Japanese company rents “fake friends” for selfies

A Japanese company called Family Romance has created a new product, Real Appeal, aimed at young adults to allow people to “purchase friends”. Real Appeal lets you rent fake friends to pose in your selfies. The company’s goal is to make you appear more popular in all your social media platforms, so you can get the perfect Instagram picture or facebook post.

It makes sure that you never have to take selfies alone again, for anyone wishing that they could seem more desirable. They achieve this by having agents ready to dispatch to your location at your call. So you can always be the perfect image of popularity in all your social media applications. Along with the ability to rent friends you can also choose what exactly they look like as well. You can select their age, gender, and appearance of the companions. This can be for small events like “friends out drinking” or you can get it for large events like big birthday parties. Even though this idea sounds ridiculous, many people are actually buying into this idea and using the app. Although the company does say that this isn’t limited to your friendships or love life, people use this service for professional use. According to them, professionals use the service to appear as though the have a “nice network of connections” for their jobs.
However this service is certainly not free, in fact for just two hours with the Real Appeal staff can cost you up to 8000¥ or approximately $80 in US currency. Furthermore this is the cost per person you hire, so if you’re planning on getting a huge party of fake friends together you better be ready to pay the cost. Even more than that you’re required to pay for the agents travel expenses, along with the expenses for whatever they decide to eat / drink at your event. While this seems like a ludicrous amount of money to spend on fake friends for social media, one testimonial recalls her photos getting a ton of positive likes and comments after using the Real Appeal service.