Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/11/09/being-a-fake-loved-one-is-big.html
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This is a pretty shit thing to do to a kid.
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This hurt to read.
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There are those of us who have come to believe, over the years, that all love is fake.
Still, kids should learn that on their own through many failed relationships and dark nights of the soul, not via some paid actor faking the fake love. it has to be “honestly fake” to drive the nails into the coffin of your heart.
Jesus Christ, I gotta stop drinking.
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This reminded me of the opening to Her – where Theodore is making a living writing copy for the company Handwritten Letters.
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It’s a business. I’m not going to be her father for 24 hours. It’s a set time. When I am acting with her, I don’t really feel that I love her, but when the session is over and I have to go, I do feel a little sad.
Much like many actual fathers.
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I was gonna make a comment about how bleak the subject of the article is, but geez, dude.
You need DMT.
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I suspect we are hearing the broken heart of someone who has loved truly at least once.
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Man, for as many cool things from Japan, there are just as many fucked up/sad things.
IIRC their marriage rate, sex rate, and birth rate is in a decline.
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If we’re objecting to the part about holding intimate family secrets over children and maintaining legally secret documents (as was my original birth certificate) friendly reminder, closed adoptions are still legal in the U.S.
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Well, I’m trying not to read too much into it, but I reckon anyone who’s capable of expressing such a magnificent example of world-weary cynicism would almost certainly be well served by the kind of months-long mood lift only high-powered hallucinogens can deliver.
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I don’t recall the ethics or circumstances that call for a unicorn chaser, but this seems like one of those articles.
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He’s the worst kind of whore I could imagine. To stick your self in some little kids life and pretend to love them, care about them and then turn it off when the “session” is over is disgustingly cruel. A kid is so open and often hungry for love, lying to the kid is nothing less than child abuse as I see it. How these soulless bastards could do something like this is beyond words. I want to think this is like something from the Onion. Can this be real? My head is pounding and I think that guys needs his ass pounded for the abuse he’s causing.
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Why would anyone hire someone to do this in the first place? What possible benefit is there?
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As the interview says, he was hired in one case because the client’s daughter was being bullied at school for having no dad. He showed up as her dad. The bullying stopped. The mother viewed this as a benefit for her child. So “what possible benefit is there?” Well, there’s that benefit, for starters.
As he also says in the interview, “I think the world is unfair. I think this business exists because of that unfairness.” So yeah, sure, it would be better if we lived in a world where Japanese children didn’t bully kids for not having a dad, or a world where Japanese kids could pretend not to care about being bullied…but we don’t live in that world.
Is he providing comparatively short-term solutions? Yes.
Is the client taking a calculated risk? Yes.
Might it be more productive in the long run to change society, rather than engage in con jobs like this just to get along? Sure.
Does that help this kid, today? No.
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Yeah blame the man and not the women hiring him, making the decision to bring him into her child’s life.
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But a lot of kids are closer to their nannies than parents.
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This is true. Having a fairly good dad whose glaring flaw was just not being around enough when I was older coupled with an abusive big brother was not an ideal situation. I think I would have benefited from a role model during my teens.
As for the little girl referenced in the interview, I think the cruel part about this business is the insistence on secrecy. Maybe it wouln’t be so hard if he’d been able to state that he was a stranger, but was nevertheless here for her when her dad was not.
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There’s really blame enough to go around. it’s not an either/or situation
Yes I do blame him. The article is about him. He’s the one who thought it up and put it out there. The women have their own issues without doubt. However the story is about a man who pretends to care about a kid as opposed to women who are aware their kids need something.
