Ashley and Madison?
More like Adam and Mark. And Aaron and Matt. And Allen and Mike.
One of the more interesting developments of the whole AshleyMadison.com scandal, in which hackers released the names and information of customers of the infidelity site (slogan: "Life is short. Have an affair"), is the demographic information it revealed.
Former Ashley Madison CEO Noel Biderman had bragged that his site -- in a space where it's difficult to attract female participants -- enjoyed a 70/30 gender split of men to women.
But, according to data analysis by the technology blog Gizmodo, the hackers' data dumps show that of the 37 million potential cheaters signed up for the site, only 5 million of them (a mere 14 percent) were women. If even that many were.
The article stated the second most popular IP address used to create profiles belonged to Ashley Madison computers, indicating a lot of female accounts are fake, fabricated by the company's staff members. It's an idea supported by a worker who sued the company due to stress injuries to her hands that she said she sustained while creating 1,000 phony profiles in three months. The matter was settled out of court, with Ashley Madison maintaining the woman did not make fake profiles.
Interesting. Why is it that women wouldn't feel compelled to engage with known sleazy, lustful liars online? Probably because we've encountered enough of that in our offline lives, thank you very much.
The relatively small number of women who do subscribe to the service (where the terms of service includes disclaimers like, "there are Guest users and Members on the Site that use and subscribe to our Service for purely entertainment purposes. Those users and subscribers are not seeking in person meetings with anyone they meet on the Service"), rarely use it.
While 20.3 million (two-thirds) of the men checked messages in their accounts at least once, only 1,492 women had. "It was a serious anomaly," wrote Gizmodo's Annalee Newitz. Same with a chat feature that 11 million men and only 2,400 women used. Same with replying to messages, which 5.9 million men and only 9,700 women had done.
"Overall, the picture is grim indeed," Newitz wrote. "Out of 5.5 million female accounts, roughly zero percent had ever shown any kind of activity at all, after the day they were created."
Which means a bunch of sad, lonely souls blew a bunch of money falling for an utter and unfulfilling fantasy. And now that the secret is out, they could be more sad, lonely and broke once their spouses spot their names on expose sites that are easy enough to discover and use. Many of us have spent the last week or so looking up -- gasp, and finding! -- ex-boyfriends, fellow church members, neighbors, lawmakers, personalities, etc. -- listed as Ashley Madison clients.
Lawsuits are being filed against Toronto-based Avid Dating Life/Avid Life Media, which runs the company that pledged to keep sensitive data secure. According to a class-action suit: "They are outraged that AshleyMadison.com failed to protect its users' information. In many cases, the users paid an additional fee for the website to remove all of their user data, only to discover that the information was left intact and exposed."
Customers are disgusted that they've been cheated ... by a cheating site. Because who doesn't expect loyalty, discretion and decency from a company based on deception?
In the end, it seems Ashley Madison was a grasping phony who ruthlessly and recklessly manipulated these guys and left them with nothing in return.
I suppose users met their perfect match after all.
Life is short. Email:
jchristman@arkansasonline.com
What's in a Dame is a weekly report from the woman 'hood.
Style on 09/01/2015