Strategically Communicating

Recently I came across a tweet about a new website that was launched called Cloud Girlfriend. I read a few blogs about it and decided to check out the website. The website is to give men the opportunity to have a virtual girlfriend. The relationship is built completely around fantasy. The creater if the website is David Fuhriman. His initial concept behind the website was to have a bunch of women post on men’s walls to display their popularity to all their female friends through social media. According to Fuhriman, it has developed into “a mix between Match.com and Second Life. Users log in through Facebook and create a profile using a selection of headshots of attractive people. They then fill out a profile, which allows one to choose between such options as “Books or Movies”  etc. and there is no sexual preference available. After making a profile of your own you can then browse through other profiles. You then have the opportunity to chat with someone if their profile is appealing to you (remember that the pictures being displayed are not of the actual people).

“We allow people to define their ideal self, find their perfect girlfriend or boyfriend and connect and interact as if that person existed,” Fuhriman says. “It can help in learning how to manage a real relationship, and they then can take it into the real world.”

This concept is extremely odd to me. Why would you want to create a false profile and connect with people you don’t know for pure fantasy purposes? The picture isn’t even of the actual person you are speaking to. For all you know the picture could be of a beautiful 23 year old blond female when in reality you are speaking to an over weight forty five year-old-man. Wouldn’t people rather have real relationships with real people who they can actually spend time with? This website is a great example of how virtual our world is becoming and how we have distanced ourselves from making new relationships in the real world.