Men are spending over Rs. 80,000 for attention from virtual girlfriends'

Stories about men paying for sex are common but one guy has revealed that he spends as much as £1,000 a year (more than Rs. 80,000) on a ‘fake girlfriend’ who simply texts him so that he can experience an emotional connection. Ben, a 28-year-old software professional, pays £81 (more than Rs. 6,000) each month so that his favourite Snapchatter send him photos, messages and emails.

Reportedly there are many people like him who don’t mind paying rising Snapchat glamour stars for just some attention. These transactional relationships are different from the raunchy exchanges between clients and web cam models. Instead of demands of nude photos or sexually explicit messages, the communication between Ben and his virtual girlfriend is the kind of mundane banter that most people in long-term relationships have.

"In the morning I could get a Snapchat selfie with 'good morning baby' written on it, later in the day she might message me on Kik (a messaging app) about how her day at work has been. It's not crazy stuff," he confesses, according to the Independent. "There's never really any hot stuff ... for most of the time it's the sort of thing you'd find in any regular relationship," he insists.

Ben, who admits that she has never had a steady girlfriend because of being “too busy”, says that the unusual agreement makes “things feel normal”. He also says that he sincerely cares about his online girlfriend, a part-time model who has more than 20,000 followers on Twitter.

The virtual girlfriend business witnessed a boom in 2014 with the increasing popularity of online firms like Invisible Girlfriend and Dream Lover.