Ask HN: Would you pay to have a penpal?
There's an epidemic of loneliness and there are some services that are trying to solve in some way this problem like having lunch with strangers or professional huggers.
I'm toying with the idea of creating a penpal service because I like to email and I want to solve problems like this. If you have read "The hacking of the American Mind" you'll know that one of the things we can do to become happier is to CONNECT (the others are Contribute, Cope & Cook).
The focus of the service would be to "be there" in an empathetic way for the people who need to be heard or exchange.
Do you think you could use something like this (now, or at some point of your life)? Do you think someone of your entourage would benefit from this?
60 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 130 ms ] threadFor instance look at language exchange, which is penpals with an intent to learn each other's language. There might be other useful stuff a service could match people for.
If it’s fake and people have to force themselves into a helpful mood then it’s probably not gonna work.
I guess that the magic behind something like this is to be able to create actual human connections.
Anecdotaly I find that getting drunk with people is the easiest and fastest way to make connections like that. Not that it is a good idea, but it works.
There's no way to scale this (as a one-man show) and keep with the quality, so I'm not trying to make this a big business, just something sustainable.
There's also Interpals - a free penpal service. You can use it to learn languages too, although some people seem to use it as a dating site!
7 Cups
Sure there may be proxy services out there that cater to these needs, but this isn’t to say that they can’t be improved.
Check out also the number of companies that are doing some version of digital therapy.
Would recommend reaching out to the people that are using other support channels and hearing their stories and thinking of ways to support them.
The problem with this services is that you are paying to have a "friend", that might says whatever you want to hear. So it would work best if it's sold as a professional service and not as find a buddy service.
There's zero chance I'd ever sign up for such a service.
It feels artificial (It's an internet friend you have to pay for!) and self-defeating (it's a platform for shared misery!) The idea of being paired up with some other lonely person so we can vent at each other empathetically about how lonely we both are doesn't sound like it'd be a support at all; it sounds like a burden. Best case scenario is we really hit it off, and then there's one more person I like but don't really get to ever connect with for real, because long-distance. Got plenty of those already, thanks.
EDIT: removed some ambiguity in wording.
That's the "best-case scenario" I was talking about. Still not great.
> And perhaps they are being rated by other users, so you'd know in advance?
Whaaaaaaaaat hell no kill that idea with fire.
First off that implies that users are being paired up with many other users, not one-to-one (otherwise there's no way for a user to build up 'ratings') which makes it sound more like a subject-specific message board than a "pen-pal" service.
More importantly, wtf? rating individual users? On a service whose purpose is for people to empathetically "be there" for one another? Seriously? "Bob's really lonely and hurting, but he's also kind of dull. One star." No. No no no no no.
I have three thoughts about this:
* You should think carefully about your marketing about the nature of the service that you offer (as you can see that some people were really rubbed the wrong way by the original description).
* Similarly, you should be sure to be clear about the scope and nature of the relationship.
* You should consider the issue of things that "escalate quickly", e.g. customers who behave inappropriately toward your staff, or customers who threaten to harm themselves or other people, or who seem to be in need of more extensive professional help. You might think this is unlikely if your service isn't marketed as psychological counseling, but all of these things are going to come up eventually!
Overall, I think it's pretty useful and valuable to have more places and options that people can turn to for conversation, interaction, and advice. I agree that it's really tough that so many people feel isolated and don't know where to turn for connection or how to talk about their experiences.
(Edit: People in this thread seem really upset about describing the other person in this interaction as a "friend". And indeed, if I pay someone to interact with me for various purposes, I wouldn't describe that relationship as "friendship". It is a professional relationship, not a friendship. But it doesn't mean that the relationship isn't beneficial. There are all different kinds of relationships that involve payment that can be enormously beneficial. Maybe you can even develop some new ones!)
(Edit 2: It doesn't have to be presented and marketed as something like psychotherapy. It can still just be corresponding about one's situation. But the parameters should still be as clear as possible.)
And I agree also with you in how beneficial is to have multiple choices for interaction and advice. I was delighted when I read philosophical counseling is a thing.
As others have pointed out, those seeking that kind of companion already have free alternatives available, in Reddit and other places.
Sometimes a terrible idea is just called a terrible idea.
and sometimes a pathetic idea is just called a pathetic idea.
Just like the "professional huggers" which he mentions. You can't purchase human affection.
However, the very spirit of being a hacker is to solve problems with less than optimal solutions, like duck tape. Human affection is the optimal solution, but people who use services provided by professional huggers know that they're buying an interaction that is positive to them, not a feeling in the other person.
I'm all for people meeting these needs in organic and free ways, that would the ideal. But it's something like good food, ideally, we should have time to prepare a good meal (real friends or new reddit strangers), but there's not always like this. So you can feel this need with some industrial food (the are services using AI to solve depression), or going to a restaurant with someone proud of their craft (my idea of service).
Here's the problem with paying for social things: I already feel like nobody ever treats me like a human being unless money is involved. The only time anyone smiles at me is if they're chasing a tip. The only time anyone speaks to me is if they need something or are getting paid for it. And that hurts.
So, using your service would hurt emotionally. That's kind of a tough sell.
There exists too many free forums on the internet, and moreso even subreddits, to make such a thing worth paying for.
Maybe an idea that will suggest meetup groups based on some personal scoring method.
I know the meetup site now spams the hell out of me with new meetups that I have absolutely no interest in.
Maybe it was Interpals [0]?
> For over a decade, InterPals has been the Internet's premier free site for online correspondence, cultural exchange, and learning foreign languages.
> Created in April 1998, the site began as the "International Penpal Page." A friendly forum for people to find email and postal penpals from around the world, the page quickly became so popular that it was rebuilt from the ground up in 1999 and renamed InterPals. (Want to see what it looked like? View archived versions of InterPals).
[0] https://www.interpals.net/
I have seen USA's loneliness crisis in the news several times the past few days in relation to the tragedy in Florida. However, it feels wrong to capitalize on it. Especially given that people living in poverty may be the ones suffering from loneliness the most.
Cool idea if it were offered as a community service, and managed by a team of people who are passionate about helping people find community. Of course, a consensus that there is a loneliness crisis in the USA doesn't appear to have been reached with people with authority to take wide actions