Web sites give students the option to purchase virtual friends
Feeling inadequate about your social status on Facebook and MySpace? Wish you had hotter friends online? Embarrassed to be the only one you know with less than 100 friends on Facebook? Worry no more; help is on the way.
Now, courtesy of www.FakeYourSpace.com, popularity on online networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, and Friendster, is just a click away. Starting March 1, FakeYourSpace will offer users hundreds of “friends” from all ethnic backgrounds, sexual preferences, and body types for a small monthly fee.
FakeYourSpace, which promises to bring “popularity to the masses”, sells friends for $.99 per month. The customer has his choice of any friend that FakeYourSpace has to offer, but chooses solely based on looks; profiles of the friends are set to private. Once a customer has chosen a friend, that friend will comment on the user’s own page twice a week. Anything unlawful excluded, users basically control what their friends will write in their comments.
Despite its effort to sell friends that look anything but ordinary, FakeYourSpace promises that its fake friends will blend in seamlessly with real, human friends.
Testimonials on the website claim that FakeYourSpace has the power to work wonders for its user’s social life.
“FakeYourSpace changed my online life,” said Lindsay from San Diego. “I have never been so popular!”
Though some students at CU agreed that the service could become successful, none shared Lindsay’s extreme enthusiasm, and most met the idea with open opposition.
“I think that a lot of girls judge a guy based on what kind of other girls he’s friends with, so this concept isn’t that bad of an idea,” said David Thayer, a sophomore business major. “Still, I think that anyone who uses this is pathetic and ridiculously fake.”
Sophomore business major, Sean Stephens, thinks that a lot of people are going use the service.
“Some say you have to spend money to make money. I say you have to have hot friends on Facebook to meet hot chicks in real life,” Stephens said.
Others, like sophomore psychology major Peter Pavlidakis, were vehemently opposed to the idea.
“It all comes from those emo kids in high school who wear black eyeliner and tight jeans and will do whatever it takes to impress people,” said Pavlidakis .”I think any college student that uses this must have serious social problems.”
Katherine Brooks, a sophomore economics major, is also skeptical of the concept of “buying” friends.
“There’s no point in having friends who are just going to exist on Facebook and MySpace, no matter how hot they are,” said Brooks. “Paying for friends is absurd in the first place, but paying for friends on the Internet is even worse.”
Representatives from FakeYourSpace, Facebook, and MySpace were unable to reached for comment.
“I can’t think of anyone that would honestly use this site,” said Danny Nolan, a sophomore engineering major. “The only way I can see this working is if people used it as a joke.”
