Rent A Friend Anyone?

Friends for rent?

Ash Wednesday! (do we greet people "Happy Ash Wednesday"?) I wanted to write about Ash Wednesday celebration here in the Philippines (and I was already doing some research about it) but I changed my mind when read an article on Business Insider about a new business start-up where you can pay to rent a friend by the hour. If you were like me, you'd be reading that twice.

At first, looking at the picture in the article, it was showing the cast of "Friends", I was thinking that people could subscribe to a service that would let them "rent" any of the cast of that famous TV show. Then after reading a few lines I was like "WTF!".

Click here for the article.

Now this kinda reminded me of something similar, I remember reading on some post quite some time ago, there were ads where you could rent-a-girlfriend in China, usually during the Chinese New Year. You could find these ads posted in popular Chinese forums. And just in case if you were wondering, there would be no "extra services". The services offered were strictly for companionship and physical contact was limited to things like hugging and holding hands. But I do wonder if such services would lead to other things.

Now back to this start-up about the rent-a-friend service. According to this article in BI, you could rent-a-friend for up to $60/hour. Now I'm not too sure if this is US Dollars or Australian Dollars as this start-up will be operating in Australia. Also in the article, one of the co-founder of the start-up, Josh Blundell insists that the site will not be a matchmaking service and will not be a place where sexual services will be solicited. Furthermore according Blundell, those that breach the sites terms of service will be removed.

When I saw this article, you could say I was "dumbfounded" with this rent-a-friend start-up. I thought, if it were up to me, I'd offer myself as friend to anyone, for FREE! Why would anyone want to pay to have friends? If your someone who can afford to pay $60/hour for a friend, you'd be someone who is successful enough in life to have friends, be it real or fake. You could say I'm bothered by this idea of rent-a-friend.

In the start-ups website, which is now recruiting "friends" you can see the uses of "hiring" a friend. Do you see Gaming partner? If you had an Xbox/Playstation with some cool games and invite me over to play, I'd definitely be your friend. Well the least could do is use the $60 to buy me beer and I'd even invite my buddies over as a bonus!

Somehow, I think the idea of renting a "friend" is just too much! I think it's really sad if you had to resort to this service just to get a friend. And I've always thought of Australians as friendly people, is it really that hard to get a friend there? If your a guy looking for a friend, I'd suggest you watch the movie "I Love You, Man" (Paul Rudd & Jason Segel). That'll give you an idea how to get a friend plus it's quite a fun watch.

You can click here to read the full article at Business Insider.

Well if your here and read all the way, click here to listen to the Friends theme song in Youtube.

A little side note, if you are lonely and really need a friend, you may contact me, but if you creep me out, please go find another "friend" :P