Here in San Francisco, we’re in a new era of lonely, unfulfilled men, and a new model of woman has risen to meet them.
They wear athleisure and love listening to you talk about your startup’s business moat. There’s an off chance they work at Corgi, and they’re likely Wasian (opens in new tab).
Call them the Manic Pixel Dream Girls, an updated version of the spontaneous eccentric with a heavily patterned wardrobe and a love of dancing like nobody’s watching. This time, they’re not impressed by vinyl collections or skinny ties; it’s seed rounds and AGI.
But in 2026, these “people” are not born, they’re created. One example is Lisa Lin, a TikToker who’s generically attractive in the way social media influencers tend to be (opens in new tab). She has posted dozens of videos over the past year that mainly take popular topics in tech and turn them into listicles or hot takes designed to incite engagement at all costs.
In a handful of her videos, she wears a silver necklace with a small crucifix pendant. Does that mean she’s a new tech-savvy Christian creator?
Not quite. Lin is an AI influencer made to market a startup called Pamba, which allows users to fill other people’s social media feeds with videos of fake humans. So, at least according to Pope Leo’s latest encyclical (opens in new tab), Lin lacks a soul.
That hasn’t stopped her from pontificating about “three reasons why software engineers make the best husbands (opens in new tab)” or “three reasons why software engineers are low key alpha males (opens in new tab).”
By far the creepiest of the genre is a video on “why software engineers make the most fertile men (opens in new tab).” No. 3: “Their server is optimized for heavy load. Heavy load doesn’t scare them, in fact they thrive in it,” she said.
In one of the more unsettling clips, she spits out 20 reasons you should use Pamba (in under 28 seconds) while completely expressionless in what could best be described as a digital hostage video.
Pamba did not respond to requests for comment.
All this would generally be fine in a city where things make less and less sense. But a recently posted video (opens in new tab), currently Lin’s second most popular ever, is a bridge too far.
Labeled “rent control makes your rich” (one of those aforementioned reasons to use Pamba is not proofreading), the video shows Lin explaining that the richest person in her San Francisco apartment building is a 70-year-old woman who has had a rent-controlled ground-floor unit since 1996.
“She pays $1,100 a month,” Lin said. “The guy above her just signed for $4,300 for a smaller unit, and his startup gives him a stipend to live within a 10-minute walk of the office.”
It goes without saying that Lin isn’t alive and there is no 70-year-old freeloader. Rather, Pamba is posting ragebait to drum up fervor against rent control. (Strangely, Lin ends the video by saying, “Good for her.”) Most of the commenters, however, seem to have little idea that they are talking to each other in an empty echo chamber.
Perhaps we shouldn’t expect more from a Silicon Valley culture that increasingly feels amoral and dystopian.
At least the Manic Pixie Dream Girl sold a fantasy of being loved. Lin is just selling the idea of blaming your neighbor for an increasingly unaffordable city.