FERGUSON: The Ashley Madison hack: infidelity’s last hurrah
People seem to love a good scandal, especially when it involves sexual misbehavior. So it’s no wonder that the hacking and subsequent release of data from the Ashley Madison website is being lapped up by the public like a cat with a nice bowl of milk.
Lives are being changed and relationships are being ended overnight as high-profile celebrities and public officials are identified as clients of the site (which very plainly advertises itself as a way for married people who want to have an affair find partners) are released to the public.
Some people just take their medicine when they are caught red-handed in a compromising situation like this. Other people are politicians. My favorite “this isn’t what it looks like” excuse came from the director of the Louisiana Republican Party Doré Jeansonne, who signed up for an account with his own credit card and claims he was doing “standard opposition research.” He doesn’t seem to realize that trolling a cheating website to get dirt on your political enemies is only slightly less scummy than signing up to cheat on your spouse, at best.
The thing I have a hard time understanding about this scandal is why anyone who got caught using the website would be particularly dismayed that they’ve been outed as a cheater. Think about it — there are many ways a person who wanted to utilize the wonderful technology of the Internet to help them cheat on their spouse could do so discreetly. There are plenty of hookup sites that don’t make themselves prime targets for blackmailers by blatantly advertising themselves as a place for people to break their marriage vows. And I’m sure people seek and find cheating partners on sites that aren’t even hookup-related, like Facebook (if you want to recapture your youth by sleeping with your high school sweetheart) or even Craigslist (if you want to date a serial killer.)
But no, these people signed up at Ashley Madison with their credit cards or email addresses that gave out their personal information, and in some cases they logged into the site from their work computers. It almost seems like they wanted to get caught or didn’t care much if they did.
What has astounded a lot of people about the story is just how popular this site is. Apparently there were only three ZIP codes in the U.S. that did not have at least one person who signed up at Ashley Madison, and all three are very lightly populated and have limited access to the Internet.
Social scientists will no doubt puzzle over what this incident says about our culture, but one thing seems clear — the practice of traditional monogamous marriage is in serious decline. People are waiting much longer to get married than they used to, if they marry at all. And the Ashley Madison hack has clearly shown us that lots of people who do get married aren’t staying faithful to their partners.
It’s enough to make you wonder if this isn’t just another sign that marriage as we know it is on its way out. Only gay people are really enthused about the marriage thing right now, and that’s probably because it’s still a novelty for them. I think the decline of marriage is really just a by-product of people becoming more individualistic and self-pleasing, something we’ve been drifting toward since the 1960s. I don’t see any reason to expect the trend to reverse anytime soon.
In fact I think sites like Ashley Madison are a vanishing breed. We are getting to the point where there won’t be much reason for people to pretend they are being faithful anymore. Our moral standards have relaxed so much and technology has made it so easy to meet people to hook up with that polygamy seems destined to become the new normal in the not-too-distant future. Potential blackmailers are just going to have to find something else to embarrass people over.
Bill Ferguson is a resident of Warner Robins. Readers can write him at fergcolumn@hotmail.com.
This story was originally published August 28, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "FERGUSON: The Ashley Madison hack: infidelity’s last hurrah ."