Rule #32 Enjoy the Little Things

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Joi isn't a physical being. K is lonely and alienated from society, and to cope he buys a Joi AI. The relationship they have is real enough but in their love scene, Joi has to superimpose her image over a sex worker, Mariette, in order to give him the illusion that they are able to have physical intimacy. This is still not the real thing, and later he loses her when Joi's backup is destroyed. Worse, the next time he sees her, she is a thirty foot tall naked advertisement. In this moment, he is confronted by the truth of what Joi is; an artificial companion, a commodity, and she is not a real girl.

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Bianca is a sex doll. Lars is lonely and dysfunctional, so crippled by his anxiety that he can't interact with people, not even his family. He treats her like a girlfriend under the delusion shes a real woman. The relationship is never consummated physically.

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I would argue that Irene isn't real, in the fact that she barely speaks and is more like an idealized fantasy of a woman. Perfect and not real. She's also inaccessible because she 'belongs' to someone else, and their romance is chaste. The Driver also makes decisions for/about her without her input. It's like she's as much of a doll as Joi and Bianca.

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Holland March's wife is dead and he's become an alcoholic to cope with the pain of her being out of his reach. He's isolated and lonely, and the impossibility of their relationship is killing him.