FRIENDSHIP BY THE HOUR
How do you go about finding a friend during a pandemic?
In early October, I was paid us$60 to be someone’s friend. Other than jokingly claiming my role in any friendship was priceless, I hadn’t ever thought about how much I was worth. But that day, I found myself in manhattan’s popular meatpacking district, outside a trendy hotel, meeting a perfect stranger named kenneth, whom I met on the rentafriend.com website.
It was started in 2009 by entrepreneur Scott rosenbaum after reading about Japan’s popular “rent A family” companies, agencies that rent out people to act as substitute family members.
The u.s. site offers friends to be hired for platonic activities such as working out, attending a wedding or visiting a museum. members join the website (there is currently no app) for a monthly fee of us$24.95 and have access to all registered users. Those interested in becoming friends sign up for free and the rates are negotiated between the parties independently of the site. Since the site’s inception, rosenbaum estimates there have been at least 100,000 meet-ups.
rosenbaum said he wanted the site to be the opposite of Ashley madison or other dating sites around at the time.
“When you stop to analyze the site, you can see that it provides a great service to both parties involved,” said rosenbaum.
The importance of personal relationships has never been more evident. With covid-19 raging, people are assessing their friendships and confronting how lonely they may actually be. Operating under lockdowns and ever-changing social restrictions, many are puzzled by how to handle what some have said is an “epidemic within a pandemic.”
I meet kenneth (last name withheld), a 36-yearold IT professional, on a mild autumn afternoon. We had exchanged numbers and decided to meet, with a tentative plan to walk around the city and possibly grab a late lunch. he suggested two hours for the meeting, while I whimsically decided $30 per hour would be a good starting rate.
his goal in renting my friendship services was to help him practise his social skills. he tells me he wants to gauge his development by receiving objective feedback from a stranger.
he’s tall, stocky, born and raised in Queens, N.y. he approaches with a self-assured demeanour, and raises his elbow towards mine, the new pandemic greeting.
“hello, hello,” we both say at once.
It was my first time having such an encounter, but not his.
We quickly decide to sit at the hotel restaurant’s patio. “Order whatever you want,” he says.
After engaging in some pleasantries, I can’t help but ask kenneth many questions, starting with the obvious: Why? Why are you renting a person to act as a ‘friend’? Why not just go out on dates with someone, I continue. Isn’t dating by definition a way to practise being yourself ?
“That would be misleading someone if I’m not romantically interested in them,” he replies.
kenneth explains that using a site like renta friend is a way for him to have a friend-like experience but on-demand and with fewer restrictions. “A paid favour, of sorts.” his first time using the site was to find a wedding date five years ago. he wanted to avoid having his friends set him up and thought having a stranger accompany him to a public event would stave off friendly harassment.
“I couldn’t find someone in my own circle to join me at this wedding, so hiring someone was the next best thing.”
ken isn’t on social media, jokingly saying he’s not interested in what his friends eat. he assures me he has an active social life with plenty of friends to call on, but it’s their inconsistent schedules that bother him.
“They aren’t always available when I need them.” We never end up walking around the city. Instead, we have some food, and just talk. The city is serene, and the day is fast approaching its golden hour. I’m very comfortable, and to my surprise am actually enjoying his company. I do have the occasional intrusive thought, though — what’s the catch here? This seems so normal.
In October, a Toronto-based woman named Amy crever started the website www.bemyfriend.ca after posting to an industry facebook group about feeling lonely and looking for new friends. her single post garnered more than 180 comments, 340 likes and 50 direct messages in less than 12 hours. To help capture the momentum she created a facebook page, which has close to 1,000 members.
crever says her post seems to have unwittingly identified a major societal issue.
“People feel such intense, deep shame about not having the friends or the local community they want,” she says.
The vulnerability in her post is helping put a face to a loneliness epidemic that researchers say existed well before the pandemic began. In truth, it’s a topic many thinkers and artists have examined throughout history. At the onset of the lockdown, a poll conducted by Ipsos on behalf of global News found that 54 per cent of canadians felt lonely and isolated.
crever says she is happy to be driving the conversation forward about the need for friends. her primary insight is that her loneliness wasn’t unique. “I just struck a real nerve, which I didn’t intend on.”
crever’s social media group isn’t the only way communities are assembling online and seeking friendships.
Two cornell university computer science students started a website called Quarantine Buddy early in the pandemic. According to its website, it matches people all over the world based on backgrounds and interests, in order that they navigate this challenging time together. To date, it claims to have helped more than 50,000 people across more than 100 countries build friendships while stuck at home.
And then there are the apps that are designed to help you find new friends. Bumble, the popular dating website, has its Bff feature, which allows platonic matches to be made, while hey vina, the self-described “Tinder for (girl) friends” allows women to meet new female friends based on interests and life stages.
There is clearly a demand for companionship. In October, a report by morneau Shepell’s mental health Index found canadian workers who identified loneliness as a concern had the lowest mental health score of those who cited a fear of dying from covid-19.
But the topic of loneliness isn’t new. Back in 2017, dr. vivek murthy, who had earlier been the u.s Surgeon
general during the Obama administration, called loneliness a public health crisis and said it is just as dangerous as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
In 2018, the u.k. appointed the world’s first Loneliness minister to tackle the problem.
Scientists recognize loneliness acts as a biological mechanism as well, similar to hunger and thirst. It’s a natural signal that our bodies give us when we’re missing something we need for survival.
There is no shortage of data and research about the benefits of healthy social relationships.
relationships enable us to ward off threats, increase productivity and can even increase wealth, so it’s not surprising that people are willing to devote precious resources (time, money, energy) into trying to find one. researchers from the AARP Public Policy Institute and Stanford university found that loneliness could be costing the u.s. government close to $7 billion annually on additional medical costs for medicare recipients who lack social contact.
But as with all things worthy of their pursuits, relationships require effort. A 2018 report published in the Journal of Social and Personal relationships found that it takes more than 200 hours to make a close friend. As adults, that amount of time can be perceived as a significant investment.
According to Shasta Nelson, author of Business of friendship: making The most of the relationships Where We Spend most of our Time (August 2020) there are three requirements for a healthy friendship to exist: positivity, consistency and vulnerability. All three must mutually exist in order for a relationship to be deemed satisfying to both parties.
“We need to feel more good than bad around the people we are with,” Nelson says. “We need to have on-going history with them in order to log memories and feel safe, and we need to feel seen.”
Nelson says a mistake people make is thinking a friendship is having an activity partner. There are certainly resources to help with aspects of a friendship, ways to help accelerate it, but friendship itself can’t be outsourced.
“There’s no way to do it except to practise those three things, so it’s important that you’re clarifying if it’s an aspect of a friendship. you can’t rent a friend, but you can rent somebody.”
As the two-hour mark nears, kenneth asks the server for the bill. I’m unsure if this is a cue for me to inquire about my bill. my imagination kicks in again — does the word “bill” act as a double entendre? I fidget and feel myself trying to push my toe further into my shoe.
We decide to head towards the train stop together. As we slowly walk, he stops me in the middle of the street and pulls out his wallet, offering three $20 bills. I confidently reach out while steadying my gaze. I am, for a few more moments, a professional; a somebody.
At the station, I smile and wish him a nice weekend as I descend the steps. I look up to instinctively say “We should do this again” as a common parting of words, something I do when I’ve had a pleasant time with someone new. But I stop myself, realizing we aren’t friends, and we can’t be, under these circumstances. I’m also unsure I want to be hired again.
A week later I get a text from kenneth asking if I’m interested in a second session.
“We’ll see if this 200-hour theory is real. 198 more to go,” the message reads.
I never did end up testing that theory. I felt conflicted about the power imbalance, and the exchange of money made the idea of the relationship that much more antiseptic.
With the noise of our modern lives reduced and the increased awareness of the mental health tolls of social isolation making its way into mainstream discourse, loneliness is no longer a concept we can squirm about. It’s prevalent and potent.
friendship, on the other hand, isn’t always about pleasure and convenience. It’s a necessity.