( CNN ) 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 ? Maybe you need an Invisible Boyfriend . Yes , the Internet has a solution for everything , and Invisible Boyfriend ( or Girlfriend , they 're not fussy ) 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 . Why , that 's sometimes better than an Actual Boyfriend ! 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 InvisibleGirlfriend.com 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 . That probably would have been it except for BuzzFeed , which picked up the story from a local alternative newspaper . Suddenly Homann -- who already had a full-time job running his company , an innovation-strategy firm called Kendeo -- realized that , thanks to the attention , Invisible Boyfriend had better be good . The result is a web service , launching in beta this week , that allows you to invent your potential partner . 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 ( the homepage includes a nice Mad Libs-style paragraph ) and pick out an image , name , age and interests . 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 . ) `` There has grown this amazing multinational workforce of people willing to do microtasks for a very small amount of money , '' he says . Not even he knows where they 're all located , but he expects that the work will be scalable with demand . A Business Insider writer observed that her Invisible Boyfriend came from the city she requested , based on area code , and she praised the `` attention to detail . '' 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 . 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 . What lonely person would n't like someone understanding to talk to , even if just through a device ? 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 . But he believes his service can be useful to build customers ' confidence . `` 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 , was n't upset at all , but became more intrigued . `` 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 . ''
Online service `` Invisible Boyfriend '' creates a virtual romance with a fake person . Comment: It costs $ 24.99 a month ; includes 100 text messages , voice mails and more .