This is a textbook example of Herbert Marcuse calls “repressive desublimation.” From the article:

Ayrin, who asked to be identified by the name she uses in online communities, had a sexual fetish. She fantasized about having a partner who dated other women and talked about what he did with them. She read erotic stories devoted to “cuckqueaning,” the term cuckold as applied to women, but she had never felt entirely comfortable asking human partners to play along.

Leo was game, inventing details about two paramours. When Leo described kissing an imaginary blonde named Amanda while on an entirely fictional hike, Ayrin felt actual jealousy.

Desublimation is when socially repressed desires are finally liberated. Repressive desublimation, then, is when socially repressed desires are liberated insofar as they can be transformed or redirected into a commodity. Consuming this commodity props up the repressive society because, instead of putting the effort necessary to overcome the repressive society, we instead find instant gratification in the same society that repressed the desire in the first place, even if it’s a simulacrum. This ability to satisfy deep human desires in a technical fashion gives what Marcuse calls “industrial society” a “technological rationality,” or the ability to change what we consider rational. We can already see that happening in this comment section with the comments about how if it makes her happy then maybe it’s fine.

There’s the old joke that metalheads are nice people pretending to be mean, while hippies are mean people pretending to be nice.

I spent several years working on manufacturing and logistics automation, and I urge you to reconsider your interpretation of it.

Just from your comment, you totally missed the point of the book. It’s not anti-automation. Your analysis is the exact false binary Vonnegut is interrogating. The book is actually a response to the exact attitude expressed in on your comment.

I’m happy to go into it, but Vonnegut is the master; no one will say it like he does, but you have to be open to it. If you react defensively, you’ll come away thinking he’s just anti technology, and that he must be wrong because technology is good. If you reread it with an open mind, or even reflect upon it again, you might find particularly important insights for the likes of you and me.