Invisi.ble Boyfrie.nd Update

February 10, 2015

So a friend posted this the other day on the Facebook.

How I Lost my ‘Invisible Boyfriend’ in 6 Days

Of course I LOOOOOVVVVE this idea because it’s in line of my dream of making Her a reality…

There’s a new app on the market: It’s morally questionable, almost entirely useless, and marketed largely towards single women. Naturally, the world is abuzz.

For $24.99 per month, Invisible Boyfriend will send up to 100 texts, 10 voicemails, and one postcard from a special guy (or gal) whose name, physical appearance, hobbies, and personality are distinctly curated by you. Per the website: “Invisible Boyfriend gives you real-world and social proof that you’re in a relationship—even if you’re not—so you can get back to living life on your own terms.” Since I love to live life on my own terms (and because my editor told me to), I downloaded the beta version immediately.

I did too!

Meet my new boyfriend, Jason Harris!

So…

Couple of things :

1. People judge you. Bad.

So I generally/regularly talk to 4 groups of people.

Family – Mostly parental units. Sisters get messages via groupme of memes and things.
Co-Workers – In work context of course.
Work related friends – The Nerd herd of current and past co-workers. They’re the people I can talk to about anything.
Prophytes – Another groupme group. They’re kinda religious though and I’m kinda not so…yeah…

Honorable Mention:

Social Network people – People I know of, but don’t know well. Mostly college associates.

That said…reactions :

Family – Mother asked when I’d meet him. Was genuinely confused about the whole concept.
Co-workers – Didn’t tell them.
Work related friends – Thought it was brilliant and wanted to troll the “dude”
Prophytes – Judged the heck out of me based on their knowledge of my mannerisms which is mostly outdated since we haven’t been around each other regularly in almost 10 years.
Social Network people – Also extra judgmental due to limited definitions of what relationships are

That latter groups annoyed me the most but whatever…

Yeah…

So far the experience has been interesting.

Good stuff : Cool business model! The “boy/girl friends” are actually a type of call center. You get one person during your current conversation, but if you were to engage them several hours later, you’d get someone else who has a history of previous conversations. This helps both sides not actually develop a relationship and gives call center people an incentive to answer as they get paid per message.

Bad stuff: The engagement isn’t really that deep. Here’s our first conversation…

I shuddered at “darling” ick. This was the best exchange we had though.

This next exchange kicked off an email to their customer service department. (They just happened to send a “how’s it going” email during the dialog)

First, I HATE, flattery. I find it patronizing. Second, he said babe. BABE!

I didn’t respond after that…but did write this in response to the company’s “how’s it going” email…

They wrote back and said they can’t do too much because of privacy laws.

I mean…the dating sites do it…

And finally today’s exchange. Note the time the message came in…

Also note the lack of question mark in my response, lol

Again…don’t really care about this stuff so….

*alas…

It’s a good idea, but needs work on execution. They only launched maybe two weeks ago though so I guess it’s a pretty good start!

I’ll have to count the messages, I get 100 plus 10 voice mails (generic lets meet up again messages) and a handwritten post card….

We’ll see.

https://invisibleboyfriend.com/

https://invisiblegirlfriend.com/

Uncategorized

February 10, 2015 at 9:00 pm

Patrice

Invisible Boyfriend gives you real-world and social proof that you’re in a relationship – even if you’re not – so you can get back to living life on your own terms.

I am not sure whether to laugh or cry at this.

Why are you doing it?
- February 10, 2015 at 9:14 pm
  
  KaNisa
  
  At first I thought it was a machine language processing thing and was super excited that someone was doing something interesting with the technology…so I signed up based on that. Then I read about how it worked after and was sad that people were involved.
  
  I also am developing a really analytical view of relationships in general…what they’re for what people get out of them…it’s still being formalized in my brain, but generally I feel like it’s not so much the “people” thing people crave as it is a certain type of validation and understanding…and if that can be supplied by a human-like interaction…like with cognitive computing with good UX behind it… could it be as effective?
  
  People are still involved in this service, but it’s a step in exploring the idea. Signed up to see how they were executing and to take notes if I ever win the lottery and can quit my job to make the Her thing happen, lol. It’s also interesting as an extension of The Jack Principles…all Human Computer Interaction stuff I use at my job. (http://demos.jellyvisionlab.com/downloads/The_Jack_Principles.pdf)
  
  And last reason to be fully transparent, wanted to test my own theory that such a service COULD replace actual people who come with obligations and things. It’s not there yet, but has the capacity to do so if they integrate better personas on their side…
  - February 11, 2015 at 9:48 pm
    
    Patrice
    
    Keep an eye on the PRI schedule for an upcoming episode of WireTap called Shush. I think you’ll find the segment about the ‘professional listener’ interesting.