Renting Friends

Japan has a rental friend service called Family Romance. Pay them, they send someone to your event who’ll smile at your jokes and act interested, and the founder Yuichi Ishii guarantees at least 100 Instagram likes. It’s the most honest thing I’ve heard from a service that’s technically not about dating at all.

A VICE editor named Kumpei Kuwamoto hired them for his birthday. Rather than sit alone at his own party, he rented a human. The photos came out great. He looked happy. There were other people in the frame. For that evening, his Friday night looked inhabited.

The insanity is how much sense this makes. There’s a real gap between how people actually spend their nights—delivery apps, their apartments, spaces arranged to be perfect for being alone—and how it looks on the feed. Family Romance isn’t the first to notice the gap, but they’re the only ones admitting what they’re selling: not friendship, not therapy, not community. Just the props. Just evidence that someone wanted to be near you.

Everyone’s faking it anyway. Family Romance just charges for the concentrated version instead of spreading the lie across 50 posts a week. There’s something almost respectable about the clarity.

The hard part is after they leave. When the person thanks you and heads out and you’re back to being alone. Your apartment doesn’t change. Your night is still what it was. You’ve got the pictures now, and the knowledge that you paid money to borrow some company. The Instagram likes will stay. The person won’t.