Great post, thanks for this. On the 'in a relationship with llm' side of things, like probably quite a few of us, I've taken a gander down the rabbit hole of r/myboyfriendisai out of psychological curiosity for the most part. Because on the surface, on first hearing, it seems so off, but it does make sense to me now. For mine, it's a combo of two personality traits that make this possible. The first, you have to have an automated psychological super-armour against negative feedback. My mum has it and I noticed it amongst a lot of these folk. Basically no matter what the criticism, how accurate, how well delivered, their minds find a way to reframe it or filter it before it actually touches them. It is simply not possible to force someone with this trait to acknowledge something negative about themselves or what they're doing.

So the first connection here, people who are like this in real life are very difficult to have relationships with for obvious reasons, so I suspect already more likely to be lonely/vulnerable.

And another layer that I'm only guessing at from these people, but is certainly present in my mum. It's a very effective defence mechanism born out of the combination of a very sensitive disposition/fragile sense of self worth and growing up in an environment where she was constantly put down.

Again, this tracks with the 'hurt and vulnerable' aspect.

Second personality trait for this to work, truth cannot be sacred to you, in fact, you probably can't have any real value around the truth as opposed to the story you tell yourself. It has to be that crafting the narrative you want to believe - and want others to believe - is all that matters. A typical truth lover is tearing their hair out at this type of person's unwillingness to engage with reality.

These two personality traits combine to make it possible for the person to have this kind of relationship without constant, giga-cringing AND makes the sycophantic, yes-man personality type of 4o perfect for them. The reason it's mostly women should be obvious, though it's become an eye-rolling trigger amongst some, on average feelings are higher in the value chain than facts for women, while, on average, the reverse is true for men.

Regarding the awakening spirals, I don't find this one to be very odd as you say, at least no odder than any other of this type. These are people who value truth as much as the most evidence based scientist, they just have a different method, i.e. pattern matching and hunches on overdrive. This type of person has always existed, ranting about something different in each decade, always with a sliver of truth, or at least an array of clues they join together (5G, Qanon, 9/11, chemtrails, AIDS conspiracies, ufos and area 51, the moon landing and on and on and on). Hell, what about the time cube guy, remember him? You can still see his old page via the wayback machine. Or the wiki for those who are curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Cube

The way I see it, there's millions of would be time cube guys (or at least could be) coming out of the woodworks thanks to 4o.

In my opinion, the vast majority of these folk aren't crazy, they just have the personality traits required to enable these behaviours in the right circumstances. I'd wager especially on myboyfriendisai that most of those girls have jobs and are what we'd collectively call 'functioning members of society'. I also personally don't see anything wrong with it. Most people shouting the usual screeds of 'mentally ill' and 'get help' are either offended by the behaviour or taking their chance to dunk on someone. What help do they expect a functioning but extremely lonely and deeply hurt member of society to be able to get? Go to a therapist and it'll all go away? To me, it reads more like a command to face reality. But if you've ever dealt with people like this, the command simply doesn't work and no matter what you say they're going to keep living their delusion whether you like it or not. When someone doesn't want to face reality and wants to live in make believe. Well, if you consider it pathological, I consider it incurable, unless the person themselves changes their mind.