Cloud Girlfriends Take Douche Bagery Up a Notch

In case you haven't heard there is a new dating site for men that takes douche bagery to the next level. It's called Cloud Girlfriend and it encourages guys to flaunt fake relationships online. The idea started as a service for men that would create fake Facebook girlfriends to make other women in their social network jealous by writing on their walls, linking to them and crafting witty status updates about their "life" together. The founder, David Fuhriman, said he was desperate inspired to create the service after the realization that all a guy needs to get a girlfriends is to already have one. And here I thought all a guy needed to get a girl was a bank account and the ability to act out Jon Mayer songs under the blankets.

In any event, while it was in beta last month, 85,000 guys registered for a Fakebook Facebook girlfriend and had their digital dreams shattered when Facebook lawyers came after them because fake profiles are not allowed on the site. Now Cloud Girlfriends are living on their own URL and the site resembles something more like second life than social networking.

Although it made the users sound like ass hats I kind of liked the Can't By Me Love 2.0 version better where guys could BYOGF for the sake of looking popular. The new iteration just sounds like something Japanese men might do with a pillow. Dear guys, it's time to get your head out of the clouds and your a$$! No one would believe you are actually dating Cindy Mancini.

The (Virtual) Girlfriend Experience

I am not the judgmental kind when it comes to love, sex and dating, but when it includes grown men maintaining relationships with virtual teenage girls I start to feel like a hockey mom on the Republican ticket.

Yesterday I read an article about LovePlus, a dating simulation game made for Nintendo DS that lets men establish romantic relationships with virtual highschool girls. Apparently these guys court their doe-eyed cartoons by using voice recognition software to strike up conversations and a screen clock that captures how much time they spend with their VGF (virtual girlfriend).

According to the website Global Nation Inquirer its creators, Konami Digital Entertainment, "have long thrilled young men obsessed with high-tech, manga, and anime, known as "otaku," by letting them chase virtual girls in the alternative universe of their digital dreams." The game was released in Japan last September and has become the country's leading virtual dating game selling 430,000 copies. That means there are more men with virtual girlfriends in Japan then there are single men in Manhattan.

Just in time for the games' one year anniversary Konami has partnered with Atami, a resort town in Japan, to create a special vacation experience where male visitors can use barcode technology at landmarks and take photos superimposing their anime gals. There are even creepy hotel rooms with two beds where they can use Augmented Reality to look through their phone and see their teenage girlfriend in a summer kimono. Although local hotels were skeptical at supporting this alternative lifestyle, the experience has boosted tourism attracting more than 2,000 male visiors to Atami. Looks like the honeymoon isn't over...

What do you all think? Is Love Plus and its accompanying resort experience yet another way that relationships can morph over time or is it an unatural evilution of technology?