lifestyle

Invisible boyfriends prove immensely popular amongst grown-up Jan Bradys.

You can stop looking, we’ve found it. This is officially the world’s saddest product or service.

$25 doesn’t buy you much these days…

A cheap pair of shoes that will fall apart within a week? Maybe. A Barbie doll for your kid’s birthday? Well, not the fancy one with rollerblades. A small popcorn and coke at the movies? Hahaha, not likely. That’s at least going to cost you a pineapple.

“I stumbled upon a delightful new sexual option: the Overnight Boyfriend.”

But what $25 can now buy you is: Ten voice mail messages, 100 texts, a photo, a handwritten note and a love story that’s more socially acceptable than ‘we met while attending a scrapbooking course for divorced parents’.

That’s right, $25 can buy you a totally objectively legitimate pretend boyfriend.

Jan Brady, start saving your pocket money.

Let us explain…

Matthew Homann is an entrepreneur who won a start up competition in the US a couple of years ago, with the idea that he would bring pretend girlfriends and boyfriends to the masses. After ending his marriage, Homann grew tired of his pushy family asking him when he was going to find someone new – so he decided to make someone up and wanted to help other put upon men and women do the same.

ROSIE: “I need to be able to fart in front of my boyfriend.”

But as any of us who have ever told our mothers to back off know, saying you have a girlfriend/boyfriend who your friends and family never get to meet, is not going to be enough. If you want to carry off a fake relationship lie then you have to commit to that lie. You have to be able to convince the outside world with evidence; social, real time evidence.

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Enter Homann’s business brainchild: Invisible Boyfriend Dot Com, which allows you to pick from photos of real members of the romantically charitable public and create a pretend partner for yourself.

Post continues after gallery.

The website then backs you up with all the information and digital social interaction you need to quell the disdain of properly loved-up family members. The site promises:

BELIEVABLE SOCIAL PROOF: HAVE TEXT CONVERSATIONS, SHARE PHOTOS, AND TELL A BELIEVABLE STORY ABOUT YOUR ‘INVISIBLE’ BOYFRIEND.

The text conversations and the voicemails will be left in real time – you can order one the same way you order a pizza.

Susan Boyle meets her first boyfriend at the age of 53.

And these aren’t robot men and women sending you messages; they’re real people with real life beating hearts and working sexual organs. (Although there is no guarantee you’ll get the same message-sender each time).

For additional cash you can request more than one photo of your new lover to parade in front of your gobsmacked social circle, who had lost all faith you were capable of adult human relations.

The service has proved immensely popular amongst divorcees, teenage girls and lonely hearts the world over.

miley fake bf
At least we’re not the only ones, Miley. Image via Tumblr.
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Super sadly, some of the biggest users of the InvisibleGirlfriend are actually men serving in the armed forces who want to pretend there is someone at home waiting for them. Homann told Gawker Media that this sort of pretend relationship can keep people going in a pretty desperate, mentally and emotionally gut-wrenching situation.

So while you may have smirked and giggled your way through this post (it’s okay, so did we), feeling immensely superior, we’re guessing that that last part got you right in the feels.

It turns out that even the strangest of ‘dating’ sites can have a genuinely positive purpose….

Additional note: If you’ve been wondering who on earth volunteers their photo for use on these websites then know this: If you give them a photo you get a FREE t-shirt that says “I am someone’s invisible girlfriend/boyfriend”, which would be a great, if not slightly awkward, conversation starter next time you’re at the pub.

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