Show and Tell

A fool and his money are soon parted.  –  English proverb

My column on Ashley Madison, the carnival scam designed to separate horny men from their money, is my second most popular one of all time; as of today it has been viewed over 10,000 times.  When I first wrote that article, it was one of the few on the web which told the truth about the so-called “dating site”:

…if you’re a woman Ashley Madison is just fine because ten seconds after you sign up the men will be all over you like white on rice.  But if you’re a guy it’s a total scam; you 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.  If a man lucks out and picks an ad which actually goes to an escort he’ll get laid (after paying her fee, of course), but he could’ve made the same connection on a hooker board, Backpage, etc for free and without the hassle of trying to figure out which ads were for whores, which for fakes and which for real women twenty years and fifty pounds ago.  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.

The reason the truth was so hard to find is that Noel Biderman, the Toronto lawyer who owns the company, bought up a number of sites with names that would come up in Google searches made to check up on him (such as ashleymadisonscam.com and the like); he then used these to post fake testimonials.  Before I wrote my column, one had to dig down about 7 or 8 pages to get to the first sincere reviews, but for whatever reason mine zoomed up quickly and has remained on the first or second page of results ever since.  It’s not the only true review any more; for example this one now comes up higher than mine in some searches, and a quick review shows me it has some excellent information (such as the fact that Ashley Madison’s “guarantee” will only refund a man’s money by sending a check to his house in an envelope marked “Ashley Madison”).  Mine is, however, still a very popular one, and somebody at AM must be unhappy about that because all of a sudden “real” women (who insist they’re attractive) are showing up in the comment thread of that column, talking about how wonderful the site has been for them.  Just to give you perspective:  NO such comments for 17 months, then one on June 30^th and another on August 7^th.

Now, it’s certainly possible that the juxtaposition of these two happy cheatin’ wives posting in the thread one after the other is entirely coincidental; however,  I don’t think it’s likely.  So I’ve decided it’s time to publish these pictures I’ve had for a few months now; I was waiting for a good time to use them and I feel this is it.  Click on the picture above and contemplate the info; this is a screen cap of Ashley Madison’s decoy interface, which allows AM administrators to make up fake female profiles with which to trick male members into spending their credits.  It’s accessed through this administration page: 

Click on the image to see details. On the toolbar at left, you’ll see the highlighted selection is “human decoy interface”, and you’ll note that my source was performing a search for a “human who has responded to a decoy” when this screencap was taken. Here’s another part of the interface which allows the administrator to attach a fake picture to the fake profile; you’ll notice settings for the “reply bot” in the lower left corner: 

I don’t think I need to say any more; as the lawyers say, res ipsa loquitur.  But next time a commenter claiming to be a happy, satisfied female Ashley Madison customer posts on that thread, I’ll have a nice link to this column to reply with.