I was chatting with my sister Nina about an article I read in The Atlantic magazine titled “How to Hire Fake Friends and Family.” Ishii Youchi has created his 8-year-old company, Family Romance, to provide actors for clients to fill roles in their personal lives.
Examples include a father for a child who has never met his/her real dad. He/She now occasionally meets with this man who proclaims to be his/her dad and shows up over time to play that role in his/her life. Now the child feels he/she has a dad who cares about him/her.
Women hire an actor to be their date. After filling out a form as to what characteristics they require, they have the perfect match. Instead of spending years building a relationship that may not work, they have the perfect interaction- no conflict, no jealousy, no bad habits. Everything is perfect.
Sometimes a woman is pressured by the family to marry. So they have an entire fake wedding. The clients family is real and shows up for the marriage, however all the grooms side and the groom are actors. The cost is 2 million yen for everyone.
Ishii has hired people from his company to be in the audience when he has speaking seminars to bolster the crowd.
In one case, a man had lost his wife. He wanted another copy of her. He called the new woman by his wife’s old name and he wanted the actresss to call him Ostosan (father) which is what his deceased wife called him. There was no time alone. They could hold hands but they have no other physical contact as part of the rules.
In justifying his businesss Mr. Youchi proclaims that he is providing what a person needs at an important time in their life. He/she has happiness for a short time. He sees his work as bringing balance to society.
Nina and I were deep into a conversation about deceit, the fallout when someone finds out there was collusion on the part of the parent and the actor, the increase in paranoia societally knowing that imposters abound (800 actors are part of this company) is of concern.
And then, Nina, said, “I hoped you never were going to find out that Bob is someone I hired to be your significant other. I had told you that you were going to meet someone special and you know how I hate to be wrong, so I spent most of my inheritance from mom and dad to provide you with what you needed after Marshall died.”
For a minute there I felt what it must feel to these people that are deluded. After all I call Bob my fig, short for “figment of my imagination.” And then I laughed like crazy, but I am not entirely sure that she was kidding. Aren’t we paranoid enough with statements of fake news…now fake everybody? Don’t look now, but your friend might just be an actor hired by your mother. Soon we will be having everyone take a lie detector test before we allow them into our lives.
Then again our iPods do have face recognition capabilities. We are going to need that function.

Ellen Blaufarb is a Marriage Family Therapist.

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