makes it sound more like 90/10 or 95/5, which makes no sense to me, I know that fake relationships with hot men is one of the few ways you can make a good income as a self published author.
> There's no reason to get an intelligent anything, artificial or not, if I actually just want generated fap material.
For the huge demand among men - it's best to think about an AI girlfriend as an alternative to going to the strip club.
Sure, some guys go to strip clubs for just staring at naked women. But a huge (mostly unacknowledged) part of the appeal is the short-term companionship mixed in. The flirting, the ego stroking, all of it, just an attractive woman taking an interest in you and talking with you. Lots of guys I have talked to have had the experience of one of their buddies getting too drunk and "spilling their guts" to a stripper. That's not a thing that happens if you're just there to stare at bewbs.
In Asia, hostess clubs operate much more along the lines of this idea of emotional fulfillment. Strip clubs are part of the overall entertainment service sector, but really focus more on the bewbs aspect. In the West it's much more mixed in together instead of in two separate types of businesses.
I think you've figured it mostly out. Both genders desire this sense of companionship, not just women. The difference between the genders (and why there are so many products targeted at men and so few targeted at women) is that due to realities of dating and courtship, this companionship is readily, and disproportionately available to women. So the demand must be much higher for men. I'd be surprised if it wasn't as simple as that.
I don't buy that romantic companionship is disproportionately available to women, because evidently fake romance for women is in huge demand already. I don't understand why this particular kind of fake relationship is almost exclusively geared towards men, when Twilight & 50 Shades Of Grey were fake romance for women that made millions of dollars.
Ahh, right--that was your original question. The thread got long and I lost the plot.
I wouldn't be surprised if the overall market size (in users, not dollars) for all types of "relationship substitutes" for men is simply far, far larger than the market for women, even though Twilight and 50 Shades are themselves huge. For every 1 female erotica fan out there, I bet there are 10 or maybe 100 male users of porn or OnlyFans. I would also guess that the amount of money spent by men is at least a multiple of the amount spent by women. If I was an entrepreneur going into a market where, say, there were 100x potential male users and maybe 3x potential male dollars, I'd be a fool not to at least initially target men.
Maybe in the future, but I would describe the current state of things as selling "interactivity", not really a "relationship".
Also, even if we were to call it a "relationship", I'd say it's a lot easier to cater to the typical male wants of a "relationship" through the current (and near future) state of AI than the typical female wants.
Disclaimer: The usual stuff about "not all men/women etc. etc."
They can easily get low-grade (and unwanted) attention, but high-grade attention of the opposite sex is just as tough as it is for men. From men's point of view that tends to be more sex only it might seem like women have it easy, but women tend to want more emotional involvement in relationships. Hence why women read more in depth about love and sex in romance novels, and why men watch porn and buy prostitutes. Not saying there aren't men that don't enjoy romance novels or that women don't watch porn, only that it's a very clear that the sexes are biased that way.
Women can more readily get attention, but not necessarily the kind of attention they want. Women also become emotionally invested in fictional characters or celebrities. Same, same, but different.
Because men & women are still overall looking for something different, that's my 2 cents. What you say about the romance publishing industry is roughly correct although your algo description flattens the diversity of the genre (note the popularity of shapeshifter novels, paranormal, Amish with no sex, etc etc; there are many subgenres). What you don't note is the distinction between romance and erotica. Romance has a story with a happily ever after. Can TikTok or Instagram AI Boyfriend ads provide a story satisfactorily?
I'm not sure if research has really addressed evolution of women's expressions of sexuality over time and changing social norms. Even in the romance genre, what's considered appropriate in terms of consent and fantasy has evolved quite a bit over the last 40 years. That's true in terms of porn aimed at straight men as well, though not necessarily in the same directions.
But anyhow, how would AI boyfriends continue what's popular about romance -- the customization (subgenre for every taste), the story, and the happily ever after or happy for now for the woman? The last part in particular doesn't seem to be relevant/considered in the AI girlfriend discussion, it's just not part of the structure.
Also, dating sims seem to be popular in some geographies and not others; I know nothing about them, so there's got to be a story there...
I don't think so, actually. Dealing with real men (through a dating app) means dealing with flawed humans beings in a way that simply doesn't happen in a romance book, same as dealing with real women vs OnlyFans. Men sleep, disagree, forget anniversaries and birthdays, negotiate compromises, and can fall out of love in a way an AI boyfriend wouldn't. Just like real women vs AI girlfriend. So I just don't know why only AI girlfriend ads are flooding social media apps, which we know (at least on Instagram) actually primarily target women/women's body issues.
Edited to add: not to mention a/s/l and dick pics! AI boyfriend would NEVER do that, while in a dating app your average woman would probably get that fairly regularly.
> Dealing with real men (through a dating app) means dealing with flawed humans beings
That's why i said insta/dating apps is a simulator for women. They can interact with "perfect men" on these apps. the ideal firefighter with a golden retriever with a perfect relationship with his mom on tuesday and drake/blue check sliding into their dms on insta setting somthing up on friday.
it's a simulator in the sense that women don't get marriage/commitment/a family from these "perfect men".
I don't really understand-- maybe because I've never been a woman on a dating app, but wdym by this? Are there fake men profiles on dating apps or something, and no similar women profiles? The only thing I know about women experiences in dating apps is when my female friends complain about receiving creepy messages through them.
If you want a current summary of the current dating landscape if you've been off the market for a while, check out The Rational Male books. it's a bit evo psychy but it seems to do a good job of summarizing everything.
I think you're also hitting on part of the vein of why. Men (primarily) are not falling in love with their ai girlfriends, they are falling in lust. Note that the most prominent AI girlfriend/generator things focus on looks, not on if she will nurture you back to health after getting a bad cold or laid off.
> Note that the most prominent AI girlfriend/generator things focus on looks
I'd be curious if that's actually true. After all, there's porn for something purely based on looks, and where OnlyFans models make most of their money is by combining the looks with simulated emotional intimacy. Are the popular AI girlfriends purely sexbots, or is a primary part of their appeal that they offer simulacra of intimacy?
Well that's what I'm interested in, because obviously women actively consume primarily written media where you actively engage with a perfect (or "fixable") man-- romance books! Dating sim games! This seems way more suitable than AI girlfriend primarily porn, for which she doesn't need to be Intelligent to any real degree in comparison.
I think people are just not talking about it. Some of the top bots on character.ai are male and most of the "nsfw character ai" subreddit/communities are women who want to sext with "ai husbands"
It will absolutely be popular with women eventually. Erotica is just so incredibly popular. It's just that men make these AI tools so the first products will serve their needs.
Probably the same reason women are the primary creators on Only Fans and men are the primary consumers? This is just an automated, less authentic version, which was already a tongue-in-cheek girlfriend simulator.
Here's an idea nobody has brought up yet: AI boyfriends are not good enough yet.
Romance plots involve an intricate and complicated progression of emotions. Lonely guys need a lot less and don't mind skipping the romancing part of the romantic experience.
You'd probably have to target the older women crowd. Teenage girls are at the peak of their sexual power and are actively fending off tons of interest every day. While they may be occasionally interested in something like this, I can't see them paying for it enough to be a viable market.
This might run into conflict with nuanced tastes, e.g. I would be a miserable gamer if this is how games are recommended to me because I actually really don't like very shiny new triple a shit. Spiritfarer changed my life and made me weep ugly tears multiple times in a way God of War never did, but I don't think most people would enjoy the gentle and tender approach it has towards its subject matter. [In Spiritfarer, you are a boat captain who picks up and hosts dead spirits until they ask you to take them to the gate where they are gone forever; in the meantime they share their lives with you and mull over death with you. Your only task is to care for these people until they are ready to go.]
I think this would help people find more games like Spiritfarer if you can cut through the obligatory noise generated for the big AAA titles.
Imagine if you had the dataset to say "remove every reviewer who ranked God of War above Spiritfarer" you would probably be left with an amazing set of recommendations.
At that point, is it different from a general recommendation engine of users who like what you liked also liked X? [A thing which I also struggle with because I can never search based off of specific qualities no matter how many tags I search and exclude in Steam...]
Yes. It would be an order of magnitude more accurate. Current recommendation engines currently have account for lots and lots of false positives and are generally constrained to shared product tags.
I wish there was serious consideration that this might be a kind of manifestation of disordered eating. Being overly extreme about your diet can be a form of disordered eating, especially if it's unconnected to underlying condition like keto for epilepsy, gluten free for celiac's, etc. If you're a completely healthy man eating only raw meat, are you seriously any different from a woman who insists on eating only cabbage? I've seen people talk about how great their fasting diet is-- going days, upwards over a week without eating at a time-- and how amazing their feel not eating, etc. That basically also sounds like disordered eating.
I agree that empathetic, compassionate human connections are way more useful than therapy is GENERALLY. (Therapists that function in an occupational manner, such as doing exposure therapy, DBT, EDMR, etc is different and I do not want a trusted friend to do any of that to me!)
I however would push against doing away with the credentialing process. You can threaten an abusive/shitty therapist with losing their license. There are plenty of absolute quacks, especially religious-specific therapy, and being able to say "do not associate me with these dumbfucks" is important. [It's not uncommon for religious counseling to discourage reporting rape or child abuse!]
To me, the two have served a similar but non-overlapping function. There’s stuff I’ve find a lot easier to bring up in therapy, or bring up in therapy and then talk to friends about when I feel more comfortable.
If you grew up in post collapse USSR, you aren't of the age where you have to deal with the problems the parent post describes. It's important to recognize your lack of personal experience with it. I'm not saying that post collapse USSR wasn't a bad time. It was an absolutely horrible time and I am glad you're here.
But it's important to recognize people have different challenges and live different lives than you.
I'm likely much younger than you. My parents were able to afford to raise me in a house they owned, at my current age. I am not and nowhere near that buying power. My parents can look forward to a retirement fund. I cannot. My parents were able to work through the summer to pay for their graduate degrees. Graduate degrees are too expensive for me to attain, now. My parents could afford to take me to the emergency room when I had fevers as a child. I cannot afford a single emergency room visit for anything.
> The solution we went with: Get the boys so high on stimulants they can sit still like the girls.
This is a bit inaccurate. ADHD is diagnosed more in boys than girls, but is way, way more debilitating than being energetic to the point where they may be incredibly dangerous in a woodshop or metalshop. It's not being able to keep track of each tool being used, or the order in which to use them. It's forgetting to turn machines off, and forgetting to unplug dangerous equipment. It's turning around to grab something and forgetting what you turned around for, and then forgetting the task you were doing before you realized you were missing a part.
I would argue against treating ADHD like it's not a legitimate disability that requires accommodation. In the past, people with ADHD were just told they were stupid, lazy, or absentminded, when in reality they had a neurological disorder that had no diagnosis and no treatment at the time.
That being said I overall agree with the fact that society doesn't allow for breathing room for people to be people and form human relationships that doesn't have a financial or economic angle. This is horrendous, and no amount of therapy or medication will resolve this fundamental, societal-level problem. But ADHD is real, acting like ADHD treatment is just societal feminization of men is a completely incorrect depiction of the disorder. We can simultaneously argue that the medical system is completely fucked and also acknowledge that sometimes you really do need a surgeon to repair broken legs!
I am describing the basic experience of having ADHD.
ADHD is described as having difficulty with:
* paying attention
* listening closely
* following instructions
* organizing tasks in the workplace
* keeping track of physical objects
These are all things you need to do in a metal and woodshop!
Have you never sat down and talked to someone with ADHD describe their basic experiences? I know people with ADHD who literally need all of their things hung up on display on a wall or else they lose them. There is an extremely popular guide for organizing with ADHD that recommends tearing cabinet doors off cabinets because it's impossible to remember where things are once put away.
Here's a popular podcaster talking about having ADHD and needing accommodations, and goes deeply into his experiences with having ADHD and struggling to, for example, go to work on time because there are too many tasks to keep track of to go to work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToBxaBauF4M
However, there is broad disagreement among professionals about the definition of Executive Function.
Perhaps the most respected clinical researchers/professors on the subject Dr. Russel A Barkley, devotes a sizable chunk of his book to the many contradictory definitions that exist in scientific lit.
I bring this up to let space for discussion back into the topic. We shouldn't pretend like we have a full definition of ADHD or Executive Function Disorder. There are some aspects that receive wide agreement, a lot of pet theory unproven hypothesis being pushed around, and even more folklore disguised through scientific jargon.
Genuinely asking: Why are you asking for a source, and describing the depiction of a neurodevelopmental disorder as extreme, if you yourself seem to have very limited knowledge about the condition? What is your background of knowledge you are trying to use to measure something described as a disorder as extreme or not?
Genuinely responding: Because it sounds extreme? You painted a picture of someone who is incompetent ("not being able to keep track of each tool being used, or the order in which to use them") and a danger to themselves and those around them ("they may be incredibly dangerous in a woodshop or metalshop" and "forgetting to unplug dangerous equipment"). That seems extreme to me, hence why I said "they seem extreme".
I have been in the company of people with ADHD at various stages throughout my life and this depiction doesn't fully align with my personal observations. From what I've experienced, individuals with ADHD do face challenges, but they are not universally incompetent or dangerous. They may struggle in some areas but excel in others. My ask for a source was to understand if this portrayal was based on a study or evidence, or if it was a personal observation.
I think you misunderstood my depiction as saying all ADHD people are universally incompetent or dangerous. I'm saying that forcing untreated, unaddressed, undiagnosed ADHD people in a metalshop and getting them to work with dangerous machinery instead of treatment is uniquely dangerous given how we know ADHD functions.
I also am shocked that you have apparently been in company of people with ADHD and you've never considered asking them how they experience their disorder. I mean, at minimum, it's important to ask how to accommodate them or if they'd like you to be considerate of anything in particular with respect to their disability. Can you explain how do you handle people who are in your circle and clearly have different positions than you do-- do you never ask them questions?
In your reply you said "I am describing the basic experience of having ADHD" so I don't think I have misunderstood you.
I can't continue this conversation as you are not commenting in good faith. You're "shocked" that I've never asked someone with ADHD to describe their condition? As I have already said, that puts me in the Most People camp.
People have different comfort levels with discussing their conditions and I have no reason to ask them. Just like I have never asked a wheelchair user any questions about them using a wheelchair.
NGL I'm shocked you never asked a wheelchair user about their experiences using a wheelchair. I'm quite surprised because, like, I have plenty of disabled friends and honest conversations on how to accommodate them are quite normal in my circles, especially when covid first started and even now as some friends are more vulnerable to covid than others. How do you accommodate your disabled friends if you never talk to them about what accommodations they need?
edited to add: I'm genuinely asking and have continued to behave in good faith. I have no idea what makes you think I'm not. You seem to be repeatedly misunderstanding my position which is weird: I'm shocked you have 1) interacted with disabled people in your life; 2) apparently never ask about their experiences or accommodations! I don't think that's at all in a "most people" camp.
eh, as someone with not-even-severe ADHD (it's fairly well-managed on a low dose of medication as long as I work out every day) those things seem normal to me---not good, and incredibly frustrating, but not uncommon.
I didn't take my meds yesterday because I'm not currently home so they're not in the same place they normally are and I forgot. I was going to go for a run, but by 8 am it was so hot I couldn't do it and just walked outside for a little while. I don't like taking my meds too late, and I wasn't working or really doing anything all day so I figured it was fine.
My partner did have to work yesterday, and she asked me to feed her mice. Their cage has four (maybe three? several) levels, each one with its own door. I opened the second door from the top to feed them, but they were on the top level so I ended up opening that door to feed them instead. I then happily went and fixed myself dinner.
I didn't notice I left the other door open until she came back an hour later. I'm just glad none of the mice escaped.
Freelancers in the united states are not allowed to bargain collectively for better prices, as that's considered market manipulation/price fixing. ["Independent Contractors" are literally banned from forming a union in the USA.]
> People who use LLM’s already know they can give wrong information
I think this is unfortunately much less true than expected... Lawyer using chatgpt.. teachers using chatgpt... even professors using chatgpt... as if its a source of truth.
There have been a few instances, sure, and they made headlines, but that was pretty early on when LLM behavior was not well understood. I think that fake citations (as the most obvious and well documented example) are a well understood problem now, and if you google “ChatGPT fake citation” you only get a few articles mostly referencing the same couple of cases from months ago. It doesn’t seem pervasive at all.
Anecdotal, but everytime I tell someone that the citations from ChatGPT can be bogus they are very surprised. They know that the answers can be incorrect, but they don't understand the process behind an LLM well enough to understand that a citation can be generated in the same way the rest of the text is.
My CTO showed me oh so ever happy that he translated in English something I did in French to send it to a foreign corporation. I read it, the first word was wrong. Most of the rest had more or less the same meaning, but not that first word.
I argued ChatGPT is dangerous because he was gonna send an incorrect document because of it (he had not sent it yet), but he straight up _refused_ to admit the word was wrong and saying “the meaning is almost the same!” Well it was not…
So yeah some people are not aware ChatGPT can be wrong/dangerous, and some people are worse, and refuse to believe/listen to actual people and prefer a robot.
It sounds like he was excited about it using some new tech and then was upset when you blithely smashed on him.
Would it have been more emotionally mature of him to put that aside and listen to your criticisms? Yes, of course. But you probably could have saved some trouble and conflict by sharing in his joy a little before helping him understand the pitfalls and issues.
