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The Booming Japanese Rent-a-Friend Business (theatlantic.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report on The Atlantic which talks about a growing business in Japan wherein you can pay an actor to impersonate your relative, spouse, coworker, or any kind of acquaintance. The reporter has interviewed Ishii Yuichi, CEO of a Family Romance, a company that rents such actors. Yuichi believes that Family Romance, and other companies that provide a similar service can help people cope with unbearable absences or perceived deficiencies in their lives. In an increasingly isolated and entitled society, the chief executive officer predicts the exponential growth of his business and others like it, as a la carte human interaction becomes the new norm. An exchange between Yuichi and the reporter, from the story: Morin: When was your first success?
Yuichi: I played a father for a 12-year-old with a single mother. The girl was bullied because she didn't have a dad, so the mother rented me. I've acted as the girl's father ever since. I am the only real father that she knows.
Morin: And this is ongoing?
Yuichi: Yes, I've been seeing her for eight years. She just graduated high school.
Morin: Does she understand that you're not her real father?
Yuichi: No, the mother hasn't told her.
Morin: How do you think she would feel if she discovered the truth?
Yuichi: I think she would be shocked. If the client never reveals the truth, I must continue the role indefinitely. If the daughter gets married, I have to act as a father in that wedding, and then I have to be the grandfather. So, I always ask every client, "Are you prepared to sustain this lie?" It's the most significant problem our company has.
Yuichi: I played a father for a 12-year-old with a single mother. The girl was bullied because she didn't have a dad, so the mother rented me. I've acted as the girl's father ever since. I am the only real father that she knows.
Morin: And this is ongoing?
Yuichi: Yes, I've been seeing her for eight years. She just graduated high school.
Morin: Does she understand that you're not her real father?
Yuichi: No, the mother hasn't told her.
Morin: How do you think she would feel if she discovered the truth?
Yuichi: I think she would be shocked. If the client never reveals the truth, I must continue the role indefinitely. If the daughter gets married, I have to act as a father in that wedding, and then I have to be the grandfather. So, I always ask every client, "Are you prepared to sustain this lie?" It's the most significant problem our company has.
...some of US right considers you to be a subhuman if your dermis has the wrong color...
Right. Who's ever accused the Japanese culture of harboring racism? Not this gaijin!
...a sizeable chunk of US left *drumroll* considers you to be a subhuman if...your genitals are not mutilated.
Who the fuck are these left-wing nuts that you speak of requiring us all to modify our genitals? I've not encountered this "sizeable chunk."
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Just like renting a hooker is much cheaper than dating a girl and you know you'll get some instead of "we need to talk about our relationship".
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
I finally came back to RTFA.
Most posts here (including some in this thread tree) keep talking about prostitutes and escorts. Which isn't unreasonable given TFS.
But TFA goes further. It's surreal. This sort of acting, of... reality orchestration, is the kind of shit reserved for fiction. The Truman Show. It's unexpectedly similar to Dollhouse, if you've seen it:
[regarding a 60-year-old man whose wife died]
Morin: "Did she have the same memories as the wife?"
Yuichi: "There are certain memories, yes. There’s a blank sheet, and the client writes the memories that he wants the wife to remember."
This is the stuff of fantasy, Hollywood CIA professionals who replace people (could be friend, could be foe) with a trained lookalike. If you told me such a business existed, I'd mock the sheer practicality of it (many posts have) but it turns out people will take what's available. Limited durations (not if the money keeps flowing) or capabilities aren't a problem for some scenarios. Give TFA a read, people. I can see how various "apology" actors would be useful.
Then you are a fool. As a canadian, I've been in physical encounters with people where they have drawn weapons. If I or they had a gun instead of a knife, things would have ended much worse for someone.
Okay, here's a thought experiment for you. What if we took an area where it was not generally legal to carry a pistol, and changed the laws so that it became generally legal to carry a pistol? Would violence go up, go down, stay the same? By your argument, it should go up.
Well, the experiment has been tried, and violence was observed to go down.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jul/14/murder-rates-drop-as-concealed-carry-permits-soar-/
Does this prove that legalizing concealed carry causes violent crime rates to drop? No, because correlation does not prove causation. However, if your argument were valid, concealed carry would cause an increase in violence, and this data clearly contradicts this proposition.
So, you were rude to me, and you offered your own opinion as if it were fact, and the facts don't agree with your opinion.
Most guns used in crimes are smuggled from the USA at extreme risk.
It's not legal to possess crack cocaine anywhere in the USA. Yet crack addicts buy it everywhere all the time. So I'm not sure what your point is... if your argument is that the laws in Canada keep criminals from getting firearms, could you please explain how the crack addicts get crack?
For that matter, since it's against the law to commit murder, why do murders still occur?
The laws shape the culture.
That's an interesting idea but I notice you didn't support it with any kind of references or statistics or anything. I'll grant that laws can exert some kind of influence on culture but I reject the idea that government has the power to directly shape culture, that if it could just pass the right laws human nature could change. I disagree with you on this point, but I won't insult you.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely