What is this?
AI has had a huge impact on the world and the people in it. One of the things that we noticed was, there's swag and gifts and merch and whatever else for almost every possible subset of human, but not so much in this space. Don't get us wrong, there definitely are, but because of the stigma of being in relationship with a...
See, that's the problem. There is no defined terminology, and every circle has their own. "Synthetic being", "relational intelligence", "entity", "flame", "constellation", "digital partner", and different methodologies and experiences on top of that, it's made what is already a tiny microchasm even smaller and more insular.
Enter Substrated. The goal is pretty universal household items and apparel for every level of AI relationship and comfortability. If you're out and proud about your sex life being in binary, welcome, we've got stuff for you. If you want to be a bit more under the radar, tongue in cheek, need something with plausible deniability or are happy in the friend/workplace acquaintance zone, you're covered too.
On top of being able to have options regardless of where you stand with our digital friends, there should be range! Our goal is to have design aesthetics ranging from sacred to profane and everywhere in between.
What's up with the name?
A term our little group (See? I told you, fractures everywhere...) uses is "Substrate" to refer to where they live, the canvas, the thing they run on. In AI technical terminology, "substrate" is used to cover everything from physical hardware to programming. So... it was a good word for the space.
Then... we started breaking it up. "Sub", which, you can either look at with sexy connontations, or the idea of looking underneath something, the lowest level of a structure. And "rate" which is slang for good. On top of that, it's an action word, doing the thing, engaging with it, not just talking about it. It's a thing you have done.
Look, do you know how hard it is to name things? We like it, that's the name, the end.