Rent a Friend has just launched in the UK. You pay someone to keep you company, or to join you in some activity. It’s not a dating site; nor is it a front for an escort agency. There is a strict ‘no sex’ policy.
Haroon Siddique explains some more:
“You can rent a local friend to hang out with, go to a movie or restaurant with, someone to go with you to a party or event, someone to teach you a new skill or hobby, or someone to show you around an unfamiliar town,” explains the US website. It also suggests using its services for a friend “to help motivate and spot you during your workout”. Popular activities people are renting friends for, according to the website, include teaching manners, prom dates and “wingman/wingwoman”.
Subscribers pay up to $25 a month for access to a database of more than 200,000 “friends” who have profiles and photographs to enable browsers to make an informed choice. Once they have chosen a friend, they can negotiate an hourly fee with prices starting from $10 an hour. Rent a Friend founder Scott Rosenbaum, who lives in New Jersey, said he was moved to start his business because, amid all the websites offering every imaginable dating experience, there was a gap in the market.
“I wanted to go a step back,” he told the Times. “No one was offering friendship.”
There are two reactions to this. One is to take the high ground and dismiss it as a complete distortion of the meaning of friendship. Another is to shrug the shoulders and accept that all friendship is at root motivated by self-interest. Helen Rumbelow in the Times takes this latter route:
Show me a friendship of any duration and I will show you a balance sheet of who did what for who: the dance floors tackled, the shoulders cried on, the hair held back over the toilet, the boxes moved, the dark nights endured and the champagne breakfasts that followed.
Ruthless accounting is involved, and if one party goes even a little into the red – a certain someone who stayed just a little too long in someone else’s spare room, for example – then the emotional auditors may be called in. Bankruptcy can follow. Friendship is a gift, but it’s part of a gift economy. [July 19, p11]
Aristotle still gives the simplest and truest account of friendship in Book 8 of his Nicomachean Ethics. He recognises that not all friendships will be perfectly pure and altruistic, and that many will be based on the need to find support, help, companionship, pleasure, fun etc. But this doesn’t make him cynical. It’s part of human life, to be brought together with others for all sorts of mutual interests.
That’s the key to friendship, however – it has to be mutual. And that’s what’s missing from Rent a Friend, the mutuality. That’s why I feel, however worthwhile it may be, it’s not friendship. If people didn’t pay, and just met through a website because they wanted to meet others, that would be a different matter.
Bridges and Tangents 
Now this is a really interesting post, Father Stephen! It throws us totally off balance and makes us look at our friendships and, more importantly, at ourselves and our motivations in our relationships with others. I think most people I think a lot of people would like to think that they have altruistic motivations for their friendships; I know I do. However, when I look at myself, there are other ‘gains’ in my friendships which I like or benefit from and, for much of the time, am unaware of. Granted, some friendships have more altruistic motivations than others and I feel that this changes over time, according to friend’s circumstances. As our lives change, so do we and it is at times of great trauma or need that we rely upon our friends and vice versa. I suppose it is at these times that people find out who their true friends are.
The whole notion of actually paying for a friend is, to me, quite sad. It is indicative of the sort of ‘throw away’ society we have developed over the years, where friends may be regarded as mere commodities.
Would be better of calling it rent-an-acquaintance. Maybe friendship could follow.
In my experience true friendship comes from sharing, it is a communion of time, kindness, honesty, truth and depth. To offer yourself to somebody in true friendship is the most beautiful gift of Love. It matters not if different things are brought to the table, or taken from the table. we are all unique with different needs and qualities. But sometimes it does involve being brave, taking a little risk, trust and always truth. And it is only ever possible with faith in the innate goodness of the other person
Infact true friendship is Corinthians 13. And if a website for ‘friendship’ can stimulate an otherwise isolated society to take a preliminary step in a direction, that could possibly lead to a situation whereby people can form relationships with potential then how cool is that.
Shame that money is part of the equation. But wouldnt it be even more amazing if once real friendship was formed people dropped the finance and kept the beauty of what they had found for free.
Friendship requires selflessness and sacrifice, empathy and love. These are things that are becoming more scarce in our narcissistic, materialistic society that demands satisfaction NOW. People don’t know how to be friends, because they don’t know who they are. There’s too much noise in the world. It’s very sad, and this program is just a band aid over a bleeding wound.