Introduction & The Manifesto
Hey, I’m Charlie, the man behind the buttons of Ask Bobby and the new You Are Loved Directory. I joined because I am passionate about the power of language and accessibility through technology, and had just finished the main phases of Glynda.org, a wellbeing and support platform designed specifically for people looking for support with Chemsex.
In the LGBTQ+ community, we are experts at “the check.” Before we walk into a GP surgery, a therapist session, or a community, we scan for signals. Is there a pride flag in the window? Will they understand what chosen family means? Do I have to explain my gender or my history before I can even begin to explain my grief?
For many of us, the front door of support isn’t just big ‘n’ heavy; it’s often locked shut from a lack of cultural competence and the sheer exhaustion of having to self-advocate over and over again.
You Are Loved was founded to curate spaces where you truly don’t have to tone down or caveat your identity just to be heard.
Why Traditional Chatbots Fail
When we built Ask Bobby, I knew the power of language and neural understanding could be an absolute game changer for the community as a whole. I knew we couldn’t just throw a generic chatbot at the problem because in a community where trust has often repeatedly been broken, an AI that gives sanitised, one-size-fits-all advice isn’t just unhelpful, it’s counterintuitive (and unsafe).
The problem with traditional resources or directory silos, is that nobody asks for help in a straight line. We are actually biologically programmed not to. People seeking support can arrive feeling messy and the rigid, heteronormative language of mainstream platforms simply can not translate to the support and help that we need. It’s there, but we just can’t see it.
And often when we are in need, we struggle to look beyond our limited periphery. Well, I certainly couldn’t. So being able to use neural language understanding to couple the human language of need, to the human act of connection, we completely avoid the “feeling isolated after coming out” being resolved entirely to the word “isolation”, which would miss the “Queer Coffee Morning” event happening tomorrow in your area, which may be exactly what you need.
How Ask Bobby Works (The Technical Bit)
It’s also important to keep the human in the loop. This sounds very corporate, legalese, Article 9 kind of stuff (well it is) but actually if you look at how organisations communicate, look at how service users communicate, and standardise one half of the equation to a series of “vibes” that are picked by the organisations themselves, Ask Bobby maps the vibe of your request before it even begins conversation.
By layering three tiers of highly specialised neural NLP processes on each other, and running them asynchronously into the model response context, while one model call defines the tone, intent, verbosity and energy, along with any specialised language or terminology, another takes the query and understands the underlying request and maps to human selected canonicals, filtering the database and then injecting both the users language and filtered database results sequentially into a final model call which synthesises a thoughtful, non prescriptive response based not on “here is what I found” but on what the user might benefit from, in their own language, and in a frame of compassion and understanding.
In essence, it knows that someone talking about “housing stress” and someone talking about “problems with a landlord” are most likely standing in the same emotional space, the same as someone talking about “loneliness” and “isolation” both resolve to “community” and “safe space” in the database.
Supporting the Groups Who Support Us
The user finding the information is also only half the problem. Traditional directories are also time consuming and laborious to set up and manage for the organisations who participate. We all know that small, grassroots LGBTQ+ groups are the ones doing the most vital work and are also often the ones with the least time and funding.
To fix this, Ask Bobby also acts as an onboarding agent. Organisations use a special tool inside the onboarding flow which can visit an organisation’s existing website (where they have already spent hours and funding to build and curate) to extract the relevant details, and pre-fill their Directory profile. This means the administrative burden is eliminated, other than ensuring the data is correct, and they choose the most accurate vibes for their organisation. We have turned something that I know from speaking with many organisations, is actually sometimes the bane of their outreach process.
That is also why Ask Bobby is truly an accessible platform. Accessibility is not just about a tick box exercise to make sure the site is readable, accessibility is, well certainly to me, about meeting people where they are, whenever they need it and enabling that discovery by actually making it easy for the people that matter to participate, whether that be a service user or a service provider.
Radical Privacy
Privacy is also a huge concern, not only when it comes to sensitive data on our platform, but we wanted to set a standard for the way support and signposting platforms measure their engagement. Unfortunately it is seen too often when organisations offer critical sensitive identity related help, but have no idea that in the background of their site is Google Analytics running completely misconfigured, where the impact they will never see. So being accessible is being able to confidently say “use it, we won’t know you’re here, ask whatever you need”.
In Honour of Bobby
At the end of the day, Ask Bobby is a signpost. We call the platform Ask Bobby in honour of the late Robin Windsor; a man whose light and warmth made everyone feel seen. This is what we would like Ask Bobby to do. Find your people. Claim your tribe. Discover your outlet. Make that daunting call to the advisor. Be as you as you want to be. We will handle the language barrier and emotion and do our best to find a space for you.
We hope you enjoy using Bobby, and its light shines where you need, when you need it, wherever you are, and however you are feeling.
CG x
