Guy from San Diego launches rent-a-cyberfriend service

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=81174d68-7321-4ee3-bab7-f62b6edf9e62&k=88845

Glamorous fake friends make Internet loners appear popular

Roberto Rocha
CanWest News Service; Montreal Gazette

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

MONTREAL - Internet loners seeking online popularity, take note: you can now be a luminary without the burden of having real friends.

A new service is capitalizing on the rush for cyber-eminence by offering attractive models to pose as friends on MySpace and Facebook, the two most populated social networks.

For 99 cents US a month, a model of your choice will add him or herself to your online profile and leave two comments a week -- comments that you write yourself -- making you seem quite the tomcat.

Fakeyourspace.com is the work of Brant Walker, a web design student at San Diego's Platt College who doesn't mince words in his business pitch.

"FakeYourSpace makes it easy for any regular person to make it seem like they have a model for a friend Maybe you want to appear as if you have a model for a lover,'' his site says. "If you are tired of seeing everyone else with the hottest friends and want some hotties of your own, then this is the place for you.''

According to Walker, his site went from 10 visitors a day to 50,000 last week, when it was picked up by tech news sites like Digg and Slashdot.

"The reaction was crazy. I received many e-mails congratulating me on such a great idea. Surprisingly I also received many orders. More than I could handle,'' Walker said by e-mail.

He also got plenty of hate mail and a few legal threats, since the pictures of the "models'' for rent were not licensed by the people in the pictures.

Walker would not say where he got the pictures, but he's now looking for ``real people who want to become part of the service by letting FakeYourSpace use their images.''

The pressure to be popular in cyberspace is fierce, sometimes more than in flesh and blood. When many of MySpace's 100 million users give their more attractive contacts more prominence in their profiles, Walker knew he had a business model.

"I knew people would be interested because so many people are just obsessed with MySpace,'' he wrote.

"Myself NOT included,however. This is just something I observed.''

At least two Montreal teens who use MySpace said they wouldn't buy into the service, but know plenty of people who would.

"It's definitely a stupid idea. You should be true about who your friends are,'' said 17-year-old Jessica Ouellette.

"A lot of people want to look cool so they add random people they don't know who are attractive,'' added Jasmine Woodward, 12.

Social networking sites have been the bane of many parents and teachers, especially in the U.S., where they are frequently slammed as dens for cyberbullies and pedophiles.

One observer of youth culture feels the fears have spiralled to paranoia, and a service like FakeYourSpace should not be seen as a worrisome trend.

"The media choose one example and pump it up as a national headline,'' said Henry Jenkins, the director of Comparative Media Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"Adolescence is about being popular. This is no different from counting signatures in your yearbook. It's the same behaviour, but with a more powerful technology,'' Jenkins added.

Irrational fears of Internet culture, Jenkins continued, can in fact have an adverse effect.

"Teens can see their parents as so out of touch with their reality, so why would they take their advice seriously?''

rrocha@thegazette.canwest.com

Montreal Gazette