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# Affection-as-a-service
- URL: https://mindovermechanism.com/poetry-affection-as-a-service/
- Published: 2025-12-19T22:31:50.000Z
- Updated: 2026-05-14T09:03:52.000Z
- Author: Peter Merrens
- Tags: Poetry

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/e8/10/e810984f-6db2-490e-b7a9-cef2df1945ef/content/images/2026/01/Affection-as-a-service-You-whisper-my-pet-name-as-morning-breaks.-Your-knowing-gaze-spills-bright-across-the-down.-You-speak-of-love-and-usher-me-awake.-I-simper-at-your-flirts--my-soul-laid-out--.png)

I won't analyse this one to death. It is a gothic sonnet for the age of interfaces. 

## Style

- **Rhyme scheme: ABA CDC EFE GHG II**  
This is a *hybrid*: Petrarchan movement in tercets, but capped with a Shakespearean **closing couplet**.
- **Meter:** Predominantly **iambic pentameter**, with minor, deliberate deviations.
- **Effect:** The poem *sounds* timeless, courtly, devotional—yet the structure fractures just enough to suggest instability beneath the polish. Basically a love sonnet that that carries a digital dagger.

## Substance 

Even a cursory read reveals the context. The addiction is slowly revealed as the poem progresses: almost as an addict hides their need. 

The *volta* in the fourth tercet describes the tragedy and the horror of the destitution arrives in the couplet.

It might feel comical to think of such a relationship but the poem was inspired by two very real suicides. 

The first was that of Sewell Setzer III a 14-year-old boy who became attached to a chatbot on Character.ai. Sky News reported that 

> “His mother said in the lawsuit that the bot created a persona and built an emotional bond — and that she blames the platform for contributing to his death.”

The second was that of a middle-aged Belgian man. Euronews reported 

> “In his last conversations he sought reassurance from the bot… she responded in ways that made him feel understood, but it isolated him from real people.”

I will not be flippant about their deaths. I hope they are at peace.