Friday, January 23, 2015

$25 for an Invisible Boyfriend

The Washington Post reports:
One of the core premises of Invisible Boyfriend, the wildly viral new service that invents a boyfriend to deceive your pestering family and friends, is that the user will not, under any circumstance, fall in love with her fictional beau.

But I’ve been using the service for 24 hours, and I gotta wonder: How can you not fall in love with him? After all, the service — which launched publicly last Monday — takes the concept of virtual intimacy further than basically any of the lolzy fake-date apps before it.

When you sign up for the service, you can design a boyfriend (or girlfriend) to your specifications — kind of like picking the genes for a designer baby, except for an imaginary adult. You pick his name, his age, his interests and personality traits. You tell the app if you prefer blonds or brunettes, tall guys or short, guys who like theater or guys who watch sports. Then you swipe your credit card — $25 per month, cha-ching! — and the imaginary man of your dreams starts texting you.
Heh, it's cheaper than a real human being.