How Many Men Actually used AM?
For completeness, could we have the stats on how many male profiles were similarly never used?
When the Ashley Madison databases were splashed all over the internet by hackers, it emerged that about 31 million accounts on the Tinder-for-affairs website were created by men. And about 5 million by women. Not great odds if you're a straight fella looking to cheat on your spouse. It turns out the odds were even worse: very …
Having used Internet dating sites, I have always suspected that the number of men dwarfes the number of women. I have no proof, but the user experience suggests it.
Having far more men than women is the norm IMO, which is why they don't function anything like portrayed in TV adverts etc. It does not work well for either sex. Somebody should start a site that admits only the same number of men as women, and use that as a selling point. Big bucks await.
I wouldn't be surprised if these stats mirror those on Match.com and other such sites
I will note, purely anecdotally, that I personally know several women who say they've used Match, and a few who've mentioned using other sites such as OK Cupid.1 I suspect, but have no sound evidence to support, that some sites - particularly Match, which has a massive PR and advertising campaign in the US2 - are somewhat more appealing to women and thus have somewhat less lopsided ratios.
If it's possible to get hold of reliable data, no doubt someone's done a study. But that's a big "if".
1Am I the only one who finds it nearly impossible not to refer to that site as "OK, Stupid"? Maybe it's just me.
2Certainly no other site matches their TV advertising spend in these parts. I've seen a few adds for Chemistry.com, which were based around a clever campaign explaining they were the site for people rejected by Match.com. Tempting!
It does show how absolutely bullshit the claim that millions of married men were having relationships though AM is though. The site was never a risk to public morality any more than ElReg readers dating, despite pretending to be.
If you discount the percentage of profiles set up by admins, men pretending to be women, and worried spouses, that 1% looks a lot closer to 0% active 'women'
"It does show how absolutely bullshit the claim that millions of married men were having relationships though AM is though."
I think you distort the facts to suit your point. I don't believe any one claimed that "millions of married men were having relationships". Merely, that milions of men were unfaithful, willingly subscribing to an idea that "life's too short, have an affair", seeking (seldom finding) that shag on the side.
Unless, of course, the opposite is the case, i.e. those milions, with exception of a few bad apples, were busybodies doing research in the name of advancing the science of extra-marital relationships, or they were unknowingly entered into the database by the miscreants who, in the random act of good nature, also paid for their accounts. Yeah, it must have been like that.
"Merely, that milions of men were unfaithful, willingly subscribing to an idea that "life's too short, have an affair", seeking (seldom finding) that shag on the side."
Of course, this is using the less traditional definition of unfaithful, which is "does not succeed in having an affair".
More seriously, since there were essentially no women on AM, does that mean that use of AM cannot be used in court as grounds for divorce, since it's way below the threshold for even suspicion of having an affair, never mind proof?
does that mean that use of AM cannot be used in court as grounds for divorce, since it's way below the threshold for even suspicion of having an affair, never mind proof?
Obviously this would depend on jurisdiction. No-fault divorce is now available throughout the US and in many other countries, so you don't need a reason - but in some jurisdictions (not sure about whether this is still true of any US states) that's only if both parties agree to dissolution.
Prior to no-fault divorce, I expect that demonstrating a concrete attempt to commit adultery could have been argued as equivalent to successfully committing it. But who knows? Maybe one of our friendly legal bloggers will look into the matter.
The appearance of a two-sided market in order to bilk the one side that actually comes to market (which is then technically, not a market.) Not much sympathy for the clients of AM, but its a pretty common dodgy business practice for intermediary market 'makers', e.g. certain freelance job sites, don't really have any appreciable buy-side clients, but want to charge job applicants for 'access' to 'them' ?!
What's new.
All women have to do to click is walk into a bar wearing very little.
Why waste time enlisting onto a website when you can get what you want elsewhere....
Most sex-sites are of a similar ratio....except that sometimes it is not evident from a quick glance that many of the women are just men dressed-to-impress.
Many of the women are, apparently, asking for "donations" to pay for the travel costs........
Whatever....................
So nearly all the names in the Ashley Madison data dump belonged to men who were faithful in deed, even if not in thought. It's evidence not that they were having an affair but that they are too tragic to be able to pick up a partner in a bar (or insert name of real meatspace venue here) and so have to resort to doing it online.
Eeenteresting.
Men signed up and paid money in the hope of cheating on their wives. At least at a knocking shop men actually got what they paid for. Ashley Madison appears to be no more than a fraud perpetrated against men who were too sad and unattractive even to have an a successful relationship with their wives much less another woman.
"What a failure."
That depends on your definitions.
Perhaps it was a success in that it enlivened the lives of some men with an apparently-plausible fantasy. This really needs to be taken into account, I am sorry to have to say.
One might well think that for at least some of the men using the site, this was about as close as they're going to get to a real woman and they were certainly under the impression that there were many desirable women on the site - because that's what the internet is; and that's what human imagination does.
(Example: note that for all the stories on this site, the pictures which accompanied the stories were all of young, well-maintained people - as opposed, for example and contrast, to grossly overweight people with questionable hygiene. Which do you think would be closer to the underlying reality?)
Or one might think that the website was a success - for the people who ran it - in that it made quite a bit of money: even the paid deletions earned them a good $4 million (rounding off to 200,000 deletions at $20 per.). It would appear that the website was a goldmine, but that might change depending on the legal fallout.
(In spite of the T&C's stating that some of the profiles were "created for amusement" I think that the fact that nearly all of the supposed women were non-existent goes far far beyond what such a disclaimer should allow them to get away with. Hopefully they will be made to disgorge, at the very least. This is a separate question from their culpability for letting the user data end up plastered all over the internet - such cases need to be punishable by imprisonment.)
Depending on one's point of view and definitions, the site might or might not have been a "success" but it certainly was a fraud. Even for me, having a very low opinion of the internet, the reality was astonishing.
As someone once put it: No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.
If women can use the site for free, wouldn't it follow that a free 'woman' would be created first so that paying users could 'test the waters' to see who/what is actually available on the service? It would be very telling if we knew how many 'female' accounts were men just looking to see if the site was worth using.
So we have a service whereby you can add some woman's email address to a big list of adulterers and it doesn't cost you anything, but obviously *she* will get the "welcome" email and it will go straight in her spam folder and there's no way for the original perpetrator to ever use the account so it lies idle.
I am not in the least bit surprised that this happened several million times. Nor am I surprised that AM made no attempt to remove these accounts from their membership statistics.
I am, however, puzzled that anyone ever thought this was a suitable website to give their credit card details to.
... when in fact the sex industry as a whole is excellent at parting men with cash for satisfying (or not) their particular fantasy.
On a separate note, i find it particularly self-demeaning for men to pay tokens to 'chat hosts'... like throwing fish at a seal in sea world... "here's a few dollars, now jump up and down and eat a banana"..
Fortunately for society, most men just shrug and say "Meh" when they realise they have spanked (pun intended) too much money on basically nothing a trip to the "wank bank"* couldn't have solved.
* the bank of memories savoured by any man for that time when they need to relieve themselves using only their memories and imagination.
i find it particularly self-demeaning for men to pay tokens to 'chat hosts'... like throwing fish at a seal in sea world... "here's a few dollars, now jump up and down and eat a banana"
I doubt that was what they asked them to do with a banana.
You can't get away from the biological facts that men are programmed to impregnate as many women as possible, while women are programmed to choose a dependable partner who sticks around.
Civilisation has glossed over those drives, but they they are still in our heads and bodies.
You might want to do some reading on the theories surrounding the purpose of the female orgasm. You may be shocked at what you may find; I know I was!
At least one theory suggested that the big Female O was about attracting additional males *immediately* during procreation to ensure that competition was fierce amongst them. Such conflict ensured good genetic stock.
Going anon because my wife reads el reg. and I don't want her getting any ideas. :D
"while women are programmed to choose a dependable partner who sticks around." -- Archivist
Speaking as an erstwhile geneticist, that's not strictly true. There's a considerable advantage to women to play it both ways, and significant evidence that they do. The optimum mating strategy for a women is to become impregnated by an extremely attractive (and likely promiscuous) male and then have her family provided for by some dependable saddo with material resources who is unlikely to cheat.
The optimum mating strategy for a women is to become impregnated by an extremely attractive (and likely promiscuous) male and then have her family provided for by some dependable saddo with material resources who is unlikely to cheat.
And that's why "Trust, but Verify" is so important. ;)
(in lots of things really)
You can't get away from the biological facts that men are programmed to impregnate as many women as possible, while women are programmed to choose a dependable partner who sticks around.
So time travel does indeed exist! This post coming directly from the 19th century is the proof!
This post coming directly from the 19th century is the proof!
Alas, sociobology is alive and well. It's a convenient refuge for a particular type of sophomoric thinker who wants to ascribe simple, foundational causes to human behavior and sweep both complexity and ethical responsibility under the rug. Now that scientific racism is a harder sell,1 sociobiology is a great way to put a pseudoscientific gloss on your own bad behavior (or the bad behavior you aspire to).
1Though by no means dead. It has yet to regain the limelight it briefly enjoyed with Herrnstein and Murray's The Bell Curve, much less its dominance of the days of naive Darwinist imperialism, but there's no shortage of tiresome small-minded bullies still promoting it.