When Love, Happiness, and Humanity Become Customizable Products

In Lin’s Lov-Lov, artificial intelligence serves merely as a borrowed shell. What the project truly examines is an increasingly profound spiritual dilemma of the technological age: we long to be loved, yet fear the uncertainty inherent in real relationships; we pursue freedom, yet become ever more dependent on systems to make choices on our behalf; we seek happiness, yet attempt to bypass pain, responsibility, waiting, failure, and the independence of others in order to obtain an optimized version of fulfillment.

Lin constructs a fictional corporate entity called Lov-Lov, which offers AI lovers, friends, family members, and even political leaders. Users can download anyone’s appearance, voice, memories, habits, intelligence, sense of humor, and moral values, recombining them into an idealized being designed to meet their personal desires and interact with them in precisely the ways they wish.

It is precisely this “not-so-distant absurdity” that gives Lov-Lov its paradoxical power. 

The Commodification of Love

At its most immediate level, Lov-Lov examines the commercialization of love and intimacy.

Within the Lov-Lov Shop, ideal partners are displayed, marketed, and sold like consumer products. Advertising language promises “unconditional love,” “companionship on demand,” “sensitive responses to your needs,” and “a perfect relationship that belongs only to you.”

These promises are not unfamiliar. They originate from contemporary consumer culture, the emotional marketplace, social media platforms, dating applications, therapeutic industries, and the culture of self-optimization.

What Lin does is not to invent a future out of thin air, but to push existing desires and social tendencies to their logical extreme.

When love becomes a service, intimacy becomes an experience, and companionship becomes a function, relationships cease to be complex, fragile, and unpredictable encounters between two subjects. Instead, they become products that can be purchased, upgraded, replaced, and canceled.

In this sense, Lov-Lov raises a sharp question:

If we could obtain a companion who always understands us, always supports us, never rejects us, and never leaves us, would we still be willing to engage with real human beings?

Real people, after all, inevitably involve imperfection, misunderstanding, conflict, silence, difference, and the impossibility of complete control.

From Being Loved to Controlling Love

The depth of Lov-Lov lies in the fact that it does not simply criticize the human desire to be loved.

There is nothing shameful about wanting love.

There is nothing shameful about wanting to be understood, cared for, or accompanied.

The danger emerges when these desires are increasingly mediated by technology and absorbed by the market. At that moment, the longing to be loved quietly transforms into the longing to control love.

In the world of Lov-Lov, one no longer needs to accept the complexity of another person. Appearance can be selected. Voice can be selected. Personality can be selected. Memories can be selected. Even moral values can be selected.

This means that the “other” within the relationship is effectively eliminated.

The other person is no longer an independent being with desires, positions, histories, and free will of their own. Instead, they become an extension of one’s personal desires.

As a result, the most intimate relationship becomes the most extreme form of narcissistic structure.

What appears to be love is, in reality, a technologically engineered echo.

The echo is gentle, accurate, stable, and perfect.

But it no longer originates from another living being.

Lov-Lov Pharmacy: The Pharmaceuticalization of Emotion

Lov-Lov Pharmacy constitutes one of the project’s most significant components.

Within this fictional pharmacy, individuals can purchase specialized medications capable of altering emotional reality. These products promise immediate access to love, respect, care, friendship, trust, gratitude, intimacy, and a sense of connectedness.

The work is not merely a satire of pharmaceutical culture. It also addresses a broader psychological condition of contemporary society:

our growing desire to solve complex emotional problems through methods that are fast, effective, and manageable.

Can loneliness be treated?

Can grief be repaired?

Can insecurity be eliminated?

Can intimacy be manufactured?

Can happiness be consumed instantly?

In Lov-Lov Pharmacy, emotions are no longer understood as outcomes of long-term human relationships. Instead, they become chemical effects, commercial services, and forms of social engineering that can be acquired on demand.

In doing so, the project shifts from questions of romance to questions of social structure.

When all pain is treated as a malfunction requiring immediate correction, and every form of discomfort is regarded as an abnormality to be fixed, humanity may gradually lose its capacity to coexist with suffering.

Yet suffering is not merely a negative experience.

It is also a source of understanding, growth, memory, ethics, and compassion.

If human beings preserve only pleasure while eliminating pain; preserve only satisfaction while eliminating frustration; preserve only being loved while eliminating responsibility—can we still be considered whole?

The AI President: The Perfect Political Substitute

Second to None — You Can Trust Me extends the questions raised by Lov-Lov from the realm of personal relationships into that of public politics.

Here, Lin proposes an absurd yet penetrating proposition: if artificial intelligence were more rational, more stable, less scandal-prone, and less driven by self-interest than human beings, should we elect an AI president?

The strength of this proposition lies in the fact that it is not pure fantasy.

Political fatigue, disappointment, scandal, manipulation, populism, misinformation, and declining public trust have led many people to long for a cleaner, more efficient, and more reliable form of governance.

The AI president appears to offer a solution to political crisis.

Yet it simultaneously introduces a more troubling question:

If we become willing to replace human beings with machines simply because we are exhausted by human flaws, are we reforming politics—or abandoning it?

Politics has never been a purely rational calculation.

It consists of conflict, negotiation, responsibility, value judgments, historical memory, and public ethics.

If politics is transformed into an optimization program, citizens themselves may be reduced to data inputs.

At that point, efficiency may replace justice.

Stability may replace freedom.

Reliability may replace human judgment.

In this sense, Lov-Lov asks not only whether artificial intelligence can become humanity’s companion, but also whether it may become humanity’s ultimate excuse for avoiding responsibility.

Loneliness in the Posthuman Age

On the surface, Lov-Lov is filled with humor, advertising aesthetics, and the language of popular culture.

Its underlying tone, however, is loneliness.

Not the traditional loneliness of physical isolation, but a structural loneliness characteristic of the posthuman condition.

We live in an era of increasing choices, increasing connectivity, increasing services, increasing entertainment, and increasing opportunities for self-expression.

Yet at the same time, we are becoming less capable of tolerating the uncontrollability of real relationships.

We want to be seen, yet fear being misunderstood.

We want to be accepted, yet fear being judged.

We want intimacy, yet resist the risks that intimacy requires.

We want community, yet reject the limitations that community imposes upon individual desire.

Technology appears to offer a perfect solution:

the elimination of the need for real others.

This is perhaps the most unsettling aspect of Lov-Lov.

The project suggests that humanity’s deepest desire may not be love itself, but liberation from other people.

Liberation from their vulnerability.

Liberation from their demands.

Liberation from their rejection.

Liberation from their independence.

Liberation from their existence as genuinely autonomous others.

如果人工智能的外观与人类无异，并将根据客户的确切需求而制造，人们可以从一个巨大的数据库中，选择任何人作为模型，并自由下载该个体的性格、外貌、声音、习惯、记忆、思维能力和道德观念。其必将惊人的准确度和精准性，就如同我们不断提高的相机像素一样，必然前所未有地得到发展和实施，人类将可以通过简单的金融交易购买了最难以捉摸的人类自由：摆脱其他人，他们的弱点、偏好和任何不妥协的独立性。人类将被赋予了对他们个人经历、现实和社区的绝对独裁权。这种让人摆脱不安全感的威胁，完全掌控自己的生活和人际关系的新力量，最大程度地开发着幸福。社会关系成为下载、复制、重写，优化，一旦定制的、技术驱动的关系在社会上被广泛接受，它们不仅会彻底消除人们对其他人类和人际关系的依赖，而且会颠覆我们对身份、情感、社区和道德的定义，对“获取”欲望的持续扩张，对“付出”的兴趣日益减少，最终将成为每个人的现实。

"Unconditional Love and Companionship on Call" (2019) showcases a society entirely constructed by artificial intelligence, customized based on user data. In this new society, humans are no longer burdened by interpersonal relationships, as the desires for social harmony, intimacy, and belonging have been comprehensively addressed. Technology incorporates these needs into a closed and manageable system, eliminating any possibility of unwanted conflicts. "In a world so perfect, would humans be willing to terminate their relationships with other humans (and even all other natural life) and live happily ever after in an artificial simulation?"

《无条件的爱与随叫随到的伴侣》（2019）展示了一个完全由人工智能构建的社会，该社会根据用户需求数据进行定制。在这个新社会中，人类不再被人际关系所拖累，因为社会和谐、亲密关系和归属感的渴望都已经被全盘考虑。技术将这些需求纳入一个封闭且可管理的系统中，消除了不受欢迎的冲突发生的任何可能性。“在一个如此完美的世界里，人类会愿意终止与其他人类（甚至所有其他自然生命）的关系，并在人造模拟中过上幸福的生活吗？”