Internet Boyfriends: A Symposium

Join our free event exploring masculinity, parasocial intimacy, platform culture and desire.

We'll consider questions including how internet boyfriend culture relates to heterofatalism, concerns about toxic masculinity, and the rise of AI chatbot relationships.

Featuring several speakers, the symposium is hosted by our Centre for Media, Arts and Creative Technologies. It's followed by a wine reception.

Speakers include:

• Harriet Fletcher (ARU), Desiring Dev: Stardom, Race and Dev Patel's Internet Boyfriend Persona
• Tanya Horeck (ARU), Soft Boys, Babygirls, Rodent Men: Platformed Masculinity and Why Tom Cruise Will Never Be an Internet Boyfriend
• Tina Kendall (ARU), “Your Own Personal Jesus”: Jesus as the Ultimate Internet Boyfriend in the Age of Generative AI
• Suzanne Leonard (Simmons University), Training “My Charlie”: Chinese Women and the Rise of the AI Boyfriend
• Diane Negra (University College Dublin): Midlife Heteropessimism and the Digital Celebrity of Benjamin Orr
• Victoria Pistivsek (King’s College), The Swift-ification of Travis Kelce: Protecting, Romanticizing, and Purifying White Male Hegemony
• Francesca Sobande (Cardiff University), Loustat </3: Immortal Internet Boyfriends and Inter-racial Intimacies
• Ciara Whelan (University College Dublin): Ireland’s ‘Internet Boyfriends’: The Importance of Queer Masculinities in Irish Celebrity Culture