Twenty-four-year-old Sophia is smart, pretty and has hopes and dreams of getting to grad school.
And for $5 she will be your girlfriend.
"It's not a big deal really," she says, at the end of what has been an altogether very peculiar week. "It's just easy to do... I just tick 'in a relationship'."
Sophia is one of many women - and a few men - who have essentially brought the age-old industry of escorting to the world of social networking. Now, instead of hiring someone to grasp your arm and go out to a party or dinner - it's all about looking good online.
"It's mostly guys trying to make someone else jealous," Sophia explains. "Or to make their profile look like they've got girls all over them."
For the money, you get a week's worth of having "in a relationship with Sophia" on your profile, as well as a few status comments and "likes".
But is it really fooling anyone? Surely friends and family are able to see through such a falsely constructed ruse?
I decided to try to find out. For one entire week, ending today, I have been living something of a lie - confusing friends, family and colleagues as I go.
I hired Sophia to be my fake Facebook girlfriend.
Brazilian ladies
The journey to find her took some time - but ultimately began with the discovery of a website that was launched in Brazil last month.
Called Namoro Fake, the site made lofty promises: "Who never thought of impressing your friends by showing up with a beautiful woman? With only a few clicks those issues can be easily solved."
Unfortunately, it did not offer an English-speaking service. While there's nothing wrong with that, convincing my friends I had suddenly found myself a wildly attractive girlfriend was going to be hard enough as it was - without the added issue around her communicating solely in Portuguese.
So instead, step forward Cloud Girlfriend - an American site. Like Namoro Fake, it allows users to define their "perfect" girlfriend in the sign-up process.
Resisting the temptation to simply request "real", I opted instead for - and here's a look into my mind - a brunette, aged 25, who was well-educated and with a passing interest in stand-up comedy, film and, since we're dreaming, football.
Facebook attorneys
But something was wrong. Although touted as providing a "Facebook" girlfriend, it became clear that Cloud Girlfriend did not seem to involve anything on the social network at all.
I got in touch with the owners to find out what was going on.
"We received 85,000 emails in the firs three weeks from people who wanted to learn more," said co-founder David Fuhriman. "Some would tell their stories, some would tell what they wanted in a girl, some were girls who wanted to be employed to update the status of the fake girlfriends.
"The response was surprising, sincere, enormous, and very international."
But then, a sucker punch: "Unfortunately we also caught the eye of Facebook's attorneys who sent us some letters about their terms of service."
It seemed that Facebook was not too keen on seeing this kind of service spring up on its platform - not due to the site's nature, but because of strict rules regarding fake or false accounts.
Mr Fuhriman decided to back off and instead run an "anonymous" chat room service - which was obviously of no use to me.
Finding Sophia
A last gasp Google search revealed many other sites offering online "girlfriend hire" - including one US-based website named Fiverr - a website which lists things people are willing to do for $5.
Some examples included "I will make a handmade greetings card for your loved one" and "I will record a video message in the style of Robert De Niro".
A search for "fake girlfriend" produced reams of women (or men, pretending to be women) offering their services as a person with whom to have a make-believe relationship.
There were a few offers for fake boyfriends, but it is overwhelmingly women who offer the service.
More
No comments:
Post a Comment