Meet GirlfriendHire, a freshly-launched site that calls itself "the first place on the internet dedicated to connecting guys and girls to help guys break up with their girlfriends, prank their friends, get their ex-gfs back, create a fake break up messages and even hire a girl to do your homework." It's based on Fiverr, a "marketplace" that lets users request and perform a variety of $5 services. But GirlfriendHire is more specific — it lets girls do stereotypically girlfriendy stuff for guys. Like, you know, a history paper.
The site is the brainchild of 22-year-old Cody Krecicki, a student at Edison State College in Naples, Florida. Krecicki said he started the site "to make a niche for girls that are in college to make money while they're busy going to class." He said the site offered a way "for girls to be their own bosses and guys to have something fun — a tool to use, if you want to call it that."
Guys can use this "tool" in a number of ways — they can pay girls to send them texts or Facebook messages, give them fashion advice, even break up with their real girlfriends for them. Krecicki predicts the text and Facebook options will be popular, because "guys have a tendency to try to look cool in front of their friends," and messages from an out-of-town girl will help them do that. One request already on the site illustrates this principle: "Help me trick my friends into thinking I started dating a punk rock chick."
However, Krecicki says the homework option could be an even bigger draw. Users have already requested "Do my American history questions from chapter 3, three short answer questions" and "I need a short three paragraph paper on nationalism for my humanities class ASAP." Of course, there are plenty of sites where you can pay someone to do your homework, if that's your thing — but GirlfriendHire lets you pay a girl to do it. Which, according to Krecicki, adds value.
He says "guys trust girls" because they "usually end up getting better grades, they're more responsible," and they're "just all-around better with school." Apparently the idea that women are the studious gender has fully entered youth culture (cue the End of Men freakout).
There might be something titillating about having a girl do your homework (like housework in lingerie, perhaps?), but that's not how Krecicki sees it. He says the homework option will be good for girls who want to make money without flirting with guys. He doesn't want GirlfriendHire to be seen as "an adult service" — he wants it to be "fun and safe."
GirlfriendHire is brand-new, and doesn't have many users yet. It may not take off. But if it does manage to recruit some willing girls (and guys), it may fill an underserved niche. In an era where you can make money selling your dirty underwear online, a service that lets you write out a guy's American history questions is sort of appealingly innocent.