A perfect application of the Forer effect: humans have an amazing ability to interpret what can apply to anyone as having special significance for themselves.
It's the same reason why horoscopes and fortune cookies work. Stepping back and thinking logically, it's easy to see why their messages might apply to a lot of people. But when you're reading one, you can't help but think, "Ah! It says that I would encounter adversity at work this week, but overcome it! I knew that presentation wasn't the end of the world." And if you're a little lonely or down and need emotional rapport, you can't help but feel a little spark of excitement and connection when that Mechanical Turker claims to like your favorite TV show - especially because the text messages from the fake partner look just like they would from a real one.
No matter how deeply we trust our logical conclusions, our emotional response remains the same. We can't help but feel worthier when we're being praised (even by computers - see the Silicon Sycophants study: http://pdf.aminer.org/000/307/350/information_requirements_a...), hurt when we're being insulted, and connected when we're being connected with.
When I was young I picked up a book at a friend's house on astrology. I am a Taurus. I mistakenly opened it on another sign thinking I was reading the chapter on what made up a Taurus character. I was reading and nodding my head "wow, this is kind of weird. That is me. I do that. Well, I'm not like that but it's not going to be a 100% fit" After several pages I realized my mistake. And then I realized the Forer effect without knowing what it was or that it had a name.
> No matter how deeply we trust our logical conclusions, our emotional response remains the same. We can't help but feel worthier when we're being praised (even by computers ...), hurt when we're being insulted, and connected when we're being connected with.
I just started playing The Walking Dead. In one scene, after another character saved Clementine from a zombie before I could, the game said, "Clementine remembers that you didn't save her." A very different feeling than failing and having to replay from a checkpoint.
There's a fine line (maybe not so fine) as to when something becomes manipulation IMHO - though if someone's paying $25 monthly for someone(s) to chat with to feel connected then I suppose they've applied an added bias or value; makes me feel a bit sad if the people aren't doing it just for fun.
> It's the same reason why horoscopes and fortune cookies work.
A more charitable interpretation of horoscopes and fortune cookies could be that, given that human behavior and problems falls into recognizable patterns, generic solutions can be offered as a sort of framework or scaffold for the received to fill in their particular details and get started with a more appropriate and personal solution.
What else did you expected? from a little something that came inside of a cookie!!!
This drive to reduce humanity to a set of chemical reactions and evolutionary traits is misplaced, because nothing makes less amazing our ability to love just about anything. And we should celebrate that, instead of being condescending about it, because you know, life would be very boring and unfulfilling without feelings.
Funny to see this here. My business partner did the design and I'm friends with the team.
I can't say that I feel much for the business, but I've been continually impressed by its ability to generate press. People _love_ talking about and debating this concept, and I can't say that I've been completely free from it.
That being said, this is currently probably the most covered startup from Saint Louis. While it is nice to see a startup from this ecosystem getting this amount of press attention, it's disappointing at the same time. I know a lot of people working on very ambitious and difficult problems that would kill for a tenth of the amount of attention that Invisible Boyfriend and Invisible Girlfriend get.
I just learned about this today. This is the greatest marketing concept since "million dollar homepage." My life is a failure for not having thought of this.
Of all the technological wonders of the setting, "ractors" are what amazed me the most. It's the perfect interactive experience, a full-time "Wizard of Oz"[0].
Maybe we can see something of the kind in the following year with the advancement of VR thechnology..
I think it's not as much about social proof as it is about feeling protected and cared for. The marketing strategy ("social proof" over "feeling lonely") let the users benefit from the service without feeling shame: loneliness is unfortunately still considered some kind of stigma.
Invisible Boyfriend might be the polar opposite and complement of prostitution: the first simulating the love between a protector and his protégé, the second providing a sex partner. I'm not implying any moral fault, but it's fascinating nonetheless.
People used to look at me weird when I explained how I was paranoid that someone was routing all of my conversations between multiple people, in an effort to cluster intelligence and intellectual contributions without any participant knowing what they were contributing to.
Take that, therapy. Yes, the paranoia was somewhat imaginative, but it was an exaggeration of something that actually can be mechanized. The people I explained this to didn't believe me that you could create chat streams this way.
I hope this doesn't come across as rude, but I sure hope that you got to deal with that fear with a professional. That would be a difficult way to live...
Not surprised that it works, it looks like something fun to do on both sides. In fact, i believe people who love romance would sign up for a free service like this on both ends. (Since their niche is people who dont want to have the actual relationships, they could easily pair up their users with each other as pure conversation partners).
The sad thing is the reason that this app exists. Has it become so taboo to be single that you have to pay to hide it?
“Oh my God,” I thought. “This total stranger, whoever he or she is, thinks I cry myself to sleep while watching public television and texting a paid fake boyfriend I named after an actor.”
To all you folks saying this is really sad, or wrong, this is a novelty. It's like the digital equivalent of a gag gift. It's a great conversation starter and really very funny.
So uh, there are attractive girls on Fiverr that will pretend to be your girlfriend on Facebook for a month (friending, n posts/likes on your posts per month, etc) for five dollars. I paid two of them to "fight" over me just to troll my friends. It turns out this piques interest in other women :-P
Ah now that would be interesting. It seems like in the examples provided the virtual SO is reactive, responding to what the user says (ex "I like Downton Abby") whereas when they reach out the messages are generic. I wonder if the conversation would generate its own 'depth'.
Virtual girlfriends have been popular in Japan for years. Love Plus (2009) for the Nintendo DS was the first to catch on. There are now many others. Some text and send you pictures of what they're doing. You can send your virtual girlfriend presents on-line, which costs real money.
For most people, looks ARE part of the equation. It's like removing Pi from an equation. I wonder what's going to happen when science makes looks whatever we want, like hair color.
Reminded me of "The Entire History of You" from Black Mirror[1] tv series (I really don't feel like calling it that way, it's more like a separate movies). I highly recommend it.
I wonder how long it takes before those lower(st) paid jobs for those that are not specialized in anything will be in something like mechanical turk. Especially in this example it's visible that those can sometimes require somewhat local workers, so they may spread outside countries with lowest cost of living.
I don't understand how their business model could scale, i.e. how they would be profitable, if indeed, they have real person(s) responding to multiple women (or users who've designated themselves as a woman :).
Let say 1 "real human" is responding to 10 women at the same time, the membership income from these 10 users (not accounting for software, hardware overheads even) = $25 / month X 10 paid users = $250.
If this "real human" is located in US, even taking a minimum wage of $10 / hour and assuming he/she works 160 hours a month ( 8 hours per day x 5 days a week x 4 weeks a month), the cost of having this "real person" on the payroll = $1,600 per month!
$250 - $1,600 = - $1,350. i.e. they would be losing over 1K per every few users if this is how they are doing it.
Unless, of course, the "real human person(s)" responding to multiple women are located in India / China and work for $1 a day or something like that.
Or maybe they are using Machine Learning or some sort of Artificial Intelligence, to come up with "Cute" Texts and responses based on the User's selected preferences and his/her past Texts to this "Invisible Boyfriend".
Only in the last case does it makes sense. But then, they'd be guilty of "false advertizing" if they claim that a "real human person" is at the other end responding...
You are off by a couple orders of magnitude on the number of people that a real human responds to. They get paid a few (Say, 5) cents for each text, so, to earn around $10/hour, they would need to send 200 texts/hour (which is pretty easy/trivial if you are doing this full time). Each package includes up to 100 texts/month, so, that is 1 real person per two customers/hour, or 16/day, or 320 customers/month per customer representative.
Looked at another way - one customer representative can support two customers/hour (in aggregate, obviously they don't send all their texts to one person in an hour). The customer representative gets paid $10/hour, the two customers pay $50/hour.
The service is ran by CrowdSource, who uses Mechanical Turk to divvy out the task of responding to texts at a very small rate. So, it is a lot cheaper.
This makes for an interesting thought experiment, particularly when you compare and contrast it with the concept of the "waifu" (loosely, an animated character from Anime or videogames people associate as being their significant other).
One is a coping mechanism for handing external pressures, the other internal. I wonder how healthy either can be in the long run.
This article remembered me again that Psychology is something really interesting. No matter how strange all of this can appear to us looking from an outside view, this is how our brain works. If you know how psychology works you are able to create new business around of it. After reading it I wonder about how much, strange or not, psychology demands people have.
Basically virtual escorting as a service (not all escorting is sex, some of it is just companionship). For now there's no sex involved but with how easy it is to connect people nearby you could easily see this type of service expand in markets where it's legal.
I could see nude selfies being sent too down the road (again a different service, not exactly this one).
The thing that has been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. ~ Ecclesiastes 1:9
[+] [-] xianshou|11 years ago|reply
It's the same reason why horoscopes and fortune cookies work. Stepping back and thinking logically, it's easy to see why their messages might apply to a lot of people. But when you're reading one, you can't help but think, "Ah! It says that I would encounter adversity at work this week, but overcome it! I knew that presentation wasn't the end of the world." And if you're a little lonely or down and need emotional rapport, you can't help but feel a little spark of excitement and connection when that Mechanical Turker claims to like your favorite TV show - especially because the text messages from the fake partner look just like they would from a real one.
No matter how deeply we trust our logical conclusions, our emotional response remains the same. We can't help but feel worthier when we're being praised (even by computers - see the Silicon Sycophants study: http://pdf.aminer.org/000/307/350/information_requirements_a...), hurt when we're being insulted, and connected when we're being connected with.
[+] [-] jusben1369|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SloopJon|11 years ago|reply
I just started playing The Walking Dead. In one scene, after another character saved Clementine from a zombie before I could, the game said, "Clementine remembers that you didn't save her." A very different feeling than failing and having to replay from a checkpoint.
[+] [-] nodata|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sharkweek|11 years ago|reply
"You had a family member who passed recently right? Or someone really close to you"
"Yes, yes! My aunt passed away earlier this year!"
"Ah, yes! And... and... she was sick right? Or in pain close to her death?"
"Wow, yes!!"
"You were close with her, or you were close with her family right?"
...etc
[+] [-] aidos|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loceng|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krat0sprakhar|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crpatino|11 years ago|reply
A more charitable interpretation of horoscopes and fortune cookies could be that, given that human behavior and problems falls into recognizable patterns, generic solutions can be offered as a sort of framework or scaffold for the received to fill in their particular details and get started with a more appropriate and personal solution.
What else did you expected? from a little something that came inside of a cookie!!!
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bad_user|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pinn2|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abandonliberty|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CitizenKane|11 years ago|reply
I can't say that I feel much for the business, but I've been continually impressed by its ability to generate press. People _love_ talking about and debating this concept, and I can't say that I've been completely free from it.
That being said, this is currently probably the most covered startup from Saint Louis. While it is nice to see a startup from this ecosystem getting this amount of press attention, it's disappointing at the same time. I know a lot of people working on very ambitious and difficult problems that would kill for a tenth of the amount of attention that Invisible Boyfriend and Invisible Girlfriend get.
[+] [-] briholt|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taki|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Vaskivo|11 years ago|reply
Of all the technological wonders of the setting, "ractors" are what amazed me the most. It's the perfect interactive experience, a full-time "Wizard of Oz"[0].
Maybe we can see something of the kind in the following year with the advancement of VR thechnology..
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard_of_Oz_experiment
[+] [-] inglesp|11 years ago|reply
http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/31/7471901/i-cant-stop-compa...
[+] [-] bigtunacan|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Red_Tarsius|11 years ago|reply
Invisible Boyfriend might be the polar opposite and complement of prostitution: the first simulating the love between a protector and his protégé, the second providing a sex partner. I'm not implying any moral fault, but it's fascinating nonetheless.
[+] [-] drcomputer|11 years ago|reply
Take that, therapy. Yes, the paranoia was somewhat imaginative, but it was an exaggeration of something that actually can be mechanized. The people I explained this to didn't believe me that you could create chat streams this way.
[+] [-] technofiend|11 years ago|reply
You might enjoy this stack-exchange article on Robert A. Heinlien's "They" - http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/49224/short-story-w...
[+] [-] hluska|11 years ago|reply
Sorry that you had to go through that!
[+] [-] ionwake|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MasterScrat|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] return0|11 years ago|reply
The sad thing is the reason that this app exists. Has it become so taboo to be single that you have to pay to hide it?
[+] [-] nissimk|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ergl|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Torgo|11 years ago|reply
This is why I don't use my real name on HN.
[+] [-] sciguy77|11 years ago|reply
This seems to be a worthwhile experiment to me.
[+] [-] wglb|11 years ago|reply
Or hook up eliza on your end and see what happens.
[+] [-] mhomde|11 years ago|reply
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-j-cameron-phd-bcbad/an...
[+] [-] LeoPanthera|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|11 years ago|reply
Now in beta, an Oculus Rift virtual girlfriend.
[+] [-] ChrisClark|11 years ago|reply
Pure profit. In App Payments for the lonely. Not sure how I'd feel if I was making money off that.
[+] [-] brador|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CapitalistCartr|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] comboy|11 years ago|reply
I wonder how long it takes before those lower(st) paid jobs for those that are not specialized in anything will be in something like mechanical turk. Especially in this example it's visible that those can sometimes require somewhat local workers, so they may spread outside countries with lowest cost of living.
[+] [-] beaumartinez|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justboxing|11 years ago|reply
Let say 1 "real human" is responding to 10 women at the same time, the membership income from these 10 users (not accounting for software, hardware overheads even) = $25 / month X 10 paid users = $250.
If this "real human" is located in US, even taking a minimum wage of $10 / hour and assuming he/she works 160 hours a month ( 8 hours per day x 5 days a week x 4 weeks a month), the cost of having this "real person" on the payroll = $1,600 per month!
$250 - $1,600 = - $1,350. i.e. they would be losing over 1K per every few users if this is how they are doing it.
Unless, of course, the "real human person(s)" responding to multiple women are located in India / China and work for $1 a day or something like that.
Or maybe they are using Machine Learning or some sort of Artificial Intelligence, to come up with "Cute" Texts and responses based on the User's selected preferences and his/her past Texts to this "Invisible Boyfriend".
Only in the last case does it makes sense. But then, they'd be guilty of "false advertizing" if they claim that a "real human person" is at the other end responding...
[+] [-] ghshephard|11 years ago|reply
Looked at another way - one customer representative can support two customers/hour (in aggregate, obviously they don't send all their texts to one person in an hour). The customer representative gets paid $10/hour, the two customers pay $50/hour.
Pretty good business model.
[+] [-] diverightin63|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justboxing|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zaroth|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] falcolas|11 years ago|reply
One is a coping mechanism for handing external pressures, the other internal. I wonder how healthy either can be in the long run.
[+] [-] shirro|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edpichler|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SG-|11 years ago|reply
I could see nude selfies being sent too down the road (again a different service, not exactly this one).
[+] [-] swamp40|11 years ago|reply
George Glass: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2egRZia504