It starts with small fudges. It’s 8th grade, one frenemy accuses another of sexual inexperience. Inevitably someone ends up saying, “I met her at camp; she lives in Canada; you wouldn’t know her.”
As it gets more severe, this syndrome—known as “living a lie”—will inevitably result in a grand dinner party in which the bishop ruins everything by bringing in the canapés at precisely the wrong moment. And there you are, holding a cockatoo in the conservatory with your pants around your ankles. I feel like we can all relate.
Is inventing a fake girlfriend the new closet? Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o became a national object of ridicule last year (today he plays for the San Diego Chargers) when it was revealed that his recently deceased would-be girlfriend had actually been invented by a scurrilous friend without Te’o's knowledge. Earlier this year Tara introduced DM readers to the art of the fake girlfriend selfie.
By Valentine’s Day 2014, the startup InvisibleGirlfriend.com will, purportedly, supply users with concocted evidence of the made-up significant other in their lives. The packages come in three tiers—“Just Talking,” “Getting Serious,” and “Almost Engaged” (!)—and to read the list of offered services is to imagine any number of Three’s Company or Frasier plots come to life: “interactive SMS Texts,” “Facebook Relationship on Profile,” “Real Voicemails,” “Custom Girlfriend Characterization,” “Premium Gifts Available.”
InvisibleGirlfriend.com is the depressing brainchild of Matt Homann, who for understandable reasons has chosen to present the deceitful service as a means to a fulfilled and honest mode of existence: “Once you’ve met your Invisible Girlfriend, you can get back to living your life on your own terms, and not on others’.” Um, right.
At what point does a prospective client of InvisibleGirlfriend.com, in perusing the price categories, stop and say, “My problems go deeper than this”?
via Lost in E Minor
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Fake girlfriend guy and the art of the fake girlfriend selfie