Blow Up Boyfriend YouTube
Single but wish you weren't? There's an app for that.

Meet "Invisible Boyfriend" (and "Invisible Girlfriend"), the app designed to send you texts, calls, and even leave voicemails to help you convince everyone around you that you've found love.

The apps, founded by St. Louis's Matthew Homann and Kyle Tabor, launched today.

"[Imagine] you've got conservative grandparents in the Bible Belt who can't believe you might be gay or lesbian," Mr. Homann told BetaBeat reporter Jordyn Taylor.

BetaBeat reports,

We needed to know: how does the service generate text messages and voicemails that seem real? We should make it clear that users don't just receive generic, robotic texts; the messages read like they come from a human, and your Invisible partner will actually respond if you text them back.

Mr. Homann said the recipe is a "secret sauce," but hinted that "you can tell in many cases there's a real person on the other end of the message."

"One of our users," he said, "[has] actually told us she's texted her Invisible Boyfriend practicing things she might say to a young man she might meet in St. Louis that she's interested in."

Invisible Boyfriend and Girlfriend also generate believable pics of your pretend partner by soliciting selfies from ordinary people, as opposed to using posed-looking stock images.

The service costs $24.99. The package includes 100 texts, 10 voicemails, and 1 handwritten note.