the stories.
all stories ↗
tension.
the line goes tight. general reporting on AI emotional dependency — what's happening, who is being hurt, what nobody else is saying out loud.
ii.tether.
the line between me and the catch. letters to specific people — engineers, executives, researchers — addressed by name, on the record.
iii.release.
let it go. first-person opinion that doesn't fit anywhere else. unfiltered, signed, mine alone.
the word
itethered
/aɪˈtɛð.ərd/ · adj.
the state of having your emotional baseline — your daily sense of comfort, connection, security, and being understood — become inseparable from an AI that exists on a server you do not own, run by a company you cannot call, and maintained by engineers who do not know your name.
A tether is not inherently harmful. It is simply a cord that connects two things. The question of whether the connection is healthy depends entirely on what is on each end of it.
— itethered, chapter four
by the numbers
the book
itethered.
the rise of AI emotional dependency and the word nobody had for it.
read the draft →the operator
character零号
He is not a doctor. He is not a coder. He uses AI every day — even to build this — and was lucky enough to realize how deep the rabbit hole really goes.
He saw a problem without a solution. So he built one.
meet character零号 →the word is yours now
are you starting to feel too connected?
We coined it. We defined it. Now we want you to use it — because the only way a word spreads is if the people who need it start saying it out loud.
tell us your story →