Elsa Angel Rose
The strawberry wife (Stawberrita) is cheating on her strawberry husband with her eggplant boss. She keeps saying she’s “working late,” but later gives birth to an eggplant baby, exposing the affair. In another scenario, blueberry is leaving raspberry to be with banana. It is just a couple of minutes into you scrolling through (Whichever social media platform) and you witness the hot AI fruit drama exploding on the mobile. Rich fruit vs poor fruit, fruit partner abandoning their spouses for better fruits and other whacky plots are the latest muse of social media. “These AI fruit love story videos pop up on my feed pretty often now, especially when I scroll through short videos for some time. Once you watch a few of them, the app keeps recommending similar videos again and again, so they become hard to avoid,” said a teenager from Margao, who requested anonymity. These vertical micro-dramas have more views compared to their human-produced counterparts. Shows like ‘The Summer I Turned Fruity’, ‘The Fruitpire Diaries’, and ‘Food Is Blind’ are AI-generated remakes of popular human produced shows such as ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’, ‘The Vampire Diaries’, and ‘Love Is Blind’. Pop Icons inclduzing Zara Larsson has openly spoke about her interest in such videos, she posted, “Sorry I can’t hang out today, I gotta see what’s happening with choclatina and strawberto.” She deleted this post after facing backlash for supporting such AI slop videos. These AI fruit dramas have millions and millions of views and even while you visit the comment section, its not bots or fake accounts but real human profiles which support the videos. The biggest AI fruit account so far is AI Cinema, creator of the parody AI series Fruit Love Island, which gained over 3.3 million followers on TikTok within just 10 days.
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CATCHY AND ADDICTIVE FRUIT LOVE STORIES “I think what attracts people the most is how realistic and emotional the videos feel even though the characters are fruits or random objects. The high-quality visuals, expressions, sound effects, and emotional storylines make the content entertaining and different from normal videos. The short length of videos also helps. I wouldn’t say I’m fully addicted to them, but it’s definitely easy to keep watching one after another without noticing the time,” said the teenager. Even if you are not spending hours searching for these videos and are not interested in them, the algorithm does it job and robustly pushes such content onto your feed. “Every time I open Instagram or even Facebook, I come across at least one AI fruit love story video on my feed. What surprises me is that this is not even the type of content I usually watch or search for, yet it constantly appears through recommendations and reels. This clearly shows how aggressively such content is being pushed on social media platforms because of its engagement. Even if a person is not interested in such videos, they still end up watching them repeatedly,” said Ambika Ashok Morajkar, a student writer and poet from Fatorda, Margoa.
THE BIZARRE AND ABSURD MESSAGING OF AI FRUIT VIDEOS
The plot of the vertical AI fruit videos often revolves around extra-marital affairs, cheating on spouses, heartbreak, and more. And the context for all the above situations is either the partner, often the woman, being poor, “so-called” ugly-looking, having some disease, or being the one cheating. People and online voices who fervently criticize such videos point out the misogyny, racism, class bias, and body shaming being sold to audiences ranging from children to adults in the most attractive and appealing way ever, precisely through the cliffhangers in each video, and the high-resolution audio and video. “Even at surface level these videos are deemed as cringe and absurd. The constant narrative and plot line around extramarital affairs, cheating, body shaming, misogyny may work towards normalising these narratives and ideas and the audience might ingrain it in their thinking without their knowledge, especially young audiences,” said Neha Laximan Gauns Gaunkar, a student from Corlim. While adults may recognize the absurdity of such videos, young kids who are exposed to them may not be able to do so. “Younger children do not have the required critical thinking skills to separate the absurdity from the message. Constant exposure to storylines centered on cheating and manipulation can subtly normalize these behaviors as standard ‘drama’ rather than serious relational issues. These types of videos also normalize constant body shaming, as well as the idea of a husband cheating on his wife because she is not “pretty” enough. Ironically, all of this is justified and presented as comical. Such narratives may harm a child’s perspective on beauty, relationships, and their own sense of self,” said Neha. The videos are also on the forefront of promoting toxic culture on the internet (which couldn’t be more toxic). “The fact that such content gains major popularity and entertainment value reveals a deeper reality about internet culture today. Many people consume and encourage negativity because controversial and toxic content spreads faster online. Instead of promoting empathy, respect, and awareness, these videos often turn serious issues into comedy for views and engagement. This reflects how social media algorithms and audience behaviour sometimes reward harmful content more than meaningful content,” said Ambika.
So, why are humans consumed by AI fruit lores? Anthropomorphic (making non-human things behave or feel like humans) characters, to be precise. “In simple terms, anthropomorphised AI are catchy objects because they activate the same ‘emotional brain’ humans use for real social connection. Our brain is wired for ‘social cognition’, our tendency to constantly read faces, voices, emotions, intentions, and personalities in the world around us. So when a fruit talks, cries, or behaves like a person, the brain quickly starts treating it like a social being instead of just an object. Our ‘mirror neuron system’, NOW, WHY HUMANS FALL PREY TO AI SLOP? emotionally simulates and responds to expressions and actions we observe. So even a fake crying mango can trigger an emotional reaction because the brain responds to the emotion underneath it, not just the fact that it’s a fruit,” explained Kripa, RCI Licensed Clinical Psychologist from Dona Paula. The human brains expects realities to behave a certain way, but these videos violates those expectations in unpredictable ways. “An AI-generated orange wearing sunglasses passionately explaining heartbreak to a banana creates a “prediction error”. Our brain expects reality to behave one way, but the video violates those expectations in bizarre, unpredictable ways. This mismatch produces a spike in dopamine levels because the brain instinctively goes: ‘Wait… what am I looking at?’ These videos function almost like a ‘mental candy’” said Kripa. As shared by the psychologist constant immersion in AI generated content can gradually reduce emotional openness, shorten attention for novelty, and encourage emotional avoidance disguised as humour.
