Idk how we’ve gotten away from such a natural human experience, but everyone knows damn well that the happiest children are out playing soccer with their friends in a field or eating lunch together at a park bench, and not holed up in their room watching endless YouTube.
LLM friends have the same energy to me as video game progression: it's a homeopathic version of a real thing you need, social activation and achievement respectively. But like homeopathy, you don't actually get anything out of it. The placebo effect will make the symptoms of your lack feel better, for awhile, but it will never be solved by it, and because of that whatever is selling you your LLM girlfriend or phony achievement structure will never lose you as a customer. I'm suspicious of that.
A soccer ball can't (usually) spy on you to sell you stuff, though, is the thing…