This is sick. That girl is going to find out one day that he is not her father and she is going to be very fucked up when she realizes her entire life is a lie and she can't ever trust anyone. I can't believe someone would be willing to do that to someone for $50/hr.
The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business
31–40 of 265 posts
Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's stopping an otherwise normal late middle aged man from making friends?
It's pretty hard to just up and make friends in Japan. People generally stick to social/activity circles, but even then, you have boundaries. For example, if you have a golfing group, you guys may go out for drinks but that would be that. You'd almost (key word) never go over to someone else's house, or go see movies together, or any of that -- they're your "golf people." But that's assuming that you do have a golf g…
Certainly not unique to Japan. I see many lonely people in western big cities for instance. Surprisingly, I find it much easier to find a girlfriend than a friend. You just go to a dating website, find someone "similar" and spend time together and you can get close very quickly. It's not the way regular friendship works where it takes much longer to get intimate.
Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business
#33Can someone confirm that this is real? It reads like (dismal) satire.
Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business
#34Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same here. I can't help but wonder about the ethical implications of lying to a child about something so fundamental for her entire lifetime.
It's not lie if everybody accepts and supports it, merely a convention. There's father-by-birth, and then father-by-adoption, and then father-by-convention.
The daughter thinks the rental is her real father. That's highly likely to unravel sometime in her life time. Certainly at his funeral...he is using a fake name and personna.
Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business
#36This is sick. That girl is going to find out one day that he is not her father and she is going to be very fucked up when she realizes her entire life is a lie and she can't ever trust anyone. I can't believe someone would be willing to do that to someone for $50/hr.
Playing devil's advocate: how much different is this from adopted children to which adoptive parent's don't tell the truth? Is it mostly how likely is the truth to come out at some point?
Still crappy, but less crappy than learning your dad was a $200/month actor that had no actual emotional investment in you.
Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business
#37This is sick. That girl is going to find out one day that he is not her father and she is going to be very fucked up when she realizes her entire life is a lie and she can't ever trust anyone. I can't believe someone would be willing to do that to someone for $50/hr.
Playing devil's advocate: how much different is this from adopted children to which adoptive parent's don't tell the truth? Is it mostly how likely is the truth to come out at some point?
Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business
#38Went into reading this article expecting it to be a one-off, rental boyfriend type deal (that kind of trope is used very frequently in movies/tv shows/manga there), but this way way deeper than I expected. I'm pretty mind blown at how far they are taking this fake/real replacements. Pretty close to some dystopian scifi actually. >If the client never reveals the truth, I must continue the role indefinitely. If the dau…
The TV Series "Dollhouse" also explores this, although there the actors can only be rented on a day-to-day basis and their memory is wiped (OR IS IT?) after every assignment.
Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's stopping an otherwise normal late middle aged man from making friends?
It's pretty hard to just up and make friends in Japan. People generally stick to social/activity circles, but even then, you have boundaries. For example, if you have a golfing group, you guys may go out for drinks but that would be that. You'd almost (key word) never go over to someone else's house, or go see movies together, or any of that -- they're your "golf people." But that's assuming that you do have a golf g…
Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's stopping an otherwise normal late middle aged man from making friends?
It's pretty hard to just up and make friends in Japan. People generally stick to social/activity circles, but even then, you have boundaries. For example, if you have a golfing group, you guys may go out for drinks but that would be that. You'd almost (key word) never go over to someone else's house, or go see movies together, or any of that -- they're your "golf people." But that's assuming that you do have a golf g…