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The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

#61

Post by yorwba »

vog wrote: post #51
yodsanklai wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's pretty hard to just up and make friends in Japan 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…

> I see many lonely people in western big cities for instance Not true for Berlin, though. If you regularily visit some hackerspaces (or other meetups with like-minded people, such as various user groups such as Emacs user group, political groups such as FSFE, whatever), or go to university and study there, you have very good chances finding friends, some of whom may turn out to be very good friends. Sometimes it see…

One problem with your comment is that you do not actually address the point you quote. Instead, you present an anecdote about how you went to lots of places where you met new people, had the courage to talk to them and made friends.

I agree that what you described is a good way (maybe the only way) to make friends. But consider what proportion of attendees at those meetups ended up becoming your friends. I'm guessing a single digit percentage, at best.

For people who don't go to many social events/don't talk to many others there/don't deepen those ties as much, it's very easy to be lonely in basically any city. Making friends takes work, and success is not guaranteed; if you're not putting in that work for some reason, e.g. your personality, you'll end up without friends more likely than not.

Let me present my own anecdote: I grew up in Berlin, and I certainly met lots of new people through school, sports, study groups and so on, but I always kept those separate. If I were into golf, my fellow golfers would be my "golf people", nothing more. I don't tend to attempt conversations with strangers (or people I know, for that matter), so very few of those acquaintances even learned my name. In essence, I don't have any friends.

I wouldn't call myself lonely, though, since I'm happy that way. I wouldn't even know what I'd do with friends if I had any. But I'm pretty sure that there are lots of people (also in Berlin) who are living essentially the same friendless life as me and suffer for it.

Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

#63

Post by timthelion »

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #20
hkmurakami wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly my experience. I felt that the only "western level" friendships of openness and directness [1] were made before college. [1] To be fair each society has its own expectations on what interpersonal relationships should be like. American openness/directness likely isn't inherently virtuous.

Americans are direct only about a certain set of things. My Thai friends are much more direct discussing appearance, for instance. As an American, that was actually quite a shock visiting Thailand -- but you get used to it and adjust, and now it feels weird that there is this taboo in the US. Americans are more open and direct than Japan, but I don't know that I'd say they're particularly open and direct -- about the…

I find American friendship to be super complex and difficult to navigate. Since inviting certain people to certain places is almost mandatory in America, it is often hard to tell if an invitation or an expression of interest is sincere. In the Czech republic, I get far fewer invitations, but if they are in person (not through facebook) then they have always been sincere.

Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

#64

Post by renox »

anonytrary wrote: post #26

Wow, this was a surprising article. I am shocked that they are renting themselves out and lying to children about who their parents are. It's unethical and he speaks about it as if it's just fine.

Except that it was presented as a reaction to other unfair situation: being refused the entrance to a school or being bullied because the father is not here..

Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

#66

Post by ZenoArrow »

visarga wrote: post #46
ZenoArrow wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Services like the ones being described are a symptom of the underlying problems. Should these services exist? Probably not. However, it's more helpful to understand why they do. Why do you think these services exist?

Because people have high expectations from life but low willingness to accept and adapt. So they'll rent a fake to cut corners.

How does that explanation tie up with the example given in the article where a girl was being bullied for not having a father? Is that driven by willingness to cut corners?

Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

#67

Post by mrSugar »

avar wrote: post #49
hkmurakami wrote: post #2

Went 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…

Now imagine a future technology where you could undergo some hypnosis / gaslighting treatment to forget you even hired this person. I.e. pay a lot of money in advance, it's invested and the actor gets paid from the interest. You undergo memory treatment, and now your mother who you see once a week is real as far as you know, but really she's an actor you hired years back because your actual mother died.

This was explored (all the way to its grim dystopian conclusion) in tv series Dollhouse. Might want to check it out.

Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

#69

Post by wrinkl3 »

In Japanese business culture, there is a situation where you have to visit a company and say I’m deeply sorry for what I did and just bow and bow. Usually, I accompany a salaryman who made a mistake. I take the identity of the salaryman myself, then I apologize profusely for his mistake. Have you seen the way we say sorry? You go have to down on your hands and knees on the floor. Your hands have to tremble. So, my client is there standing off to the side—the one who actually made the mistake—and I’m prostrate on the floor writhing around, and the boss is there red-faced as he hurls down abuse from above. Sometimes, I wonder to myself, “Am I actually doing this?”

This actually sounds like something that could be spun into a separate startup in Japan - people who will pretend to be you in intense politeness-related scenarios.

Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

#70

Post by wrinkl3 »

sersi wrote: post #60

This, especially the case of the grandfather who wanted to see his grandchild before dying reminds me of the game "To The Moon". Creating new memories, new reality because the one people are living is just not good enough....

The logistics also remind me of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse.
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