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4 Magazines Delivered to Your Door

You Can Now Hire a Stranger to Come to Your Barbecue and Hang Out

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Meet Artem. He’s a trained chef based in Moscow, and for somewhere between $13 and $65, he will come to your barbecue, grill your meat, tell you jokes, and keep you company for the day. He will not, under any circumstances, become your friend afterward.

Artem is one of dozens of men advertising “barbecue companionship” on Russian classified platforms, a service that has been gaining traction in cities across the country. The transaction is simple: you want to fire up a grill, you have nobody to do it with, you pay someone to show up. The companion handles the social side—conversation, atmosphere, possibly........

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