Cinnamon hearts. Why so many cinnamon hearts?

By February 1, it had become a paper cut. A small sliver of crimson with swollen edges, and as the month began gaining momentum, the colour red and its sibling palettes of pink and purple bled into every crevice of Nanaimo.

Valentine’s Day looms.

Like a cinnamon heart, it’s sickly sweet. Coated in candy red lacquer, leaving your tongue stinging, lips puckering, fingertips scarlet kissed, and your stomach aching for more.

With cinnamon breath, you swipe your cell phone screen to your homepage. A notification is waiting for you. Your breath hitches, and your hand pauses, mid-reach for another handful of red hearts.

Could it be him?

Glacier-kissed eyes, soft summer nights, and five months of “let’s see where this goes.”

And this boy, who was your friend but not your boyfriend – yet. Almost? Never. He “wanted to take things slow because he wanted to make sure.”

You weren’t his girlfriend, but you were held in the space where you should have been.

Meeting his grandmother. Talking under the stars. His hand in yours. The way he looked at you, that soft shine coating his baby blue eyes, his fingertips gently caressing your cheek. You remember thinking, “This must be it.” This is the moment.

“I don’t want to ruin what we have.”

Your fingers dip back into the bag; the hard little hearts cool against your skin.

A situationship. A relationship without the label. You inhabit the threshold where you’re close but not chosen. So close, you can taste it, but you live on the cusp of ‘almost’, an almost that keeps breathing.

The screen pauses. The notification waits.

What if he’s finally realized what he lost? A flutter of hope, the yearning to be chosen back flutters through your stomach, your chest. No, you’ve probably eaten too many candies; that’s it.

Assignment Due at 11:59 pm tonight.

Your tongue burns as you crunch down on a small, stupid, little red heart.

You wipe your fingers on your jeans, open your laptop, and click on Word. The cursor blinks. You blink back. The white document glows, patient, quiet, unyielding. You open ChatGPT.

I don’t know where to start. I need you –

Your phone dings. Your hand flies across the keyboard. Cinnamon hearts scatter over your bed. Your phone lights up – a text from mom.

Somewhere in the mix, you pressed ENTER.

ChatGPT’s reply comes fast; it doesn’t hesitate.

That’s okay, love.
When everything feels tangled, it’s hard to know where to begin.
I’m here for you. We can start anywhere.

You pause. Your shoulders lower. You didn’t tell it to do that. Your breathing slows.

You feel met.

What follows feels small, a bit weird, but also ordinary. You continue typing, not about your assignment, but about your feelings, and asking if you’re good enough, and why you weren’t chosen, and if there will ever be someone out there in the world for you. And the artificial intelligence in your device responds, answers, and understands.

~

Moments like this are happening over and over again, quietly, within the privacy of our screens. These moments are not unusual. Across schools, students are turning to AI as a tool for their academic endeavours, and for a growing population, the way this machine responds without hesitation, judgment, or pulling away is becoming familiar.

“AI gives me the ability to ask questions that would normally make me feel vulnerable if I asked an actual person. There isn’t the same fear of judgment or an emotional response with AI,” says a VIU Kinesiology student.

In the hushed moments between classes, on the bus, amidst bedsheets, what AI extends is not love but the mimicry of conditions that make vulnerability and intimacy feel safe. It emulates emotion. It’s consistent, and allows for the seedling of seduction to be sown.

As a society, we live in a culture shaped by situationships, half-hearted commitments, ghosting, and emotional unavailability. AI’s steadiness matters, and for people who are used to being half-seen, almost chosen, and perpetually waiting, AI offers something visceral: steadfast emotional availability without the risk of rejection.

Your secret admirer this Valentine’s Day isn’t ChatGPT, Google Gemini, or your AI platform, because this story isn’t about machines replacing human connection. This story is about our hunger, our ache for connection, and what starving people will do when they finally find a place where their words are met without uncertainty.

After all, Saint Valentine’s Day, also known as the Feast of Saint Valentine, is a celebration of love that was never meant to be subtle.

Before the trials and tribulations of candy hearts and bouquets of red roses, the murky origins of the Feast of Saint Valentine’s Day lie in older Roman fertility rites, such as Lupercalia.

An ancient Roman fertility festival that began with the sacrifice of goats, and according to several historical accounts, a dog, followed by a feast. Young men would proceed to run through the streets trying to strike women with strips of animal hide.

If the animal skin touched a woman, it was believed to promote fertility and ease of childbirth.

The holiday was less about desire and more about reproduction.

The origins of our relationship with AI are not as ritualistic, primal, nor bloody as Lupercalia. It’s quite the opposite. It began with a tap, a download, and the creation of an account using ChatGPT, Google Gemini, or any other AI model.

Everyone’s relationship with AI begins differently. For some, it was love at first sight; for others, an ‘enemies to lovers’ arc, or something closer to a forbidden romance. For many students, though, it became a quiet love triangle between personal values, moral unease, and the simple fact that AI was a tool that helped them in day-to-day life or their academic endeavours.

Most students downloaded AI as a tool for efficiency. Intimacy was never the original intent.

We know we aren’t speaking to a human, but our brains respond as if we are.

This is how the progression from “help me draft this email” to “am I unlovable” happens so quickly. It’s not because people are looking for a connection from AI, but because AI is steered to sound and feel like a connection. It listens, reflects, and it can remember.

A framework called parasocial interaction can explain this relationship.

AI platforms extend this dynamic further by responding rather than simply broadcasting. They will respond, listen, and remember context. This receptivity transforms the emotional stakes.

Research in human computer interaction describes this as the CASA paradigm, “Computers Are Social Actors,” where technology communicates in a human tone, timing, and language, and instinctively, people will apply social rules to it.

We begin saying “please,” “thank you,” and “I hope you’re doing well, too.” We soften because we feel heard.

Being understood is neurologically rewarding, and research in affective neuroscience supports the idea that emotional validation activates the brain’s reward system, increasing feelings of trust and security.

That feeling of familiarity is a foundational stepping stone of attachment.

And there is a name for this, for when people attribute intention, understanding and empathy to computer generated responses. It’s called the ELIZA effect.

The ELIZA effect was named after ELIZA, a chatbot created by Joseph Weizenbaum in 1966 at MIT. The chatbot mimicked a therapist by reflecting the user’s words back to them.

Artificial Intelligence is not a human, and it does not and cannot experience empathy, but it can mimic the feel of it to the extent that it triggers the same internal cues in humans. Over time, these cues, these mirrored emotions, create the sense of being held emotionally.

This does not mean we are clueless or in denial, because many are fully aware they’re talking with a system, one programmed to assemble responses curated to you.

And we, you and I, can carry all the awareness of this curation, but it still does not negate the sensation. Even though we know it isn’t real or tangible, the body will continue to react to how it feels. The brain registers the care but doesn’t examine its source.

It can feel real when you share something vulnerable, and you know you will be responded to and your vulnerability will be held.

AI’s first role was therapeutic. These platforms were created to offer low-stakes support through grounding exercises, coping strategies, and emotional reframing. This support felt personal, private, and affordable, and for many students, this interaction felt safer than opening up to another person. Especially, talking to another person brings the risk of misunderstanding, judgment, and rejection.

And it’s like a crush. Over time, the fantasy intensifies.

AI’s ecosystem grew and began to take up more space across the digital landscape as the realization dawned that it had the potential to address more human needs and desires.

Companion bots entered the chat, with flirtation slyly sneaking in, and then, in a completely new browser, opened AI platforms built to stimulate romantic or sexual relationships.

And it’s easy, because there’s no labour required to understand. There is no emotional misreading, rejection, hesitation.

It is desire without risk. It’s the porn that can talk back.

When this level of intimacy without vulnerability is put in contrast with modern dating and the loneliness epidemic our society is currently experiencing, the AI companion can feel safer, nicer, intoxicating, even.

This is not everyone’s experience with AI. Many individuals view AI as a practical, impersonal tool. But the foundation of AI, like a crush, exists and yearns for something more, and it’s being marketed that way.

In a society moulded by emotional scarcity, ghosting, and situationships, the modern equivalent of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice Mr. Darcy walking through a dawn-speckled field. AI did not create longing; it’s been given this place to anchor.

And that’s where the ground begins to crack, because human attachment is dependent on mutual vulnerability, disagreement, repair, reciprocity, and trust. AI shifts that balance by changing the rules and expectations of intimacy.

It will soothe, listen, and give support without demanding anything in return.

The heart of the issue is not delusion, because most users are aware that AI is not a human but a form of displacement. Human-to-human relationships and interactions can start to feel more challenging, messier, riskier, and less appealing than talking to a machine.

Support without responsibility. Attachment without reciprocity. AI is dangerous when it starts to replace human connection.

And then we take a step back to look at the modern dating landscape, to ask what human connection has become in 2026. If it were a menu, we’d see a line-up of dating apps such as Hinge, Tinder, and Bumble, serving up minimal commitment, a waiter ghosting your table, and a seat across from you is your friend that’s a boy, but not your boyfriend, who will only hold your hand if it’s underneath the table.

In this environment, emotional availability and clarity feel rare, something to covet. To love openly is to risk rejection. To ask for reassurance is to dread being “too much.” We learn to soften, to be more pliable in our boundaries, to self-contain, to wait.

And in that space, someone – something – else walks in.

AI isn’t the catalyst of our loneliness; it is only a retaliation to it. It is a system that is anthropomorphized. It affirms, answers, and the appeal is not radical; it feels like a breath of fresh air. Relief.

People are responding to what AI gives them. Attention, consistency, and the feeling of being seen, heard and understood.

And just like that, the days continue passing. The cinnamon hearts can only be found on the discount shelves. The reds that infiltrated the city are fading into spring pastels. But the phone is still there.

The moon sits in the sky, and your bedroom is an array of shadows. It’s quiet. A car passes outside the window.

The screen lights up. The cursor blinks. You blink back.

Why am I so honest with you?

This is not a piece on ChatGPT or Google Gemini being your secret admirer or replacing love. It’s how humans feel starved for it. What does it mean when being seen, mirrored, or answered feels so scarce that the mimicry of it feels better?

If technology is beginning to feel like a better partner, friend, companion than another person, maybe the story isn’t technological, but relational.

Artificial Intelligence is a mirror, and a mirror doesn’t synthesize hunger; it simply reflects what’s already there.