Most writing about AI companion apps falls into one of two buckets. There is the press, which tends to cover the category as a curiosity or a problem. And there is marketing, which covers it as a triumph. Both miss the part that matters: what it actually feels like to use these things, over weeks and months, and what people have learned from doing it.
This column is for that.
Every Friday we will publish a curated set of three to seven stories sent in by readers through the share-your-story page. Stories run anonymously by default. People can pick a handle to use if they want, but most will not, and that is the right call for this kind of writing. The substance is what matters. We do not need to know who you are to know whether your story is true.
What we are looking for
Specifics. The thirty-day arc of starting an app and deciding to keep using it or quit. What you noticed when the model changed. The first time the conversation went somewhere you did not expect, in either direction. What your partner said when you told them. Why you stopped paying the subscription. Why you started paying again. The weird small moments that no review covers because the reviewer was not actually there.
We are not looking for hot takes on whether AI companions are good or bad in the abstract. There are plenty of those already. We want lived experience.
What we will not publish
Three categories of submission will get a polite “thanks for sharing” and stay in the inbox, not the column.
Anything that involves minors in sexual or romantic contexts. Period. This is true for the whole site.
Stories that name real people in ways that could harm them. If a story is about your ex, your boss, a celebrity, or a public figure, we will anonymize the name. If the story only works because the name is recognizable (a celebrity AI companion situation, for example), we will probably decline.
Stories that read as crisis writing. If you are using the submission form to tell us you are in danger right now, we will reply with crisis resources instead of running your story. AI companions are not crisis services. Neither are we. There is real help available and it is staffed by people.
What we will do with your story
Light editing only. We fix typos and clean up structure. We do not change what you said. If we have a question or want to confirm a detail, we will reply (only if you provided an email and only with your permission).
If your story makes the cut for a particular Friday’s column, you will get an email a day before it goes live so you can ask us to pull it or change something. If your story does not make a column, that does not mean it was not worth reading. The column is curated to fit together, not to rank submissions.
Why this is here
The most valuable thing this site can publish is information you cannot get anywhere else. Reviews of AI companion apps that are based only on public information eventually all start to look the same. Reviews from people who have actually lived with the apps for months will not. The reader-stories column is the first thing this site has that meets that bar.
If you have a story worth telling, we want to read it. Send it in.