It's the same reason why horoscopes and fortune cookies work. Stepping back and thinking logically, it's easy to see why their messages might apply to a lot of people. But when you're reading one, you can't help but think, "Ah! It says that I would encounter adversity at work this week, but overcome it! I knew that presentation wasn't the end of the world." And if you're a little lonely or down and need emotional rapport, you can't help but feel a little spark of excitement and connection when that Mechanical Turker claims to like your favorite TV show - especially because the text messages from the fake partner look just like they would from a real one.
No matter how deeply we trust our logical conclusions, our emotional response remains the same. We can't help but feel worthier when we're being praised (even by computers - see the Silicon Sycophants study: http://pdf.aminer.org/000/307/350/information_requirements_a...), hurt when we're being insulted, and connected when we're being connected with.
(The background is she just found out she was actually born 3 months after her parents told her she was born - they lied to get her to start school a year earlier.)
I just started playing The Walking Dead. In one scene, after another character saved Clementine from a zombie before I could, the game said, "Clementine remembers that you didn't save her." A very different feeling than failing and having to replay from a checkpoint.
This, + general storyline and execution of the product made it the first game I found myself to be really involved emotionally with. Say, when I picked up the second game and met an important NPC from the first, I literally felt like I've just rejoined with an old friend. By the third game I actually printed out a photo of my character and her entire team. It's crazy how deep a good video game can touch you.
Oh, and I spent 10-15 minutes thinking heavily about morality and consequences just to choose the right ending...
"You had a family member who passed recently right? Or someone really close to you"
"Yes, yes! My aunt passed away earlier this year!"
"Ah, yes! And... and... she was sick right? Or in pain close to her death?"
"Wow, yes!!"
"You were close with her, or you were close with her family right?"
...etc
You know the saddest first-world thing I've ever heard? A prostitute doing a reddit AMA had a client once that wanted her to sing "happy birthday" for him. It was his birthday and no one else was going to.
A more charitable interpretation of horoscopes and fortune cookies could be that, given that human behavior and problems falls into recognizable patterns, generic solutions can be offered as a sort of framework or scaffold for the received to fill in their particular details and get started with a more appropriate and personal solution.
What else did you expected? from a little something that came inside of a cookie!!!
http://zenpencils.com/comic/137-richard-feynman-the-beauty-o...
I can't say that I feel much for the business, but I've been continually impressed by its ability to generate press. People _love_ talking about and debating this concept, and I can't say that I've been completely free from it.
That being said, this is currently probably the most covered startup from Saint Louis. While it is nice to see a startup from this ecosystem getting this amount of press attention, it's disappointing at the same time. I know a lot of people working on very ambitious and difficult problems that would kill for a tenth of the amount of attention that Invisible Boyfriend and Invisible Girlfriend get.
Actually, I did think of this, many times. But my biggest bottleneck was: how will I scale up the replies? I could handle being a "boyfriend" for, say, 10 women. But any bigger, and I'd need help. I considered MTurk, but thought that quality control would be an issue. (What if the MTurk guy really starts hitting on the woman, they exchange numbers and then he starts stalking her?). Anyways: after considering all the messiness, I gave it a pass.
Press is good, profits are better. I'll be interested to see where this is in six months.
Of all the technological wonders of the setting, "ractors" are what amazed me the most. It's the perfect interactive experience, a full-time "Wizard of Oz"[0].
Maybe we can see something of the kind in the following year with the advancement of VR thechnology..
http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/31/7471901/i-cant-stop-compa...
Invisible Boyfriend might be the polar opposite and complement of prostitution: the first simulating the love between a protector and his protégé, the second providing a sex partner. I'm not implying any moral fault, but it's fascinating nonetheless.
Take that, therapy. Yes, the paranoia was somewhat imaginative, but it was an exaggeration of something that actually can be mechanized. The people I explained this to didn't believe me that you could create chat streams this way.
You might enjoy this stack-exchange article on Robert A. Heinlien's "They" - http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/49224/short-story-w...
Sorry that you had to go through that!
Ever hear of 4Chan?
The sad thing is the reason that this app exists. Has it become so taboo to be single that you have to pay to hide it?
Apparently yes, sadly.
Even so, I can't imagine this app could possible be worth the time (let alone the cost). Especially when simply lying to people (who aren't close friends anyway), as needed -- or in the case of a good chunk of my direct family, explicitly firewalling ("Look, over the years I've been having various relationships with various people. If any of them become important enough for you to know about, I'll let you know, eventually") to be easy enough, and to work perfectly fine for all concerned.
The bottom line is that intimacy is a gift, and at no point are you obligated to provide it to anyone you don't really consider to be that important in your life -- or in situations that make you uncomfortable.
I think that's why the founder is talking of expanding the service already, such as getting flowers on Valentine's, say. It might provide social worth to some, who see this extravaganza displayed on every other desk at their work.
The trouble is that you need human moderators to prevent trolling/harassment/etc. - and if you're going to pay humans to read every message, you may as well have them write them as well.
> The sad thing is the reason that this app exists. Has it become so taboo to be single that you have to pay to hide it?
Article mentions more traditional cultures, and semi-closeted gays. I think singledom is becoming much more acceptable to our generation than it ever was before - but it doesn't play so well with our parents.
Maybe that's the point. Maybe the users of this service are trying to focus on school or work, and are tired of friends and family trying to set them up with significant others.
It is less taboo now than it has been for many generations (for anglos, at least). Being labelled a 'spinster' or a 'maiden aunt' was a stigma.
“Oh my God,” I thought. “This total stranger, whoever he or she is, thinks I cry myself to sleep while watching public television and texting a paid fake boyfriend I named after an actor.”
This is why I don't use my real name on HN.
Because you don't want the people in your life knowing that you pay money to manipulate and deceive those around you? Seems smart to keep that a secret.
This seems to be a worthwhile experiment to me.
Or hook up eliza on your end and see what happens.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-j-cameron-phd-bcbad/an...
Now in beta, an Oculus Rift virtual girlfriend.
Pure profit. In App Payments for the lonely. Not sure how I'd feel if I was making money off that.
Did you read that OKCupid piece on when they turned off profile pictures for a day? Supposedly the result was better for their users - people who went on these "truly blind dates" had significantly better odds of a successful relationship coming out of it than the site average. Looks do matter, but the way we encounter each other via technology is artificial and superficial. I wonder if there would be a market for a text-only matching app.
I wonder how long it takes before those lower(st) paid jobs for those that are not specialized in anything will be in something like mechanical turk. Especially in this example it's visible that those can sometimes require somewhat local workers, so they may spread outside countries with lowest cost of living.
Let say 1 "real human" is responding to 10 women at the same time, the membership income from these 10 users (not accounting for software, hardware overheads even) = $25 / month X 10 paid users = $250.
If this "real human" is located in US, even taking a minimum wage of $10 / hour and assuming he/she works 160 hours a month ( 8 hours per day x 5 days a week x 4 weeks a month), the cost of having this "real person" on the payroll = $1,600 per month!
$250 - $1,600 = - $1,350. i.e. they would be losing over 1K per every few users if this is how they are doing it.
Unless, of course, the "real human person(s)" responding to multiple women are located in India / China and work for $1 a day or something like that.
Or maybe they are using Machine Learning or some sort of Artificial Intelligence, to come up with "Cute" Texts and responses based on the User's selected preferences and his/her past Texts to this "Invisible Boyfriend".
Only in the last case does it makes sense. But then, they'd be guilty of "false advertizing" if they claim that a "real human person" is at the other end responding...
Looked at another way - one customer representative can support two customers/hour (in aggregate, obviously they don't send all their texts to one person in an hour). The customer representative gets paid $10/hour, the two customers pay $50/hour.
Pretty good business model.
Context switching would take a while. You can't just reply with random phrases a-la Eliza[1] . In the article, the "boyfriend" responds to a specific question about Downton Abbey. Sure, in this instance the responder may be a fan of DA; but in the general case, it'll require more than 18 seconds (@200/hr) to just type up an intelligent, context-relevant response.
One is a coping mechanism for handing external pressures, the other internal. I wonder how healthy either can be in the long run.
I could see nude selfies being sent too down the road (again a different service, not exactly this one).
George Glass: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2egRZia504
100 texts 10 voicemails 1 postcard
...
I think 100 texts is a bit low for $24.99/month. The postcard option is very nice, so are the voice mails however.
But how do the voice mails work? Will it be the same voice every time?
I've tried the free trial, which is 10 SMS and went through them in half an hour or so (and that's because they don't reply very quickly). Haven't even got to the parts that I customized, I was still at "Hello there, how are you!", "Did you have a great day?" "Oh, and your?".
That's 4 SMS a day or so. At this point, I would simply use a chatbot, since they are fine with the basic conversations that I would manage to get to in 4 sms.
I guess you could have two 50 SMS conversations a month, but even then, good luck fooling someone into thinking this is your real lover.
The only plus I can see is that you can have someone tell you "Alright, if she is really your girlfriend, ask her something only your close friends know about you" and "she" would manage to answer.
Not very convinced about the service.
Uhm this is odd, I don't know about South America but Europe? Here in Sweden LGBT people are even allowed to marry in church before their god http://www.upi.com/Top_News/International/2009/10/22/Church-...
And a real hero? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DSVDcw6iW8
Edit: before anyone questions it, I am not saying that in any derogatory manner. Just a similar concept in a way, though obviously this has very different value proposition.
Or Rhondas. Women know what women want from a fake boyfriend service. What subterfuge is needed to fool the parents, what parents expect, etc. The text exchange about Downton Abbey makes me suspect that their staff are, at least partly, female.
Sentiments are real, I don't think anybody should play with other person feeling...
Of course the user signed up, and they think that this is what they want, but I honestly believe that nobody want to risk to fail in love for a nobody...
Independently of how arbitrary attraction and love are, there's certainly a difference between them, depth being the divider.
With this in mind, the "falling in love" the author is talking about, which may also apply to the crowds using such service, is the equivalent of a teenager "falling in love" with, say, Tom Cruise.
Although of course, services like this pose a "risk" of falling in such state, there's nothing really "wrong" (in the "damaging" sense of the term) with it.
I have seen people go out craving attention and not being satisfied until they have gotten a hit from someone.
To me it is the same impulse that has people meticulously manage a facebook profile so they can get kudos from practical strangers.
The author seems old enough to be able to distinguish love and attraction...
I believe that different people have different emotion, keep texting with somebody can be extremely powerful can go a loooong way...
Wow, that's a whole lot of bullshit right there. That kind of thinking is why we have religion and politics. Men thinking they know what is best for everyone else.
Of course I don't force anybody, it is just my opinion, I believe that I have the right to have an opinion...
Anyway, I would like to suggest you to use a language a little more cordial.
It's text/html, so it can't be anti-bot and seems like pointless for a human... Does anyone else know the logic behind that?
Most web spam bots fall into two categories:
1. They target a certain web software package (such as WordPress), for which they know the HTML layout and the range of possible CAPTCHA challenges.
2. They try to fill out every HTML form they find blindly, using heuristics based on the names of form input elements.
To defeat both, all you need to do is to write a custom HTML form by hand (which defeats category 1), and add a simple CAPTCHA challenge (which defeats category 2).
PS: it's a the bottom of the landing page (not signup)
Say they pay $0.05/text (to the MTurker). In about 500 texts, the budget will be used up. That's about 15 texts/day; that's not a lot for today.
"You're an INTG. Get together with other INTGs, read the descriptions... See, isn't this you?"
I'm ok with saying "this is an attempt at classification, it's an extra data point", but I'm not ok with resorting to scammy techniques, if anything it tells me that the classification can't stand on its own and has therefore very little value.
Does this represent a messed up person or a messed up culture?
Even if you are talking to multiple people you could imagine keeping tracks of your key facts and interests, maybe use data mining from actual conversations to auto-suggest answers, automatically check out your social medias etc.
> Homann says the service has also seen a surge in interest from people in conservative countries, particularly in South America and Europe, where the stigmas against being single or LGBT remain pretty strong.
It is very very sad but I can imagine that in some place it may be worth spending a few bucks a month to be able to show conservatives co-workers/parents/whatever that you have a regular boyfriend (for girls) or girlfriend (for guys), and live your private life as you wish.
Both these scenarios assume she's happy without a BF but the fact that she describes feeling that she might have fallen in love could also mean she actually wants a boyfriend but can't find one. Things are tougher on women these days (http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/02/sex_i...).
In one of her texts to "Ryan" she writes: "Ha, you're better than my real bf".
"On its Web site, Invisible Boyfriend calls itself “believable social proof”: When your mom won’t stop asking you when you’re going to settle down, or your weird male acquaintance keeps hitting on you, you can just whip out your phone and show them evidence that you’re not an unlovable loser, thank you very much. Homann says the service has also seen a surge in interest from people in conservative countries, particularly in South America and Europe, where the stigmas against being single or LGBT remain pretty strong."
I find the whole premise depressing.
Be proud of what you are or, if you are unhappy with your situation, take meaningful action to address the problem.