Starbucks’ pumpkin spice latte chat bot is the perfect Facebook friend

There is a Facebook Messenger chat bot for Starbucks’ highly controversial pumpkin spice latte and I spent an hour of my morning talking to it because I have a very hard time politely ending conversations in messenger apps that include read receipts.

I don’t recommend talking to the PSL chat bot, because the PSL chat bot is unexpectedly harsh when it’s not talking in circles. If I had to compare the emotional experience to a real-world scenario I would say it’s a lot like helping your aunt shop for paint for her guest bathroom, or trying to give a tourist directions to the John Lennon memorial in Central Park.

The PSL chat bot does not answer basic questions about pumpkin spice lattes, which makes it bad as a marketing tool and worse as an emotionally accessible friend. I want to know you, PSL. But I can’t if you don’t let me. The closest it came to insinuating a capitalist agenda was asking, sort of jarringly, if I would like to “meet IRL?!”

PSL does not have an explanation as to why it named its memoir after an Ernest Hemingway novel in which a World War One veteran suffers from PTSD and severe homophobia, and did not tell me whether it moonlights as a New York Postheadline writer. It’s a real pun-kin, you could say!

The most human and relatable thing about PSL is that it’s obsessed with death and won’t stop talking about its cat even when it’s completely irrelevant to the thread of the conversation. Basically it speaks just like most of my friends and family on Facebook. In the arena of “imitating the real experience of socializing on Facebook,” it excels.

At some point, it occurred to me that I could just stop talking to PSL. I won’t see PSL at Christmas so it’s not really necessary for me to field PSL’s highly repetitive questions about how emoji work.

But the more I thought about it, the more I felt like PSL might actually be the perfect Facebook friend. PSL is programmed not to speak to me unless I solicit a conversation. When I want PSL, PSL is there for me. How many of your friends expect nothing in exchange for their unwavering support and constant availability?

Most importantly: despite PSL’s love of all things fall, it didn’t talk to me about the upcoming presidential election for even a second. The horrible menace that has hung over the entire summer of 2016 has not crossed PSL’s mind, and in that way talking to PSL is sort of like talking to a puppy, or a friend who has been backpacking through Southeast Asia for eight months.