In college, one of my writing professors told us to beware of certain literary magazines as they’ll inform us they “accepted” your submissions but they may need some pay for publishing. I even decided to do it sending off some mediocre items and thus getting told it had been “accepted.” I knew it was not good so I knew it wasn’t legitimate.
This was about the same time Internet chat rooms became popular and people were told to beware. The website ashleymadison.com launched in 2001. Credited as an online dating site, the powers that be behind the curtain were using the same techniques Big Tobacco used. They’re just presenting a product and no one is forcing you to use it. And that might have been what Noel Biderman, former CEO of Avid Life Media, owner of the website used as his rationale for even having it in existence.
Even though the website got a lot of negative feedback, Biderman was the type to use it for his advantage. They used advertising billboards and TV ads to entice people on the belief they’d find someone to hook up with for a booty call, one night stand, whatever. That was until the summer of 2015 when lots of confidential information was released on the dark web. The Ashley Madison Affair produced through ABC News Studios and currently streaming on Hulu is a sleazy look at the rise and fall and rebirth of the website over the past 20 years. Intended as an online dating service, it soon became notorious for a website for people to cheat on their spouses. And for the company to cheat its users out of money on the pretense they might actually have found someone.
The people at Avid Life wore that it as a badge of honor it was a place for consenting adults to get together. Biderman, who is only show in archival footage, will come off as one of the worst people you’ll ever see. Remember Bill Murray as Frank Cross in Scrooged? That’s what Biderman reminds me of. And he didn’t care. He was just offering a service. No one really had to use it. But that’s the rub. You can’t serve an drunk an alcoholic drink. As Dr. Jeffrey Wigand, former executive of tobacco giant Brown & Williamson, said to 60 Minutes, “We’re in the nicotine delivery business.” Just like Big Tobacco, it’s about selling the addiction, not the product.
Avid Life was betting on people to have illicit affairs and one-night stands. But the problem is if you take people’s money, you got to provide them with a service. The company was taking money but hooking people up with bots. And when you can’t deliver, that causes problems. But more and more people were shelling out money in hopes of finding someone to either have sex with or have a more meaningful relationship. Yet do you think it’s really all there on a website like Ashley Madison?
Around this same time Ashley Madison’s secrets were being exposed, FarmersOnly.com was also popular thanks to cheap commercials that made porno flick productions look like a Jerry Bruckheimer production. And then, there was that awful jingle. So, as interest, I started an account circa 2015 a month before the data breach at Ashley Madison. Almost immediately, I could tell there were a lot of bots. And I’d bet you everything from a diddley-eyed Joe to a damned if I know, just about every other dating site is the same.
When the data was leaked by a group calling themselves The Impact Team during the summer of 2015, very few people were sympathetic. Last month, when the Ocean Titan imploded killing all who were on board, we were divided over whether we should care or not. The data breach also led to some people committing suicide. A newspaper in Alabama went as far as publishing all the names of those to publicly shame them as modern day scarlett letter. Cheaters get busted and most people play the world’s smallest violin.
The documentary asks a big question and that’s where people’s morals are drawn and should everyone be judged by the same. It’s already known that Josh Duggar, who at the time was a conservative Christian family advocate (instead of a convicted sex offender), had his name was released. It shows the hypocrisy. But at the same time, why should Josh Duggar get a mulligan but say Josh Duggins from Passiac, N.J. be raked over the coals even if he didn’t do anything but start an account that he soon lost interest in. (Also, I’m just speaking hypothetically. If there is a Josh Duggins in Passaic, N.J., I meant no ill-will.) And people had paid extra to have their information wiped clean but it wasn’t.
In many ways, the distaste for the website and the schadenfraude when the data breach happen comes from the fact that just about everyone of us has been cheated on. Whether it was some elementary school crush from someone who caught kissing somene else underneath the jungle gym at recess or if it was someone we were married with children to who do it, we’ve all felt that pain. And we’ve all felt the happiness when the cheater gets what’s coming to them. Jerry Springer created a freaking TV show based on watching people fight as the result of cheating.
And in the end, Biderman himself finds himself in the hot seat as it’s revealed he also had an account which maybe gives this three-part docuseries some poetic justice. Yet, even though he stepped down, the website still remains despite the civil lawsuits and multi-million dollar settlements. Usually, this is the type of scandal that destroys something. Why does it continue to flourish years later with millions of users around the world? It’s probably for the same reason why a gambler won’t walk away from the slot machines. They might just hit the jackpot on the next pull of the lever.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 