Market for adultery revisited

Cheating, Incorporated At Ashley Madison's website for "dating," the infidelity economy is alive, well, and profitable By Sheelah Kolhatkar

Lots of interesting bits, here are some...

"There's a lone genius—possibly evil and certainly entrepreneurial—behind Ashley Madison. His name is Noel Biderman, and he's the chief executive officer of Avid Life Media, based in Toronto. "Monogamy, in my opinion, is a failed experiment," he declares."
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"Avid Life's six websites—including cougarlife.com, for older women seeking younger men, establishedmen.com, which connects "ambitious and attractive girls" with "successful and generous benefactors to fulfill their lifestyle needs," and hotornot.com, the 1990s throwback where people rate one another's photos"
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"Promoting adultery and creating a market for it has made Biderman rich. It has not made him popular."
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"...Ashley Madison is drowning in husbands, so many that they threaten to crush the few venturesome ladies who have boldly—and perhaps recklessly—put themselves out there. Each time you log on as a female, it's as if a new batch of peanut butter packets has been dropped over a refugee camp—everyone leaps at them at once, and you are overwhelmed with messages, "winks," and men attempting to interact. The pricing system is cleverly designed to charge the men at their most vulnerable moment: Each time one of those hungry males tries to grab at the peanut butter, he has to spend a few bucks. Creating a profile and browsing others are free, but if you'd like to initiate an e-mail or chat conversation with someone, you must purchase "credits"—200 of them cost $79.00, and they run like a meter (e-mails after the first one cost nothing; charges appear ambiguously on your credit card bill). "
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"Curiously, Australia, where Ashley Madison was launched in April 2010, has the highest proportion of women users, at almost 40 percent. Biderman spent a few weeks there and says he noticed that prostitution is legal and that Aussie women aren't happy about it. "I think women down there have a view of the world that men have all these playgrounds—brothels, strip clubs, massage parlors," he says, "and they have nothing." Biederman has spent so much time studying his users, he sounds like an amateur sociologist: "We know there's a lot of doctors on there with god complexes who clearly either deal with so much stress in their lives, or believe they're so important, that having an affair—they're entitled to it."
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"Biderman is quick to explain why his business isn't hurting anyone. "You eradicate Ashley Madison, you're not going to eradicate infidelity."
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"When I asked Biderman's wife, Amanda, what it's like being joined in holy matrimony with an anti-marriage entrepreneur, she let out a long sigh. "Really, the business itself doesn't match who he is as a person—it's not our lifestyle or value system or any of that," she said. "I mean, yeah, I'd love it if he were working on a cure for cancer. But it's a business, and that's how we look at it."

HT: Benjamin Kay



For a historical view, see Elizabeth Abott, MISTRESSES: A history of the other woman; reviewed here:Mistresses through the ages: Prostitute, concubine, mistress, wife: the boundaries are blurred in this study