Ask HN: Would you pay to have a penpal? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Would you pay to have a penpal?

21 pointsearlyriser56 comments

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?

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If you charge for it, do so in a way that doesn't seem like you're paying for the friendship itself. Imagine two scenarios: 1) You pay $10 for the pleasure of seeing your friend. 2) You meet your friend for drinks, where you end up spending $10. There's a subtle difference between the two, the latter of which is pleasant, the former not.

Depends on the culture of the target audience too. In Japan, paying for a friend isn't terribly uncommon. OP could consider that market as well.

I really want to like this idea, I think the ideals behind it are laudable, and honestly I would fall well within its target market.

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.

But what if this other person is on the company's payroll, and is/acts really cool? And perhaps they are being rated by other users, so you'd know in advance?

EDIT: removed some ambiguity in wording.

> But what if this other person is really cool?

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.

Ok, I changed my wording a bit. What I meant is that the other person (the penpal) could be paid by the company. As such, I don't think it is bad if they are being rated.

In this case I think you are effectively offering something like psychotherapy/counseling/coaching/advising. It's not necessarily bad if some these things are provided by people without certain kinds of training, although there are some serious and complex problems that really are best handled by a professional.

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.)

Thanks for your comments. I was an Educational Psychologist at some point. This wouldn't fall under the umbrella of traditional therapy, but it will be certainly a professional relationship that will need some clear framework (ethical and operational).

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.

That's even worse. I guess it solves the "Peeple" rating problem, but at the price of making the whole service transparently artificial. ("It's an internet friend you have to pay for! Also they're not really your friend, they're just paid to pretend they are!")

I honestly think rating people in a service like this will make it feel even more artifical and 'disconnected'. Coolness is not a one-dimensional scale, and what is interesting to you might not be interesting to the next person. Such a system would just make some people try to optimize their score, i. e. not really caring about the relation in itself.

C'mon this is emotional prostitution.

There are a range of services out there already. There was a YCombinator startup where you could sign up and be a volunteer "listener" after completing some online training - sorry forget the name now - it was designed to solve the issue you are talking about.

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!

https://www.7cups.com

7 Cups

That's the one - thanks for reminding me!! :)

No. People are lonely because they have incentives to do things other than make human connections, mostly in the form of technology. It’s not a problem that is caused by lack of availability, it’s a problem caused by short-term gratification that is more appealing and easier to obtain for people. Providing availability would be moot since there’s no demand to begin with, and any that exists is already met by online forums like this.

A penpal situation in particular is the antithesis of what you’d want, as sitting down and writing letters to other people is actually work that people don’t want to do. Maybe the first time is fun, but then it becomes a chore. I’m not going to pay someone to sign me up for a service which carries a bunch of obligations in addition to what I already have in my life.

My opinion is that as long as there exists free ways to connect with people, nobody is going to pay for it. So it's tough for me to see a way to build a business around this; I don't think people will be particularly willing to pay.

While I would love to find a penpal, I don't think I'd pay for such a thing. I can only imagine the pricing revolving around a convenience fee, and that's not too much to hang a business on.

People already pay to be listened to. It's called therapy. So yes, I think people would pay for it. Perhaps someone that's just lonely wouldn't use such service, but people that are truly depressed and struggling to make it each day my give such service a try.

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.

No.

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.

I'm 99% sure that I saw this idea floated during the DotCom boom on Slashdot.

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/

There are a bunch of subreddits for that already so I'm not sure a paid service would work that well for that. One advantage could be that people stay more engaged for longer because they are paying for it?

Some subreddits are awesome. The advantages here will be avoiding flakiness & ghosting, the intended depth of the connection (something that would be more along catharsis than let's say discovering a stranger's books taste), a focus on the client needs and avoiding "catching feelings".

Aren't there plenty of hybrid dating sites with the option of just being friends?

If the service is good and truthful it has a great potential.

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.

Yes, I think authenticity is the key here.

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.

Fascinating idea. I don't mean this in a bad way, but it fulfills the same role as prostitution - a basic need met with money.

My thinking was similar but a bit more cynical: if I'm going to be paying someone for company, I feel like I'd get more (pardon the awful pun) bang for my buck with a sex worker.

I would definitely not pay for this. But there are a lot of interesting cool people out in the world that would be nice to meet for intellectual discussion. Finding them is the challenge.

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.

I am convinced that there's a (paid!) market for this, but you are also asking for feedback from the wrong crowd, that's why you are getting feedback like this

> There's zero chance I'd ever sign up for such a service.

Majority of HN users are I am guessing under 50 and most if not all have good paying jobs -- money is a factor in quite a few instances of loneliness directly or indirectly. Ex: Guy loses job, girlfriend leaves him, starts drinking and become lonely.

The loneliness epidemic is also very prevalent in the 50+ age group, esp. with rising longevity and healthcare facilities in the developed world, people are living longer and longer.

I saw in the news the other day how the mailman was sitting and reading mails to senior citizens in some french village and they were paying him for it.

You should do a quick and simple MVP, and position it positively, like "make friends anywhere in the world" or something like that, not too cheezy, but nothing "negative" sounding like "overcome your loneliness" etc cos that will just remind people how lonely they are.

I recently interviewed at https://www.keen.com and when I visited their site, it looked scammy like 1 of those online horoscope, lover gurus and tarot card readers. On site I learned that they are very highly profitable since 2004. It's a bunch of online properties where people call into a phone # and discuss their relationship, get "happiness advice" etc. Apparently quite a few of those "Advise providers" are making a fulltime income.

You could apply the same principles to penpal / email to help people combat loneliness, make news friends, and get relationship (this also causes loneliness with breakups, divorce etc) advise etc.

Email me if you wanna discuss more. Email in bio.

There's good reason to believe that the increase of loneliness is being caused by an increased sense of alienation in society, which was predicted to occur due to economic forces under capitalism by Marx. So heartwarming to see this loneliness being viewed as just another potential to extract profit from people...

No; there's no need to pay. There are a load of free dating/friendship sites. I got onto a couple about 10 years ago and made friends from dozens of countries. Learnt Spanish cause I liked the Latin Americans I met so much. (Still friends, now old friends, with a few of those original people from 10 years ago.) That just changed my life, never had so many awesome friends. Also later I joined a free language-exchange site, where you're matched with appropriate people and teach each other your native language—another very good way of making friends. Sure, it's not great for real hugs, but apart from that :-)

One group of lonely people who need Connection are residents in assisted living, memory care, nursing homes, etc. They will likely not seek out a service for themselves, but their relatives might pay. Family members often don’t have the time, inclination or ability to stay connected with their older relatives, especially those at a distance. And frankly (sadly) many of the residents have simply been forgotten. Pen pal emails would not cut it for most of the over 70 crowd (especially those with dementia), but a snail mail handwritten letter or card could go a long way toward brightening somebody’s week.With some additional tech video pen pals might work. There is a vast untapped market of “upwardly mobile people who cannot pay enough quality attention to their older relatives living in facilities”.

No.

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

Just being honest - no.

There exists too many free forums on the internet, and moreso even subreddits, to make such a thing worth paying for.

I’m sure somebody would pay.

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.

All of these are already handled by facebook and such. Maybe involving something useful in the process would justify a new service.

For 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.

I'm not sure that Facebook already doing something is a valid reason not to do it in a new service. Quite the contrary, Facebook has validated the market for online connection, but is now struggling to find a way that to do it that is received positively by all. This could be a great time to slice off a piece of Facebook and make a new service.

Meetup - they have communities for lots of things. And its a paid service in the sense that an organizer may leave a tip jar on the table to cover costs.

I don't think people will pay for a penpal. However, they might pay for advice if the person giving the advice qualified as some kind of expert in the area in question. Perhaps you could consider an idea pivot to something similar that people would be willing to pay for.

I would say no, because paying someone to do this means your friendship is shallow and based off money

>There's an epidemic of loneliness.

This problem isn't solved by a penpal service. It's solved by the living situation. The people you live and work with everyday are the people you become closest to.

Call it PayPal :0

PenPayPal

The argument "X already exists" is not a reason not to do something. We have both Coke and Pepsi ya know.

I would pay _not_ to have one.

$0.00

This is pathetic and you should feel ashamed for trying to exploit individuals with such needs for profit.

As others have pointed out, those seeking that kind of companion already have free alternatives available, in Reddit and other places.

Please don't be nasty. If you disagree with OP's idea, that's great. Just don't call OP or the idea pathetic. There's nothing wrong with the idea of getting paid for one's work. Let the market decide--it's ultimately smarter than you (or me).

Sometimes a bad idea is just called a bad idea.

Sometimes a terrible idea is just called a terrible idea.

and sometimes a pathetic idea is just called a pathetic idea.

The idea was in no way pathetic, terrible, or bad.

You think he should build it for free? How is he supposed to pay his bills or eat while he's making it? Profit is not necessarily a dirty word.

I don't think that he should build that, period. It is an abomination of an idea.

Just like the "professional huggers" which he mentions. You can't purchase human affection.

I think it's fine to call this an abomination. I wouldn't be on Ask HN if I didn't want honest opinions.

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.

Exactly. Profit is necessary to facilitate resources (time in this case).

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).

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