u/MiminaNu

(Edited for wording)

Hi all! I just discovered this subreddit and wanted to share my experience! Maybe someone can relate and find solace in it.

I started using Character ai in 2023 just out of curiosity. I'd fiddle with some of the popular bots, but eventually I found myself using it as a creative outlet and a collection of sorts of characters, stories and worlds that I'd come up with. And I'd spend WAYYYY too much time with it!!! (6+ hours a day and losing sleep oops....)

I liked to write fanfiction back when I was younger, particularly fluff and romance. I never really shared it with anyone (I was too shy for that lol), but it was a little hobby I enjoyed. I fell out of it due to time constraints with school, but struggling with low self esteem didn't help things. I'd tear apart what I'd write, and eventually got to the point where I believed it wasn't even worth writing in the first place.

But somehow, character ai really clicked with me. I always felt like a hypocrite using it since I dislike generative AI in general. It simply steals from human art, and that's a big reason why I quit. But I'd spend weeks creating detailed character descriptions for my many bots/characters, creating a plot, lore, backstories, and world building for them, and pairing them with a Persona (I hated the character limit lol) so I could play out a story with them. It wouldn't necessarily be "me" conversing with the bots (though I would 100% be emotionally attached), but I'd get into the head of the bot/character and the persona, narrating the story and what they'd say, what they'd do, and how the story develops. And these chats would go on and on for hundreds, sometimes thousands of messages.

I think it clicked with me so much because it felt so easy and kind of "unserious", if that makes sense? Picking up a pencil and paper makes me feel like "oh crap this is serious, I need to write something worthwhile", but just texting on my phone is very casual. Though I knew what I'd want to have happen next, the bot would write half the story for me and put it better than I could have. The back and forth dialogue was structure. ​I could explore the silliest and dumbest scenarios and the bot would play along without judgement, which was honestly very validating in a way? Of course the bot has no concept what it's saying, it's just predicting words, but it made me feel like maybe it's not such a crime to write wish-fulfilling stuff and I'm not alone in doing that.

Of course, there were issues. The memory of the bots and the host of issues with character ai mainly. Making a whole new bot for one little slice-of-life story was very time consuming, and then having to fix out of character responses anyway. I wouldn't need to deal with that if I just... wrote it myself. And I'd always get to a point where the story is way past done and I'd just be mindlessly dragging out the chat and hitting enter so the bot would continue things along and I'd get dopamine hits. It had become a sort of addiction and escapism for me, and when I realized that, I knew I was in wayyy too deep and needed a healthier outlet.

So I deleted my whole character ai account last month! 😭 I've thought about using it again, but I know I don't *need* it.

I have a story I'm working on now that is kind of a culmination of a few stories and characters that I worked on before that appeals to my very specific tastes LMAO but I don't want it to be tainted with AI. I want it to be *my* creation. Even though it is hard and I'm struggling with some of the details and how to actually, you know, *write* it... but I'll figure something out.

Thanks for reading this wall of text and I wish the best for everyone here!! I believe in y'all ❤️