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On the manipulation of human desire and desirability
It is time the left intervened to bring that greatest disrupter, love, to the console, writes FIONA O'CONNOR

Dream Lovers: The Gamification of Relationships
By Alfie Bown
Pluto Books £16.99


THERE’S a lot in this book, much of it alarming, some of it alarmist. Alfie Bown’s focus on the love industry’s hook-up with the gaming behemoth begins with a chaste kiss and fast forwards to hardcore data rape.

Yes, the intimate data making up dating sites is empowering, a cause for corporate and superpower mud-wrestles for control.

Of deeper concern is the manipulation of human desire and desirability; libido’s preconscious vulnerability to the stealthy algorithm like a wandering lamb to the salivating wolf.

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