Like most red-blooded American boys, from the beginning of middle school on, I was very interested in girls. Indeed, I spent pretty much the entirety of my teenage years trying to figure out how to get girls. I never did find a formula, but I was forever looking. For the most part, my days were filled with sports of every type, from scuba diving to motocross to baseball, football, golf, karate, the gym, etc. But the entire time, all of that, and school, was set against a mental backdrop of how to get girls, how to get a date…and, umm…more. That pretty much was it, and from what I could tell from my friends, that was pretty much normal. Some guys were more successful, some were less successful, but we were all basically in the same game.

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Image created by Vince Coyner.

But here’s the thing: For virtually all of us growing up (except those lucky few Casanovas), getting girls was always a challenge. I don’t mean a challenge that someone put you up to—although sometimes it was that—but rather that the entire process of getting girls was challenging. You might admire a girl from afar and practice what you’d say when you approached her, but then you’d chicken out. Or when you bumped into her around a corner, you somehow forgot how to speak English correctly. There’d be the nervousness, the dozen times you’d pick up the phone to call but hang up before you dial that last digit, and more.

Being a young man was often hard when it came to girls, but that was life. (It no doubt was hard to be a girl too, likely for different reasons, but I can’t really speak about that…).

You’ll notice I said was and not is. It might still be, but it’s different.

If you’ve ever seen the Joaquin Phoenix movie Her, you’ll have an idea where I’m going. In it, a lonely Theodor (Phoenix) strikes up a friendship with an Artificial Intelligence, Samantha, voiced by Scarlett Johansson. The friendship evolves into a relationship that seems to be everything Theodor wants, except that Samantha is an operating........

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