Rent a Mourner

Article from cbc.ca talks about a business that hires out actors to attend and mourn at your funeral.  Their website states:

Whether you need to introduce new faces, increase perceived popularity or simply increase numbers we are here to help

This is something that is common in some other cultures.  However this feels different.  I want to say wrong but that would not be the right word.
In other cultures it is an established cultural tradition.  Everyone knows who has been hired and what they are there for (often it is for loud wailing).  This seems like something totally different.
The website mentions to "increase perceived popularity".
Which leads me to ask a whole bunch of questions:

• Are we so desperate to appear popular that even in death we are still striving for people to believe that we are/were popular?
• What has happened to our community when we need to hire people to come to our funeral?  We have 1,000 face-book friends, but are not convinced that anyone them will actually show up to say fare-well once we have died.
• Why are we worried about what people think of us after we are dead?
• Funerals are already expensive  so why pay more to convince people that we are popular?  (Rather than giving the money to family or friends.)
• Who do we think we are kidding?  Do we really think that people are not going to know that we hired someone?  And once it is discovered what happens to our "perceived popularity"?