Website Built on Broken Families & Questionable Morals

AN attractive couple lie entwined in a cotton sheet - clearly satisfied after what seems to have been a steamy sex session.

Cue subtitles for a dramatic finale: "This couple is married . . . NOT to each other."

The controversial TV ad for an infidelity website caused outrage when it aired in America.

And now it could hit Britain as part of the multi-million pound UK launch of ashleymadison.com.

Branded "a business built on the back of broken hearts, ruined marriages and damaged families" but hailed by others as "an honest format for an age-old human weakness", the online phenomenon already boasts seven million members in the US, Canada and Australia.

Its owner Noel Biderman, a married father of two, hopes to add one million UK cheaters to his portfolio by Christmas.

Canadian-born Biderman, 39, says: "Ashley Madison is like a traditional dating site but for people already in relationships.

"It was becoming increasingly apparent people who wanted to cheat on their partners were using more traditional sites like Facebook and match.com but concealing the fact they were married when they began dating.

"My research showed around 30 per cent of these people were effectively taking off their wedding rings when they went online.

"So I didn't need to generate infidelity but I saw that I could capitalise on it by taking this pool of people away from the mainstream dating sites and letting them know about another community where both parties could be more honest about what they're doing."

Ashley Madison - which carries the slogan "Life is Short. Have an Affair" - has become a multi-million pound phenomenon, receiving news coverage on leading US shows and channels including CNN and Fox News.

Biderman clearly revels in the "King Of Infidelity" title given to him by the US media and delights in explaining the intricacies of his website.

Starting from £49 for 100 credits, members can email one another (five credits); engage in real-time chat, enter virtual bars and bedrooms (both 30 credits for 30 minutes) and even post virtual gifts to one another.

Launched on February 13, 2002 (a day Biderman has dubbed "Mistress Day"), the following years have been spent honing the product.

Dressed in chinos and brogues, Biderman attempts to present himself as a relaxed charmer but he sips on a can of Red Bull and talks at 100mph as he tries to excuse the questionable morals behind his business.

"I've spent years perfecting the product," he says.

"Lipstick on the collar doesn't catch out people these days. Digital lipstick - emails and text messages that get into the wrong hands - catches them out.

"I've had to convince people that communicating on Ashley Madison is safe, with billing under a pseudonym."

Biderman christened the business Ashley Madison because it combines the two most popular girls' names in the US and he wanted the brand to appeal to women as well as men.

In the UK around 40 per cent of people married or in long-term relationships cheat at some stage.

More than half of women and around 60 per cent of men have been unfaithful in the past.

Love or hate Biderman, he has so far managed to tap thriving markets for infidelity in other countries.

And the no-holds-barred messages on his website have given him an insight into cheating in the 21st Century.

Biderman says this comprises: "Around two men for every woman on the site and a three to four-year itch scenario as opposed to the more mythical seven-year phenomenon."

He adds: "There is also a dramatic shift in family dynamics after the birth of the first child. Intimacy levels between couples change because of the way people feel about their bodies.

"For years, infidelity was viewed as a male phenomenon but Ashley Madison revealed more and more women have been having affairs as opportunity has allowed them to enter the workplace.

"Not every woman a man cheats with is a mistress, is she? And the more emasculated men feel, the more it causes them to lash out and want to cheat on their wives."

Biderman is currently staying in a luxury Mayfair hotel as he prepares to launch his "service" in the UK.

A round of media interviews has been lined up and a £10million advertising budget is poised to be spent if he can get his controversial message past the Advertising Standards Authority.

He claims he has seen enough messages on his website from people in the UK to know there is a "captive market waiting to join".

And he claims: "By Christmas, I estimate that one million Brits will be using the site."

The product of a stable middle-class home, Biderman says there was no role model in his own family for infidelity.

The son of a dentist and a housewife, he thrived at school and was a sports attorney. His older brother is a banker.

Married for eight years, Biderman swears he has been faithful to his wife - a stay-at-home "mom" who looks after his son, five, and daughter, two.

"Have I been tempted to stray? Yes," he says confidently.

"But I talk about infidelity ten times a week. If there is anyone who should know about what it takes to be monogamous, it's me.

"Is our relationship perfect? No. But I try hard to keep it on the right tracks.

"I might one day find myself in a similar position to my members and, if so, I would rather stray then leave the family unit."

So has Biderman considered the possibility his wife might be cheating on him right at this moment?

Appearing a little flustered for the first time, he pauses before responding more slowly: "If my wife was cheating on me right now, I would be shocked."

By all accounts, Mrs Biderman would rather he got a more respectable job, but the legitimising of extra-martial affairs has reaped rich rewards.

Biderman admits to living in a "big house" and driving a Maserati sports car.

He clearly revels in the debate over his business but, amazingly, also tries to convince the world there are heart-warming stories surrounding infidelity.

Like the Ashley Madison Diaries, a book written by a woman trapped in a loveless marriage who allegedly found her Prince Charming on the website.

Or the elderly gentleman nursing a wife with Alzheimer's.

Biderman claims: "With the permission of his children, he joined and spent once a week with a married woman. He wanted to tell me his story because he could see I was getting a hard time in the media."

Actually, Biderman appears to delight in his role as a moral villain because he knows controversy sells.

And as he points out: "Extra-marital affairs existed long before Ashley Madison and will continue to long afterwards."

original article here

Hate & the Internet

Does the internet encourage insidious and bullying behaviour?

I remember the first time I logged into a chatroom. It was 1996, and I was using my mum's AOL account to mooch around the world wide web, which was still very much in its infancy. I was in that glorious, unrestricted period of life between college and reality, and the web seemed to offer splendid, unrestricted access to the outside world in a way that no generation had known before.

So it was with cocky confidence that I joined the "general" room as "Dan" (of undisclosed gender) and instantly discovered the thrill of anonymity. Behind my digital mask, I began a brief but satisfying tirade of mockery, contrariness and antisocial behaviour. Of course, compared with the stream of epithets that Xbox Live users encounter playing online, my efforts were pretty tame – I didn't question anyone's sexuality, make any racial slurs or say anything particularly negative about anyone's mother. But the sense of release I experienced in 10 minutes of childishness has remained at the back of my mind ever since I started studying the web; it helps define our behaviour online.

For some, this new technology not only facilitates, but actively encourages insidious and novel social ills. Blogs and forums are no-go zones for people who hope for rational conversation; cyberbullying has been blamed for several recent suicides; and white power, homophobic and jihadist organisations have colonised the web, preferring its potential to old-fashioned pamphleteering. It looks as if the web makes it possible for us to hate one another more easily, more efficiently and more effectively.

My mantra is that the web is an agnostic communication platform: it can do nothing to us except reflect who we are. However, as my own little descent into cyber-trollism attests, there are aspects of it that do encourage antisocial behaviour.

The biggie is anonymity, according to Dr Karen Douglas from the University of Kent, who studies the psychology of hatred online. We can log into a forum under a pseudonym, lob a hate bomb and then fade away into the digital ether. It's like playing a trick on Halloween; it's childish, it seems insignificant, and it's kinda fun. Unfortunately, such actions can have real-life consequences depending on who the hatred is directed at, how often it happens and whether there's support in place if the victim needs it.

But is anonymity alone the issue? Philip Zimbardo, professor emeritus at Stanford University, has been studying why people do evil since the 60s, and he says that environmental social cues are equally as important. In his famous Stanford prison experiment in 1971, a random selection of psychologically stable subjects were transformed into brutal prison guards after being given mirrored sunglasses and uniforms and told to play the role.

To reindividuate anonymous members of online crowds, forums, blogs and news sites – including the Observer's – are increasingly asking commentators to register their real names before posting any material (even if they then do so using a pseudonym). It's believed that the forging of this simple link between the virtual and offline persona is why relatively few counter-normative attitudes are expressed on sites such as Facebook, where exposing yourself as racist can turn you into a social pariah. Unless, of course, your friends are racists too. And that's a more difficult problem to solve.

Data traffic indicates that, online, we are increasingly talking to people just like ourselves, relying on our friends' directions to navigate the web. It's ironic that, rather than opening us up to an ever-greater number of opinions and attitudes, social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter may actually be narrowing our worldview, confirming what we already believe and reinforcing attitudes we hold already.

So what happens when we only communicate with people like ourselves, and the messages we share only reinforce our mutual hatred? It's a technique radical religious and racist organisations have always used to make sure their members conform, but now they're employing technological tools to create global communities of like-minded ideologues.

Groups such as Stormfront.org and GodHatesFags.com use the web for networking, self-promotion and recruitment. They give support and intellectual ammunition to existing members, rarely explicitly inciting violence. Thankfully, it appears that efforts to convince non-believers to convert to their cause are rarely successful – although we have yet to see the impact of their children's zones (with links to games, and alternative information for schoolwork, that reinforce their ideologies).

It's not all bad news, however. Just as the web is a powerful tool to get the message out, it's also a good vehicle to expose its flaws. The rampant opinions that dominate online life challenge users to be critical of the content they consume, and considerate in how they construct effective counter-arguments.

Online hatred is real, and it can have a very real effect. But we are in command of the technology; it's not in charge of us. And as for anonymity, back in 1996, even though I hid behind a false name, I didn't throw a hate bomb into that chatroom and run away; no, I was booted out. And frankly, my moment of humiliation was exactly what I deserved.

original article here