For one, there are literally millions and millions of accounts and nearly all of them are men or fake accounts made by the employees of Ashley Madison for the sole purpose of impersonating women to perpetuate their con. Ms. Newitz even discovered that of the female accounts that do exist, only about 1,500 were actively checking messages. This in comparison to some 33 million male accounts. I had so many questions as to what's going on here. Questions like: why is the ratio of men so high? Are men biologically programmed for deceit or is something else going on here? And if we do accept that men are biologically programmed for deceit, how would that cause you to raise a boy differently as per se a girl? Would it be harder to raise a boy to be a responsible young man so as to steer him straight from being just another future statistic on an Ashley Madison-type clone in the not-so-distant future?
And then my thoughts turned to such topics as "open marriage" and "polygamy" (hey I live in Utah) and by extent "polyamory" and "open relationships." I started to wonder if the dynamics of "more than one" evolved to placate men (specifically) and not women because with so few women having active accounts on Ashley Madison, my conclusion is that most women are satisfied with their marriages. I suppose I shouldn't be shocked because the United States is a patriarchy, and as unfortunate as that fact tends to be it means that women have been placating the needs of men for centuries. It's just that I've never noticed it as much as I did when I started reading the statistics that Ms. Newitz was posting on Gizmodo.
And then there are gay male relationships to consider. Long term relationships in the gay community do exist, but I would almost say they are "unicorns" in the same manner as Wall Street refers to a billion dollar startup as a "unicorn." In other words, most businesses fail, and I think the same is true of gay relationships (male not female). Why? Because they are comprised of two men and men are (as Ashley Madison statistics show) overwhelmingly deceitful. So yeah, it makes sense that long term gay relationships are rare.
But what about the fraud that the website perpetrated? There's that too. I mean, Ashley Madison was perfectly marketed to its audience. It was a honey pot that attracted enough men that it generated $140 million in profits in 2014 alone. And what were they paying for? Newitz points out that the entire website was a dystopia. It billed itself as a social network but none of the members on the site could be social without paying for that privilege. You couldn't even check your messages without paying money, and it turns out, when you did you were just conversing with a bot...a fake account...meant to string you along and fleece your pockets. If you wanted to quit the site, they withheld your information unless you actually paid them to erase it (kind of like blackmail). And as it turns out, even if you paid they kept your information anyway. So the customers were liars and deceitful bastards and the owners of the website were also liars and deceitful bastards. It's just that one was "outfoxing" the other, and that I suppose is either really sad or pure genius in that it netted $140 MILLION DOLLARS.
I hope some of you will read this and comment and tell me whether you too are fascinated by any of this. We sure live in interesting times.
I don't see it as deceit at all. I believe it is a mixture of an imbalance of libido sizes (generality of course with exceptions) and socialization. Men in general want sex more often and are also okay with having 'meaningless' sex than women are (because it isn't actually meaningless to us). There may even be a lot of women who crave sex as much as men do, but socialization causes them to feel they have to hide these feelings away. I think there are true issues with the idea of long-term monogamy (and I say this as a person happily married for twenty years). Monogamy for life may have been reasonable when people lived relatively short lives, but it becomes more problematic the longer we live. A lot of people will claim perfect happiness in their marriages, but I don't believe they are admitting the full truth to themselves. Even if we still absolutely love our spouses after many years, as I do, we still often crave more sex than we are getting. That doesn't make us deceitful but rather only human.
ReplyDeletePosit this idea: perhaps it's a sign of emotional immaturity linked to entitlements. We know that gun violence is huge in the United States and most of these crimes that I know of are perpetuated by men. Men who have been spurned by women, fired from jobs, or otherwise failed in things that they believe they should not have failed at. Emotional immaturity leads to all kinds of poor decisions, and certainly having an affair could also be considered a "poor decision" in some circles. So maybe it's not an imbalance of libido sizes but the fact that men are achieving physical adulthood while never grasping emotional adulthood and the idea that we don't always get what we want (and being satisfied with that).
DeleteWe'll just have to disagree. I think society is just too puritanical and has incorporated too many elements from religion. Many of the things society sees as the 'right way' don't feel so right to me, and I think at my age I know myself well enough to know that I'm emotionally mature. I think a lot of people, especially younger ones, hang on to idealism rather than be completely honest with themselves. Just my take, and I know it won't be the popular one.
DeleteI agree it really does say something about men. Perhaps the temptation is just too great for so many of them. I don't feel sorry for anyone caught in the hack.
ReplyDeleteWhatever happened to just banging your Secretary? It's hilarious that these horny guys were paying all that money to hit up robots or other dudes in disguise.
ReplyDeleteHilarious because of schadenfreude? This is fraud on a huge scale. I'm in Cindy's camp in that I don't feel sorry for anyone caught up in the hack. I am fascinated by the idea that someone could set up such a money-making honeypot for a specific audience. The person responsible for the idea is probably one of the best marketers in the world in that he knows his audience better than anyone.
DeleteMeh. It's just phone sex taken to another level.
DeleteIt's fascinating that the site made so much money when presumably the guys weren't really getting much out of it. It was this fictional ideal. I've been listening to this unfold, and it makes me happy that I'm single. I think.
ReplyDeleteI had no idea sites like this existed until the shit hit the fan over this. I heard that one of the Duggar guys had an account, and that really fries me because of all the moralizing they did to convince us they were the perfect family.
ReplyDeleteI don't think men are necessarily more deceitful than women; its just that cheating men are more acceptable to society as a whole than women. Women who cheat are treated as whores, whereas men are just seen as getting ansy. And, the women are always to blame for not being able to keep their man's interest. When women cheat, they usually leave the relationship because they fall in love with another; but men will have one "love" relationship, and only have sex with others.
ReplyDeleteI would think in a male/male relationship, those male dominance qualities about relationships still exist. Both men have them, so while they feel its ok for themselves to stray, their partner has to remain faithful. Doesn't work unless at least one partner is willing to remain in the relationship regardless of an unfaithful partner.
Personally, I don't think humans were meant to mate "forever" in one monogamous relationship. Marriage should be a contract with an end date. Perhaps more relationships (gay or straight) would work out longer, or at least end friendlier.
So using the same logic for women that you used for gay men, are lesbians supermonogamous? Yeah, I made that word up.
ReplyDeleteThat's not what I was trying to say at all. Rather, I'm saying that women have the capacity to be faithful and committed if they so desire. But men? Not so much. And because of this, any relationship comprised of only men has twice the chance of failure that a heterosexual relationship based on monogamy does.
DeleteI think all dating sites have too high of a male-to-female ratio.
ReplyDeleteAdam: Any theories as to why that is?
DeleteI once read the comments of a marriage counselor who had come to the conclusion that all men and women fall into three almost equally sized groups: one group is naturally monogamous, the second has to struggle to be monogamous but can do it, and the third isn't monogamous at all and never will be. If this is true, we should alter our culture to recognize variety in human behavior.
ReplyDeleteI do like what you say about the lack of emotional immaturity among a lot of people in our society, but I also think that people (both men and women) try to satisfy what is missing within themselves or their lives by turning to the wrong solution, which can be anything from sexual affairs to guns to excess materialism.
I love the way you raise so many thought-provoking subjects, Mike!
Thanks, Helena
DeleteI think it winds up being who is in charge of paying the bills. Might be harder to hide the account's bills if your husband pays the bills. I know that used to be the case that most men paid the bills. Don't know if it's so now.
ReplyDelete