In 1986, Ben Hollis sat down in front of a camera and decided to be someone's friend for 42 minutes straight.
The result was "Rent-a-Friend," a VHS tape where Hollis played Sam, a cheerful companion who would chat with you like an old acquaintance—no script, no cuts, just one long uninterrupted take of genuine, slightly awkward friendliness. It's the kind of artifact that feels impossible now: sincere and unsettling in equal measure, the way only 1980s earnestness can be.
But the story behind it is quieter than the weirdness suggests. Hollis was going through something. His first marriage was ending. He was lonely in the way that makes you want to reach toward anyone, even strangers on the other side of a screen. So he made this video not as a joke or a gimmick, but as what he calls a "creative and emotional salve"—a small act of service disguised as entertainment.
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Start Your News Detox"I was aware that maybe this odd little video might make someone smile, or feel a little less alone," he wrote later. "If so, wow. Even a laugh would be nice. Laughter reduces depression, after all."
You can hear the neediness in Sam's voice—Hollis admits it's there, a kind of gentle desperation to be liked. The video walks a strange line between comforting and unsettling, which is probably why it's never quite left the internet's collective memory. People find it, watch it, and don't quite know what to do with the feeling it leaves behind.
But something unexpected happened over the decades. Strangers actually found it helpful. One YouTube commenter wrote: "You were my friend today Sam when I was feeling down. Thank you." Not mocking. Not ironic. Grateful.
Loneliness isn't new—it's been woven through human experience for as long as humans have existed. What's changed is how visible it's become, how many of us are naming it out loud. Hollis's impulse in 1986, to make something that might ease that feeling, turns out to have been ahead of its time. He created a remedy for isolation using the only tools he had: a camera, his own company, and the hope that it might matter.
Thirty-plus years later, it still does.
