The article "Too busy to make friends?
Rent one instead" is about the opportunity of hiring a total stranger in order to spend some time together.
The report starts off with an example.
A woman is having dinner with a married man who she rent as a friend.
They are spending time together and afterwards the woman will pay the man for this.
The concept including the Website rentafriend.com is the brainchild of Scott Rosenbaum who ran dating websites for ten years until creating the website after hearing about a Japanese trend.
In Japan family is such an important part of society that strangers are often hired to replace a family member who is somehow not available.
The text then lists some reasons in our society to rent a friend.
For one people today are so busy that they don't have time to make friends but still don't want to be alone of course.
Also the website is a great chance to meet new people.
You can invite a potential friend to various events such as a wedding, yoga class or a lunch or you simply talk to your rented friend on the phone.
To access the site members pay $24.95 a month.
They have Facebook-style pages where the can present themselves.
One can charge more than £50 an hour for his time.
Nowadays the places with the most rent-a-friend activity are big cities incuding London and Chicago.
But Brazil and Canada are following.
October 2014
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