Cybersexy

I feel guilty I’m making cheaters, liars, and two-timers pay $2.75 to contact me. There’s something wrong here.

This week I’ve been doing research into Ashley Madison, the social networking site for people who want to cheat on their spouses. They’re the same ones who pissed off Times Square by putting up a giant billboard that read, “Life is short, have an affair.” The basic idea of their site is to safely connect men and women who “want a little something on the side” in addition to their marriages. The basic idea of their advertising campaign is get enough people angry they end up on Fox News.

Of course, in order to write the piece, I needed to know what the site itself was like, and that meant signing up for an account. Ashley Madison’s CEO Noel Biderman had told me when I interviewed him that a woman didn’t even need a photo or any personal info in her profile to get twenty potential affair buddies arriving on her digital doorstep. I guess I should have believed him. Within minutes of logging in, I had a stream of instant messages from men in the Bay Area. There was nothing so blunt as, “I’m married. You’re married. Let’s have sex,” but plenty of “Do you come here often?”

Not being interested in having an affair — for that matter, not even being married — I didn’t think anything of ignoring their messages, letting them flirt awkwardly to themselves. That is, until I remembered that Ashley Madison works on a pay model. While signing up is free, contacting people isn’t. Users buy “credits” — 100 for $55, last time I checked — and have to use them whenever they want to chat up a new person. Each contact costs five credits. That means I cost each of those men $2.75.

Honestly, I feel really bad about that. Bad enough I considered blowing my humble research cover by posting a line in my profile that read “I’m a money sink-hole!” Still, there’s something really weird about my priorities on this one. While I can’t say I 100% support Ashley Madison on a personal level, my issues with them are based on the fact that they facilitate people who hide their affairs instead of encouraging openness. Of course, leave it to the poly girl to want spouses to communicate about their desires. In the overall though, the sacred institution of marriage isn’t something I’m too worried about. The sacred institution of not wasting money, however, I feel pretty darn strong on.

Loose morals, tight budget. Maybe that’s why I prefer cybersex to the hassles of real-life dating. Just as many people get off and no one has to pay for drinks.