Opinion ‘Fictosexuals’ love and marry fictional characters. They are more honest, perhaps, about the nature of romance

Here’s the synopsis for a great romantic drama: A relatively shy, hard-working man falls in love with a pop star. They meet online, fall in love and decide to get married. But the world and their families can’t accept the union. They are from different worlds, after all. He’s just a regular guy and she is — here comes the twist — a piece of digital and robotic fiction. Despite what seems like the most insurmountable of divides — between the organic and inorganic, life and not-life — Akihiko Konda is managing to make his marriage work. In 2018, the Japanese “fictosexual” tied the knot with Hatsune Miku, a computer-synthesised pop singer. He has recently become a spokesperson for others like him.

It is easy to laugh at Konda, or to think of the growing number of fictosexuals — people in love with fictional characters — as delusional. But they have probably cracked the secret of the fairytale romance. Isn’t all love delusional, after all? Don’t the subtle algorithms that govern social behaviour make people pretend to be someone other than they truly are? Dress well on a first date; ask interesting questions for the first month; pretend to be a “sapiosexual” overcome by “wanderlust”; hide the insecurities and warts for the first few years. And, if all goes well, people make a commitment, sometimes for life. Then, so often, the fantasy ends. It turns out, that like all fiction, love and marriage are often acts of projection, of imagining qualities in a paramour that may or may not exist. That’s why, perhaps, marriage is a contract — with a penalty for violating its terms.

Advertisement

Since so much of romantic love begins in lies and ends in disappointment, what’s wrong in going into it with your eyes open? Konda’s relationship with Miku may be one-sided, and imaginary. But at least he knows it.

This editorial first appeared in the print edition on April 27, 2022 under the title ‘True love’.