Blessed be they as virtuous, who when they feel their virile members swollen with lust, visit a brothel rather than grind at some husband’s private mill. – Cato the Younger
Those who read my “2011 in Review” column may have noticed that after adjusting for several very popular picture searches, my second most popular column was “Ashley Madison”, published one year ago today; discounting those who viewed it on the home page, it was viewed 3569 times last year. The reason for this is simple; upon seeing an ad for this con game disguised as a dating service, many people try to look it up online to see what others have to say about it. Noel Biderman, the Toronto shyster who dreamed up this scam, anticipated this and acted accordingly:
Do a Google search for any phrase like “Ashley Madison scam”, “Ashley Madison fraud” or “Ashley Madison review” and you’ll find websites stocked with testimonials for the agency and either insinuating or outright stating that escorts carry venereal diseases. Of course, as my regular readers know this is a crock of shit; escorts have a vested interest in staying clean, and promiscuous amateurs have far higher rates of every known STD. Why are these sites so eerily similar and why do they all carry praise for the agency when their names suggest otherwise?
Because they’re all owned by Biderman, of course, as a quick whois search will reveal. It took me a bit of diligent digging to find any REAL criticism of the agency…
What I found was revealed in last year’s column, and it’s not pretty; male customers have to…
…buy “credits” which are needed to do pretty much anything on the site (send a message, receive a message, start a chat, etc). The agency employs a number of shills and/or robots which bombard male members with fake messages that cost credits to open, and sending messages to the fake “too good to be true” ads costs credits as well and goes nowhere…Everything is set up like a casino or a carnival con game, enticing the poor bastard to keep throwing good money after bad in a futile effort to get something for nothing.
Biderman has himself a sweet little racket going, but he couldn’t have anticipated that a certain website which exposes the swindle would end up as the second result from the top whenever someone Googles “Ashley Madison testimonials” (in fact, mine is the only site on the first page which isn’t owned by Biderman). I’m also the first result on page two for the search “Ashley Madison scam”, and I’m sure you’ll get similar results by combining the agency’s name with words like “fraud”, “flim-flam”, “hustle”, “rip-off”, “shakedown” or “sucker game” (at least, you will now).
There are lots of hucksters out there pulling the wool over people’s eyes, so you may wonder why Biderman’s con in particular annoys me so. There are two important reasons: First, as I’ve stated many times, I think it’s reprehensible for a married man to cheat on his wife with an amateur, because she could jeopardize his whole marriage and even put his wife in danger, yet here is Biderman trying to convince people that the immoral course of action is moral and vice-versa. Second, as I stated above, his fake “testimonial” websites all either imply or directly state the outrageous lie that escorts carry venereal disease while cheating housewives are somehow magically protected from viruses, spirochetes and even pthiridae via the prophylactic power of most holy matrimony. As if that weren’t enough, he’s added other prohibitionist myths to his smear campaign in the past year; Aspasia recently sent me this photo of an Ashley Madison ad
which Mariko Passion posted on her Facebook page. Seven men a day, my high-priced fanny; that’s not “average” by any stretch of the imagination, except in the dirty minds of prohibitionists. I only did that many in a day twice in my entire career, once in 2000 and again in 2005. And though it may be true that the average woman has sex with seven men in her lifetime, the average woman doesn’t cheat on her husband either (and even the average cheating woman doesn’t hook up with random strangers on the internet). As for that last line…92% of statistics are made up on the spot, eh Noel?
Now, sleazy Ashley Madison ads are nothing new; they’re practically a trademark. But one has to wonder if Biderman hasn’t “lost his Ouija board” (as Grace would put it) on this one, reported in Huffington Post on December 20th:
…Ashley Madison, a “pro-adultery” website whose slogan is “Life is short. Have an affair,” put up a billboard in Bucks County, PA, that “endorses” Newt Gingrich for president. Gingrich has famously admitted to extramarital affairs in the past. The billboard boasts a large picture of Gingrich, with the text, “Faithful Republican, Unfaithful Husband. Welcome to the AshleyMadison.com Era”…site founder Noel Biderman explained further in a statement:
Now that Newt is the leading contender in the race for the GOP nomination, we felt compelled to make a point to illustrate how times have changed when a serial divorcee/adulterer is capturing the hearts of the American people. Gingrich proves that marital fidelity has no bearing on someone’s ability to do a job. Rather than judge him, Americans have finally embraced the reality that affairs are commonplace, and perhaps paradoxically, might be an indication of great leadership to come. He is not the first nor last politician who will step outside of their marriage.
Of course, most smart politicians do their cheating with whores; those foolish enough to try it with amateurs risk losing everything, which makes them pretty much the same as other men…though Biderman would rather you forget that.
