False friends

I suppose it's inevitable at a time when the boundaries between the real and the virtual are increasingly blurred, but the service provided by Family Romance still makes the mind boggle. As the Atlantic's Roc Morin reports, Ishii Yuichi's company and others like it are able to supply surrogates for practically any scenario: supposed boyfriends, fake friends, false fathers, even pretend wedding congregations designed to deceive just one or two people.

What's particularly remarkable are the lengths to which Yuichi and his employees will go to sustain a lie. That, and the number of jobs they have on at any one time, means that they almost lose sight of their own identities. Yuichi claims he feels most like himself when at home with his real family, but when Morin asks him how he knows his family hasn't been hired, he replies: "That's a good question! No one knows."

(Thanks to Simon for the link.)