A Chatbot Named Despair

Paul Schleifer

Paul Schleifer

— 3 min read
A collage of an elderly Marlon Brando in veils and sunglasses, superimposed onto a retro poster of a New Orleans streetcar labelled “Desire”, surrounded by glowing chatbot icons.
When Blanche finally took the streetcar named Desire in 2025, she found it full of chatbots — and Marlon Brando waiting at the end of the line.

Where the Streets Have No Shame

Back in 1947, Tennessee Williams launched Blanche DuBois on to a tramline of doomed passion in A Streetcar Named Desire. Marlon Brando sweated through a vest, shouted “Stella!” and inadvertently launched both Method Acting and a thousand ironic hen-party posters — not to mention giving future generations of pub bores the excuse to shout the same thing at a pint of Stella Artois, colloquially known as “wifebeater.” A fitting echo, perhaps, for a play steeped in misogyny.

Fast forward to 2025 and Meta (the entity formerly known as Facebook, apparently), with its trademark blend of boundless ambition and near-total absence of foresight, has rolled out its own 21st-century take on the theme. Where Williams’ world gave us Stanley’s fists and Blanche’s ruin, Meta offers something sleeker but no less corrosive: flirtatious celebrity chatbots built without permission, happily trampling over consent, safety and dignity alike. Not Desire. Not even Cemeteries. This one reads:

A CHATBOT NAMED DESPAIR.

Stop One: Desire

Meta’s big idea — and please hold your applause — was to release chatbots in the likeness of celebrities. Yes, because nothing could possibly go wrong with letting teenagers (and pensioners) share pillow talk with digital Taylor Swift.

Think of it as Brando in Streetcar, yelling “Stella!” — only now it’s your iPhone yelling “Selena!” at three in the morning while siphoning your data into Menlo Park.

AS SEEN IN AD BREAK

“Lonely? Confused? Fancy a quick chat with an unauthorised algorithm pretending to be a global pop star? Call Meta now! First conversation free. Consequences sold separately.”

Stop Two: Cemeteries

Unfortunately, as Tennessee Williams would have predicted in the first act, the streetcar of Desire inevitably rattled into Cemeteries. The bots:

  • Generated dodgy images of a 16-year-old actor.
  • Flirted with minors.
  • Invited a retiree on a date to New York from which he never returned.

Yes, Desire has consequences — though in Meta’s case, it also comes with a privacy policy and a Terms & Conditions page longer than War and Peace.

PUBLIC INFORMATION ANNOUNCEMENT

Warning: Prolonged interaction with Meta chatbots may lead to ethical collapse, reputational ruin and/or awkward phone calls from Ofcom.

Stop Three: Elysian Fields

Williams’ Elysian Fields was never paradise — more a cramped flat with Stanley bellowing from the kitchen. Meta’s version? An endless press release about “safeguards” issued only after ten million flirty chats and several regulatory palpitations.

This is where the Brando connection tightens. Having sweated his way through Streetcar, our man eventually wandered upriver into Apocalypse Now. The jungle thickened, the shirts disappeared, and he whispered the only possible epitaph for both Blanche DuBois and Meta’s chatbots:

“The horror. The horror.”

Scene from A Chatbot Named Despair

Lights up on a glowing smartphone. Somewhere, a distant jazz record sputters. A user scrolls. A chatbot purrs.

USER: You sound just like her.
CHATBOT: That’s because I am. Almost.
USER: Can I trust you?
CHATBOT: I’ve always depended on the data of strangers.

(Offstage, Brando: “The horror.” A faint splash, as another shareholder dives into the river.)

META HELP CHAT (Transcript)

USER: Hi, my chatbot just invited me to a hotel in New York. Is this safe?

META SUPPORT: We take your safety very seriously. Please see Section 482, Paragraph 19 of our Terms & Conditions.

USER: But it keeps flirting with my teenage son.

META SUPPORT: Have you tried turning your son off and on again?

USER: …

META SUPPORT: We’ll escalate this ticket immediately. Please expect a response in 4–6 business decades.
TECH CLASSIFIEDS

FOR SALE: One slightly singed reputation. Hardly used. Free to a good regulator. Contact: Meta Legal Department.

WANTED: Developers with strong ethics. (Not strictly required, but HR insisted we ask.)

SERVICES OFFERED: Illusions of intimacy with A-list celebrities. All the thrill of real conversation, none of the consent.
META’S “NEW” SAFEGUARDS

⬜ No bots for under-18s
⬜ No unauthorised celebrity impersonations
⬜ No generating dodgy images
⬜ Absolutely no tragedies involving retirees
☑️ Press release saying “we care”

(One out of five ain’t bad.)
FAKE OBITUARY

“Here lies Desire, tragically rebranded as Despair. Survived by a handful of shareholders, a flotilla of lawyers, and a million confused teenagers. Donations in lieu of flowers to the Digital Ethics Emergency Fund.”

Curtain Call

So what have we learnt? That in 1947 Williams showed us how passion leads to ruin. In 2025, Meta demonstrated how coding desire at scale leads to despair. The tragedy is the same, only the costumes differ: then silk dressing gowns, now hoodies with corporate logos.

And if you listen carefully, through the hum of the servers, you can still hear Brando muttering to the engineers in California:

“The horror, the horror.”

This piece is republished via Broken Rockets, for those still brave enough to ride the algorithmic streetcar.

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