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Work with the NEU
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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