單身狗有救了 虛擬完美男友來陪你

Are you lonely? Bored? Trying to deflect questions about that special someone from Mom, Dad or your friends because there's nobody romantic in your life?
你寂寞嗎？無聊嗎？試圖從爸爸媽媽或是好友轉移問題，因爲生活中的浪漫愛情遍尋不着。

Maybe you need an Invisible Boyfriend.
也許你需要的就是一個虛擬男友。

Yes, the Internet has a solution for everything, and Invisible Boyfriend (or Girlfriend) can take care of those pesky privacy-invading questions by supplying an actual person to call you, text you and leave you messages. They'll even send you handwritten notes.
是的，網絡無所不能，而虛擬男友（女友）可以省去那些麻煩的侵犯個人隱私的問題，傳送一個真人打電話給你，發短信給你，並給你留言。他們甚至還會親手寫下留言給你。

Why, that's sometimes better than an Actual Boyfriend!
爲什麼，有時候就是比現實中的男朋友還要好！

Matthew Homann, who describes himself as a "recovering lawyer" with "idea surplus disorder," came up with the idea several years ago after a divorce and bought the domain for $7. He filed it away until late 2013, when he pitched it to a St. Louis hackathon. A long weekend later, he and his team won the contest.
把自己形容爲“腦補過剩混亂”的“復職律師”馬修·霍曼，幾年前在離婚後想出了這個主意，並花7美元註冊域名。直到2013年末，他才存檔完畢，參加了聖路易斯的黑客馬拉松活動。一個長週末過去後，他和他的團隊贏了競賽。

For $24.99 a month (for starters, which includes 100 text messages, voicemail and handwritten notes), you get to make up a story about how you met and pick out an image, name, age and interests.
24.99美金一個月（爲新用戶，包括100條短信，語音留言和手寫留言），你能自編自導一個你們如何邂逅的故事，並選擇頭像，姓名，年齡和興趣愛好。

Who's at the other end? Though Homann says some of that information is proprietary, he'll allow that the St. Louis-based company has partnered with a service that has real people responding to your messages. (Yes, they've been trained, so watch your language.)
另一端到底是誰？雖然霍曼聲稱一些信息歸私人所有，他會允許聖路易斯的公司和有真人服務迴應你信息的合作。（是的，他們訓練有素，所以，注意你的言辭）

Eventually, Invisible Boyfriend expects to offer gifts sent to you at work and other real-life services, says Homann. Not even Pygmalion had it so good.
最終，霍曼說，虛擬男友希望能在你工作時送禮物給你，還有其他真實生活中的服務。即使“賣花女”都沒有這麼貼心。

Ideas like Invisible Boyfriend have been fodder for generations of stories, of course. Think of "Cyrano de Bergerac," who supplies poetry to the lunkheaded Christian to woo Roxane; or the movie "Her," in which Joaquin Phoenix's sad sack falls in love with a computer operating system.
當然了，像虛擬男友這樣的點子已經滋生了幾代故事。想想“大鼻子情聖”爲呆頭呆腦的基督徒寫詩歌來追求羅克珊；或是電影《她》中，瓦昆·菲尼克斯扮演的冒失鬼愛上了電腦操作系統。

What lonely person wouldn't like someone understanding to talk to, even if just through a device?
孤獨的人怎麼會不喜歡有貼心的另一半說說話，即使是通過一個裝置設備。

Homann admits he's thought about it. "There's a very real possibility that people might grow attached, though that's not what we're trying to go for here," he says.
霍曼承認他想過。“雖然這不是我們想要的結果，但是真的非常有可能人們漸漸對此產生依戀，“他說。

But he believes his service can be useful to build customers' confidence.
但是他覺得他的服務能夠對建立消費者信任大有裨益。

"We had a user who was at dinner on a date. His text message went off, he texted her back, and all of a sudden the woman across the table from him asked who it was," he says. The real-life date, he says, wasn't upset at all, but became more intrigued.
“我們有用戶在吃飯的時候約會。他的短信來了，他發短信回她，而突然對面的女人問他誰來的短信，”他說。現實的約會，他說，並沒有那麼心煩意亂，但是變得更感興趣。

"What we're seeing is potential user cases are all over the board," Homann says. "It's not just, I want to convince my parents I'm in a relationship."
“我們探尋的是潛在用戶星羅棋佈地呈現出來，”霍曼說。“不僅僅是這樣，我想要讓父母深信不疑我在戀愛。”